CHAPTER THREE

MALE EGO AND MARITAL DISHARMONY: DANGLING MAN,

THE VICTIM, SEIZE THE DAY, THE ADVENTURES OF
AUGIE MARCH AND HENDERSON THE RAIN KING

The concept of ego has proved to be one of the

integrating concepts necessary to deal with the
individual's experience and behaviour in his day-to-day
activities. It is considered that the core of the
personality pattern is the individual's concept of himself
as a person as related to the world in which he lives.
William James calls the core of the personality pattern,
the "self"' and says it provides a "unity." Sigmund Freud
refers to it as the ''ego1'* and Harry Stack Sullivan
denominates it the "self system. ,, 3

There are two schools of thought regarding the

concept of 'self.' On the one hand, Rogers and his
followers feel that the basic problem of many disturbed
people is that their self-concepts are sources of
inner discord. On the other hand, Freud and other
psychoanalysts belonging to the second school of thought
focus on the importance of the ego. According to them,
the strength and functioning of the ego determine how
well the individual can deal with his inner conflicts.
Snygg and Combs have stated that the self-concept is
"composed of all meanings which the individual has about
himself and his relation to the world around him. ,,5 Ego
must, therefore, be defined as a "developmental formation
(a "subsystem") in the psychological make-up of the
individual consisting of inter-related attitudes which are
acquired in relation to his own body, to objects, family,
persons, groups, social values, and institutions and which
define and regulate his relatedness to them in concrete
situations. "6 The Gestalt psychologists Koffka, K8hler
and Lewin also point out that the ego is a subsystem in
the total psychological make-up of the person.

Ego problems arise when persons find it difficult to

bring about a compromise between his ego-attitudes and the
situations in hand. "When the individual is ego-involved,
he 'tightens up;' he becomes less subject to variations in
the stimulus field; he deals with situations and tasks
more in terms of his own claims and pretensions. "7 Hence
Ausubel remarks that ego development is the result of
continuous biosocial interactions wherein there is no
predetermined sequence of events which reflects the
unfolding of a detailed blueprint designed by inner
impulses.8

Saul Bellow dramatizes through his novels Sherif and

Harvey's thesis in their study of ego-functioning. His
male characters are subject to ego-consciousness and when
the stability of relatedness defined by ego-attitudes is
disrupted, the consequence is ego-tension. Ego-tension
includes within its wide ambit unpleasant experiences like
anxiety, insecurity, personal inadequacy, aloneness, shame
and guilt on the one hand and male dominance, male
violence, male assertiveness and superiority complex on
the other. An attempt is made in the following pages to
analyse Bellow's earlier novels in the light of the above
findings. The novels chosen are Dangling Man, The Victim,
Seize the Day, The Adventures of Augie March, and
Henderson the Rain King all of which have prominent ego-
tension characteristics.

Some of the common features found in all the above

novels are anxiety, male insecurity, male inadequacy, male
violence and separation. At one time or the other, most
of the protagonists remain unemployed. The psychological
effects of prolonged unemployment have been found to
include the breakdown of some ego-attitudes. Prolonged
unemployment is likely to make the unemployed feel useless
and superfluous as in the case of Joseph in Dangling Man,
-
Kirby Allbee in The Victim and Tommy Wilhelm in Seize the
. Money is an important motif in all these novels. In
Dangling Man, Amos marries Dolly from a rich family which
makes him socially and economically more secure than his
brother Joseph and Iva. In The Victim, Allbee's ego-
tensions get cured only at the end of the novel when he
marries a millionairess. Seize the Day introduces a
moneyed father, Dr Adler and a penniless, anxious son
Tommy Wilhelm who has to pay his divorced wife Margaret
for the upkeep of their sons. In The Adventures of Auqie
March, as in Dangling Man, Simon March marries the wealthy
Charlotte Magnus and is thus prosperous unlike the less
fortunate brother, Augie March. Henderson the Rain Kinq,
is the only novel in this group where the protagonist is
socially and economically well-placed. But here money
becomes a curse when Henderson resists the idea of his
wife Lily enjoying its privileges. There is separation
either legally or just physically in almost all the
novels. In Seize the Day, Tommy Wilhelm and Margaret are
legally separated whereas in The Victim and Henderson the
Rain Kinq, the protagonists Asa Leventhal and Mary and
Henderson and Lily separate with mutual consent. The
possibility of separation hangs like a Damocles' sword in
Dangling Man and The Adventures of Augie March when the
protagonists Joseph and Augie March decide to wind up
their marital relationship, the one to join the military
and the other to start a foundling school.

Bellow's very first novel Danyliny Man (1944)

examines certain issues that are of topical interest.
The marital ties of Joseph and Iva and Almstadt and
Mrs Almstadt which represent major relationships serve as
parallel but contrastive studies. The relationship of
couples Harry Servatius and Minna and Waltar and Susie is
minor compared to that of Joseph and Iva. Some of the
vital problems examined in this novel are male dependency,
male insecurity, male dominance, lack of communication,
sexual truancy, arrogance, infidelity and separation. The
novel also affords some moral lessons on mutual adjustment
and understanding, on flexibility in relationship and on
genuine love.

Carl Jung says that "seldom, or perhaps never, does a

marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly
and without crises; there is no coming to consciousness
without pain. "lo In Danqlinq Man, conflict develops when
one spouse's behaviour does not watch the other spouse's
expectations or hopes. Through Joseph, Bellow shows "what
it meant to be a parasite and a failure in an elite
society. "11 Iva, his wife is loving, caring and
protective. But Joseph upsets the balance by his being
unemployed. Being dependent on his wife for everything
seems to have ruined his self-respect and dignity. He is
unable to function as a complete man and there is
eventually no love in the relationship. Lack of a job
breeds in Joseph a sense of uselessness--"there is nothing
to do but wait, or dangle, and grow more and more
dispirited" (10). Even the maid treats him as a non-
entity and smokes in his presence. A typical household
quarrel recorded in the 26 March entry brings to focus
this feeling of inadequacy in Joseph:

Don't make fun of me, Iva. Things have changed.

You've become the breadwinner, and whether you
know it or not you resent the fact that I stay at
home while you go to work every morning. ...
You want me to earn my keep (148).

Male dominance is the natural correlative of a sense of

male inadequacy. Joseph assumes that the natural order of
life requires the complete subjugation of women to the
male ego. Accordingly, he has a certain general plan:

Into this plan have gone his friends, his family,

and his wife. He has taken a great deal of
trouble with his wife, urging her to read books
of his choosing, teaching her to admire what he
believes admirable (24).

Joseph McCadden makes this observation on the egoistical

tendencies of the protagonist:

Throughout Danglinq Man, Joseph expresses

disappointment, indeed anger, with Iva for
failing to conform to his ideals of feminine
perfection--to be spiritual, intellectual, and
ascetic. ... He believes that women are flawed
creatures with a pre-disposition to self-
 indulgence that can be corrected only by complete
12
submission to male authority.

Male dominance in Danqling Man leads to male

inexpressiveness. In the I1 January entry, Joseph
recalls: "Iva and I had not been getting along well. I
don't think the fault was entirely hers. I had
dominated her for years; she was now capable of
rebelling" ( 7 7 ) . "It was evident that Iva did not want to
be towed" (81). Her complaint is that Joseph takes little
interest in her. There is a lack of communication between
them. She accuses him in bitter terms:

It's months and months since you took an interest

in me. Lately, for all you care, I might just as
well not be here. You pay no attention to what I
say. If I didn't come home for a week you
wouldn't miss me ( 7 7 ) .

While Iva imprints in her mind the image of Joseph as

unreliable, angry and demanding but inexpressive in the
positive sense, insensitive and unkind, uncaring and
irresponsible, Joseph writes off his wife Iva as a
nagging, over-emotional and dominating woman.

Male inexpressiveness leads to loss of intimacy which

is a primary human need. In the previous chapter it was
seen that the Triangular Theory of Love sees love as
composed of three elements--intimacy, passion and
decision/commitment. Joseph in Dangling Man lacks all the
above mentioned virtues. Loss of intimacy leads to
unhappy sex life. An unhappy sex life does not
necessarily mean that a couple is sexually incompatible.
Their sexual relationship may be undermined by other
problems. In Dangling Man, Joseph's initiation into
extra-marital relationship is a signal to the partner Iva
that she is sexually inadequate and uninteresting. Bryan
Strong and Christine De Vault have rightly observed:

Rage, anger, disappointment, and hostility

sometimes become a permanent part of marital
interaction. Such factors ultimately affect the
sexual relationships, for sex is like a barometer
for the whole relationship.13

Joseph's relationship with Kitty Daumler is recorded

in the 11 January entry where he recalls how two years
before, he as an employee of the Inter-American Travel
Bureau had mapped out a Caribbean tour for Kitty. What
Joseph finds pleasing in her is that "she is simple, warm,
uncomplicated, and matter of fact" (79). She felt that
"marriage as such did not exist. There were only
people" (80). Initially, Joseph's intimacy with Kitty
stopped with mere conversations and discussions. The day
comes when this routine changes. It is a wet, cold
evening in early fall. Kitty is caught in the rain and
she is warming herself up in the bed with a cup of whisky:

She sipped her drink, her head raised between the

cleft of the raised pillows; her chin ...
nestled above the other cleft, the world's most
beautiful illustration of number, tender division
of the flesh beginning high above the lace line
of night gown (82).

Joseph himself comes in wet. She gets a towel to dry.

Her solicitousness extends and they have sex. Joseph "saw
it her way" (83) for two months, until she began hinting
at his leaving Iva.

As soon as Joseph recognizes this, he makes an

earnest effort to bring the relationship to a close. He
makes it clear to her that "a man must accept limits and
cannot give in to the wild desire to be everything and
everyone and everything to everyone" (83). Bellow's
rating of 'sex' women is very low. They are synonymous
with Evil. They are almost always described as dirty,
unsystematic and disorderly in their ways. This is
noticed in the portrayal of Kitty Daumler too. "Her
furniture was soiled, the wall-paper next to the mirror
was smeared with lipstick, clothes were flung about, the
bed was always unmade, and she was careless about
herself . . ." (81). Joseph's sexual escapade with Kitty
Daumler indicates his rebellious phase. His calling off
his extra-marital relationship with Kitty makes him return
to Iva.

In the 26 January entry, Joseph describes the manner

in which Iva nurses him when he is in bed with cold:

Iva came home after lunch to nurse me. She

brought a box of Louisiana strawberries and, as a
treat, rolled them in powdered sugar. ... She
read to me for an hour, and then we dozed off
together. I awoke in the middle of the
afternoon, she still slept. I gazed up at the
comfortable room and heard the slight, mixed
rhythm of her breathing and mine. This endeared
her to me more than any favour could (98).

These are the few moments of intimacy that one can notice
in the novel. These are also the occasions when Joseph
remarks that Iva has been free from the things he disliked
so greatly. But the moment Iva asserts herself and acts
independent, the relationship becomes sour. Note, for
instance, the 26 March entry where Joseph records the row
they have over the former's refusal to go to the bank to
cash Iva's cheque. This is one of the few instances when
we get the woman's point of view:
 I'm quite sure you can stand it [go without
meals]. You'd have to be as weak as . . . Gandhi
before you'd give in. You're mulish.
.........................
You always have reasons, and with principles.
Capital g, she said, tracing the letter on the
air with her finger (147).

Iva's outburst in this context is typical of a

liberated woman who longs for the same degree of freedom
that men enjoy and wishes to be treated as an equal. In
the Joseph-Iva relationship, therefore, we find that
rebellion turns to adaptation which in turn ends in
separation with the signing up of Joseph for the Army.

The Almstadt couple's relationship runs parallely as

a contrast to the Joseph-Iva pair. The Almstadts live on
the North-west side. Joseph finds the house in disorder
and Mrs Almstadt, his mother-in-law trying to do many
things at the same time. Everytime her friends ring up,
she repeats her troubles all over again. "Old Almstadt
gave no indication that he heard; at times, he seemed
automatically deaf to her" (17). Joseph tries to worm out
information from Mr Almstadt but his words are quite
matter-of-fact:

I don't pay much attention to it. All women are

talkers. Maybe Katty talks more than most, but
 you got to allow for that. ... Some people
just turn out different than others. Everybody
isn't alike (17).

Joseph wondered if old Almstadt was not just resigned or

unaware but delighted in her slovenly, garrulous, foolish
and coy ways. What should be noted here is that genuine
love prompts Almstadt to take a flexible stand regarding
his wife's weaknesses since adaptability and flexibility
are positively inter-related with marital happiness.

Among the minor relationships, the Harry Servatius-

Minna relationship and Harry Servatius-Gilda relationship
serve as contrastive studies. The December 27 entry in
Joseph's Diary mentions the party thrown by the Servatius
pair. Joseph accompanies Iva to this party though he is
not much interested in it. He feels that "the human
purpose of these occasions had always been to free the
charge of feeling in the pent heart ... to give our
scorn, hatred, and desire temporary liberty and
play" (37). Female jealousy and revenge are highlighted
in this episode. Minna tries to hit back at Harry who is
in the study with Gilda. She flirts with George and then
with Abt who was her one-time lover. She seeks his help
to liven up the party. And her way is to get him
hypnotize her. This is Minna's way of satiating her urge
for love and attention. The sadist in Abt is brought out
very well when he gradually incapacitates her by making
her numb. As Jo Brans remarks, Bellow in fact intends the
Abt-Minna relationship to act as a silhouette to the
Joseph-Iva relationship for in Abt's victimization of
Minna, we see Joseph's attitude towards Iva.l4 The vital
point to be noted in this episode is that all of a sudden
Minna sits up and cries for Harry. The hypnotic session
winds up and the crowd disperses. But the indirect
message is that with all the shortcomings and misgivings,
one would prefer one's own.

Another pair that throws light on the dynamics of

marital life is Walter and Susie Farson. The latter comes
to Iva in tears as she and Farson "wage an endless
fight" (93). Susie is six years older than her husband.
"He resents this difference in their age, he resents
having been trapped into marriage, and most of all, he
resents the baby, Barbara" (93). Some of the interesting
issues brought to our attention through this episode are:
(1) Compatibility (2) Role-Conflict (3) Adaptability.
Farson is infuriated on knowing that he is six years
younger than Susie. The resulting complex makes him
indulge in violent acts. Susie Farson, on the other hand,
finds it difficult to cope with many roles at the
same time. Recent sociological studies too have
emphasized that

role-conflict causes women great anguish; to be

simultaneously wife, mother, and mistress to
 one's own husband, causes stress for a woman that
male role-conflict does not 15. ....
The problem in this case is resolved when Susie
compromises with Waltar, leaves her child with Farson's
sister and goes with her husband to Detroit to attend a
radio training course offered by the War Department. The
brute force of Farson exposed in his act of gagging his
child is a sign of his possessiveness and of his urge to
dominate and suppress another's freedom. These are some
of the symptoms depicted in Joseph's character too.

Saul Bellow, by a critical assimilation of the

contemporary world affirms the fact "that human nature
is full of many kinds of wickedness which must be
fought. . . ."I6 The question most pertinent here is how
should a good man live in the midst of wickedness. Bellow
makes a point here when he reiterates that "goodness
can be achieved [only] in the company of man. ,817

In the 5 February entry, Joseph sums up "we fly at one

another because of 'confused motives of love and
loneliness'" (121). The ultimate choice of Joseph for the
warfield and Walter and Susie Farson for the war school is
an indirect message that marital life is also in a way a
kind of regimentation. It requires both parties "to
submit" (125) and to be accommodative.
 While the first novel Dangling Man examines the
problem of male inadequacy and inexpressiveness and
role-conflict in the female, the next novel The Victim
treats of the problem of separation from two points of
view--separation and its fall-out on the protagonist
Asa Leventhal and on Elena, Asa's sister-in-law.
"Separation," according to Bryan Strong and Christine De
Vault, "refers to the physical separation of two married
people. It may or may not lead to divorce. "18 In

The Victim, separation in both cases does not lead to

divorce. It is separation only in the physical sense. It
is the victimisation of the victims.

Strained marital relationship is once again the theme

in The Victim. In this regard Goldman remarks: "All the
married couples function with one spouse missing. ...
Asa is a married man with an absentee wife, and he
foreshadows the marital status of Bellow's future
protagonists; husbands sans spouses. "19 For the purpose
of textual analysis, one can identify four relationships:
Asa Leventhal and Mary, Max and Elena, Kirby Allbee and
Flora, and Kirby Allbee and the rich hollywood star.
Through the first relationship, Bellow tries to convey the
message that "the wife represents emotional security to
the unsettled hero battling against his own destructive
impulses in a hostile world. "*' When the novel begins,
Mary has left home to nurse her ailing mother.
Asa Leventhal, in the absence of his wife, is like a bird
with broken wings. This is because "he needs the
psychological identity of being a husband to satisfy
fundamental emotional needs.'2tl Asa experiences this
sense of incompleteness physically and psycholoyically,
for his nerves had been quite unsteady. "He kept the
bathroom light burning all night. . . . This was absurd,
this feeling that he was threatened by something while he
slept" ( 26).

Asa and Mary Leventhal are Jews. Asa is to a great

extent influenced by the Talamud injunctions about a
wife's duties to her husband. It is to be noted here that
as a husband Asa fails to assert himself and prevent Mary
from staying away for a long duration. Mary, on the other
hand, fails to fulfil her functions as envisaged by the
Judaic traditions. Judith Hauptman in "Images of Women in
the Talamud" specifically points out that "a woman's prime
function in life is to concern herself with man's welfare
and to provide for his physical comfort. ... A second
function of a wife is to satisfy her husband's sexual
needs. ... A third highly applauded duty of the wife
is to enable her husband to study Torah. "22 In Rabbi
Tanhum's view, "a man who lives without a wife lives
without happiness, without blessing and without
goodness."23 Bellow shows in The Victim how a man without
his wife could lead a disorganized life and even fall a
prey to erotic advances. There is no mention of any
conflict in the Asa-Mary relationship which sparks off
Mary's departure to her mother's house. Rather, the
protagonist is portrayed as feeling warmth towards Mary
and "despondent . . . quarrelsome . . . difficult, touchy,
exaggerating, illogical, overly familiar" (391, during her
absence.

The idea that Mary is the fulcrum of Leventhal's life

is further reinforced by the unholy erotic advances of a
one-time acquaintance, Kirby Allbee, who falsely claims
that his life and career were ruined by Leventhal. Joseph
McCadden argues that "Allbee who lives in an emotional
world devoid of a commitment to a woman is leading
Leventhal into a homoerotic relationship centering on
narcissistic self-indulgence. " 2 4 Both Leventhal and
Allbee are in an emotional wasteland. Hence it creates a
paradox of repellance and pleasure:

Allbee bent forward and laid his hand on the arm

of Leventhal's chair, and for a short space the
two men looked at each other and Leventhal felt
himself singularly drawn with a kind of
affection. It oppressed him, it was repellant.
He did not know what to make of it. Still he
welcomed it, too . . . (183).
There is yet another passage that possesses similar erotic
connotations:
 'I've often tried to imagine how it would be to
have hair like that. Is it hard to comb? What
do you mean, is it hard?'
'I mean, does it tangle. It must break the teeth
out of combs. Say, let me touch it once, will
YOU? '
.........................
'Ah, get out,' Leventhal said, drawing back.
Allbee stood up. 'Just to satisfy my curiosity,'
he said, smiling. He fingered Leventhal's hair,
and. Leventhal found himself caught under his
touch and felt incapable of doing anything.
But then he pushed his hands away, crying, 'Lay
off!' (183)

The ominous message from Bellow is that the husband

and wife are the most vital building blocks, and that the
removal of any one of which could shake the very ethos of
marital life. It could in an advanced cultural society
bring in its wake very unpleasant and unwelcome equations
like lesbian or homosexual relationships. The quick
resolution of the Leventhal-Allbee tangle affirms Bellow's
view that "in spite of all that is wrong in the present
civilization, we can still learn within its context how to
live decent, satisfying lives. " 2 5 It should be noted that
Bellow effects a resolution to this problem by making
Leventhal seek the return of Mary. Allbee, on the other
hand, indulges in sexual relations with a girl in
Leventhal's room and later when he gets the boot from
Leventhal, marries a millionairess Hollywood star and
settles down to normal life.

It is quite interesting to find that some of the

vital doctrines of marriage are put into Allbee's mouth.
It is he who enlightens Leventhal about what he misses:

You long for your wife when she goes, if you love
her. And maybe sometimes if you don't love her
so much. I wouldn't know. But you're together,
she bends to you and you bend to her in
everything, and when she dies there you stand
bent, and look senseless, fit nothing. ... I
would have taken anything before I let my wife
go (65-66).

Probably, this prompts Leventhal to call back Mary. This

also signals the success of the "struggle to define those
qualities which identify [one] as human, qualities which
for Bellow, emerge sometimes in opposition to, sometimes
as a function of the belief that goodness can be achieved
only in the company of other men. ,,26

Bellow turns historical and seems to comment on the

contemporary American social life when he says, through
one of his characters: "Daniel, it's not a thing to joke
about, if a couple is devoted," his mother said. "It's
nothing to ridicule. These days when marriages are so
flimsy it's real pleasure to see devotion" (71). It goes
without saying that Leventhal has unquestioned love for
Mary. His separation is not something that is the outcome
of a conflict. He looks forward to her return:

He would wait and have Mary to himself in a few

weeks, when things were quieter. She would make
them quieter. He.has great faith in her ability
to restore normalcy (168).

Leventhal's brother Max and Elena are the other

couple who suffers the repercussions of an unwanted
separation. Max is diametrically different in character
from Asa Leventhal. The whole gamut of marital concepts
like stability, responsibility, frustration, role-
conflict, inter-dependency and so forth is examined here
in the context of the Max-Elena relationship. Max is
depicted as an irresponsible man who had married young and
who now is after novelty, adventure. Meanwhile Elena is
burdened with the care of the children. Bellow, it should
be mentioned here, treats the problem of a couple where
the wife lacks the Judaic qualities in the Leventhal-Mary
relationship. But in the Max-Elena tie, the problem
created by the man when the woman conforms herself to the
extreme injunctions of the Judaic belief is highlighted.
Nowhere in the novel does Elena complain of the
irresponsible nature of Max. That she is greatly attached
to her husband and would not tolerate any assaults on his
dignity is evident from her own defensive words: "Oh, he
makes good money down there; he works fifty, sixty hours a
week. He sends me plenty" (16).

Bellow seems to agree with conflict theorists that

conflict is not always bad. According to them love and
affection are important factors in marriage, but conflict
and power are also fundamental. To drive home this point,
Bellow brings in an emotional domestic conflict in Elena's
family. Elena's son is critically ill almost on the point
of death and she refuses to put him in hospital.
Leventhal in the absence of Max helps her to some extent.
The child dies before Max arrives. But Elena does not
blame him for the catastrophe. Her unspelt reactions are
quite conspicuous, nevertheless. Here is a woman tutored
to conform herself to the Judaic pattern of a submissive
wife who is quite content to promote her domestic
responsibilities. In the modern American social context,
Bellow would say that this is not enough. Through
Elena's predicament, Bellow appears to reflect the view of
sociologists, D. Mace and V. Mace:

Unlike the old institutional marriage which was

formal and authoritarian and had rigid discipline
 and elaborate rituals, the new companionship
pattern is delineated in terms of interpersonal
relationships, 'mutual affection, sympathetic
27
understanding and comradeship.

Max fails to provide these essential virtues in his

relationship with Elena. Probably, Max would have come
round if she had been more assertive. The emotional
conflict caused by the sudden death of her son serves to
bring the family together.

The Victim also provides an insight into two other

minor relationships, though only from the point of view of
Allbee. These are Allbee and Flora on the one hand and
Allbee and the Hollywood star on the other. In the
Allbee-Flora tie, Bellow uses the term "separation" in the
legal sense of the word. No clear reasons are given in
the novel for the separation. But we have it from
Allbee's words that the initiative for separation from
Flora has torn him emotionally: "We're made of different
stuff, you and I." Allbee grinned. "And I didn't let her
go. She left me. I didn't want her to go. She was the
one" (66). Again a little later in the same chapter,
Allbee argues:

A woman doesn't leave her husband for anything--

just for a trifle. . .. But it's unfair to try
to put the blame for my wife's death on me.
 It's worse than unfair; it's cruel when you
consider what she was to me and what I've been
through (67).

The point is Allbee becomes a misfit in society--a

problem not only to himself but also to others--as a
result of his marital instability. It is here that Bellow
"confronts us with the disturbing idea that the social
'victim' may himself assist in the creation of his unhappy
condition. 2 8 Allbee stays put in Leventhal's room. He
blames the latter for his dismissal from a yood job. He
takes advantage of Mary's absence and makes homoerotic
advances to Leventhal. He even dares to defile the
marital bed of Leventhal by having sexual escapades with a
strange woman. Allbee represents the new generation of a
permissive society which tries to justify thus:

You mustn't forget you're an animal. That's

where a lot of unnecessary trouble begins. Not
that I'm in favour of infidelity. You know how I
feel about marriage. But you see a lot of
marriages where one partner takes too much from
the other. When' a woman takes too much from man,
he tries to recover what he can from another man.
Likewise the wife. Everybody tries to work out a
balance (166).

Years later, Allbee is seen with a rich, Hollywood

star whom the former claims to have married. We are
offered no in-depth study regarding this new equation.
But one can guess that it is a compromise between sex and
money which Allbee and his new wife represent. Whether
Allbee has emerged successful in the conflict between
nature and ideals is any man's guess. But the key message
put across to the reader is that "right thinking is virtue
and can leave you in charge of the life that is so
outrageous to live. The process of self-teaching becomes
the heart of Bellow's novels. "29 Bellow makes Leventhal
think right and call back his wife Mary. He makes Max
think of a family life with Elena and lastly he makes
Allbee settle down in life after his bohemian wanderings.
All of them ultimately embrace flexibility and adaptation.

In Seize the Day, Bellow turns to a different aspect

of marital dynamics, going back to the root of marital
discords. Though the focus of the novel is the father-son
relationship, it provides a deep insight into personality
problems in marital life. The sole conjugal pair
discussed is Tommy Wilhelm and Margaret and they are
discussed from the point of view mostly of Tommy Wilhelm.
The fall-out of their conjugal discord is the extra-
marital relationship between Tommy Wilhelm and Olive.
Seize the Day, interestingly enough, begins and ends with
the conjugal pair in the 'separation' phase. There is no
resolution. The loose ends are left as they are for the
reader and the issues indeterminate.
 The first chapter of the novel reveals that in his
childhood days "Wilhelm had had a speech difficulty. It
was not a true stammer, it was a thickness of speech which
the sound track exaggerated" (27). Psychological research
has proved that "such personality characteristics as
anxiety, depressive tendencies, pessimism, inferiority,
indecision, nervousness, helplessness, and sensitiveness,
appear to be characteristics of the stuttering
subjects. ... They have also been reported to be shy
and self-conscious, tending to feel uneasy in
social situations and manifesting withdrawal
tendencies. ... lv3O Tommy Wilhelm in Seize the Day
exhibits these symptoms quite early in life.
Psychologists argue that these early symptoms can have
their repercussions in later life:

The presence of the opposing trends masochistic

urges in the form of intraggression, abasement,
passivity and rejection on the one hand, and the
contrasting need of dominance and aggression on
the other, has the stutterer's personality often
at war with itself leading to a rather strange
behaviour. It suffers from conflictful
situations and a deep-lying unconscious or inner
hostility. 31
Tommy Wilhelm's inner hostility translates itself into
hostility towards his father and later towards his wife,
Margaret.

Apart from this minor physical handicap in early

childhood which, nevertheless, has had its effect on Tommy
Wilhelm's psyche, his constant surveillance by a critical
Dr Adler has contributed to the gradual destruction of his
self-esteem. This is because "with their power and
strength to dominate, it is possible for parents not to
recognize their roles in contributing to the insidious
problems of rejection, overcontrol, or neglect, which may
erupt later, full-blown as adolescent rebellion or severe
self-devaluation." 3 2 In Seize the Day Tommy Wilhelm
recalls how he had played truant from school to become an
actor when his mother wanted him to enter the medical
school. On his return from New York with failure writ
large on his face, Tommy Wilhelm realises that his name is
a synonym for rejection. The psychologists would explain
that at the subconscious level parents have high hopes
about the success of their children, and that these
"desires tend to induce pressure upon the child to excel,
which if combined with rejection or punishment for lack of
success, could affect seriously the child's feelings of
self-esteem. " 3 3 Tommy Wilhelm is caught in a cross-fire
of striving to win acceptance from both parents and peers
whose values are opposed. He rejects his parents and
chooses the values offered by his peers:

And then, when he was best aware of the risks and

knew a hundred reasons against going . . . he
left home. This was typical of Wilhelm. . . ,
Ten such decisions made up the history of his
life. He had decided that it would be a bad
mistake to go to Hollywood, and then he went. He
had made up his mind not to marry his wife, but
ran off and got married. He had resolved not to
invest money with Tamkin, and then had given him
a check ( 2 7 ) .

Lack of success on every front makes him rebellious.

He casts off his father's name and in a bid for liberty
calls himself Tommy. But "Wilky was his inescapable
self" ( 2 9 ) . He longs for self-liberation. But in effect
he reverts to a dependent, childlike role. Note for
instance, Wilhelm's frantic appeal to the powers above in
Chapter One:

Oh, God, Wilhelm prayed. Let me out of my

trouble. Let me out of my thought, and let me do
something better with myself. For all the time I
have wasted I am very sorry. Let me out of this
clutch and into a different life. For I am all
balled up. Have mercy (30).
 Money is the yardstick by which a person's social and
marital credibility is judged. Bellow shows how Wilhelm
is rated low by his father and wife because he lacks
money :

How they love money, thought Wilhelm. They adore

money! Holy money! Beautiful money! It was
getting so that people were feeble-minded about
everything except money. While if you didn't
have it you were a dummy, a dummy! You had to
excuse yourself from the face of the earth (413.

The importance of money is once again highlighted in

Chapter I11 of the novel when Dr Adler alludes to his
daughter Catherine, who interestingly enough has also
changed her name to Philippa thereby rebelling against her
familial identity like her brother, and to her frequent
demands for money. It is here that Wilhelm concedes his
ignorance about women and money and mentions, for the
first time, his problem with his wife, Margaret. Bellow
is trying to draw the attention of the reader to the new
feminist but remedial stand that Margaret takes in order
to bring Wilhelm round. She refuses to confine herself in
the garb of a submissive, sacrificing and tolerant wife.
She would rather apply coercion and teach him the first
lessons of responsibility. As Dr Adler puts it: "She's
showing you that you can't make it without her," said
the doctor. "She aims to bring you back by financial
force" (53).
 Eusebio Rodrigues describes Tommy Wilhelm as a
"dramatic illustration of how human character structure is
molded and distorted by a society that is patriarchal,
death-dealing, money-oriented and barren. , , 3 4 By applying
Reichian theory, the critic argues that Wilhelm's
behavioural pattern is typically masochistic for he
reveals

a chronic sensation of suffering which appears

objectively as a tendency to complain; chronic
tendency to self-damage and self-depreciation and
a compulsion to torture others which makes the
patient suffer no less than the object. All
masochistic characters show specifically awkward,
atactic behaviour in their manners and in their
intercourse with others, often so marked as to
give the impression of mental deficiency. 3 5

Daniel Weiss in his critical essay says that Tommy Wilhelm

represents the neurotic conflict between natural cravings
and externally determined frustrations. Wilhelm operates
as the moral masochist, the victim, for whom suffering is
a modus vivendi, a self-justifying means. 3 6 The death of

his mother "induces a retreat from adult effectiveness

toward dependence and a heightened dependence on the
surviving parent. Dr Adler is pressed into service as the
mother in addition to his role as a father." 3 7 which the
former stoutly refuses to take over. For the rest of his
life, Wilhelm seeks from others "a duplication of her
[mother's] all-encompassing care and comes to find that
need distorting his life. v38

Wilhelm seeks in his wife Margaret, a substitute for

his mother. When Margaret fails to satisfy the demands of
conflicting roles, she is quickly categorised as a bitch.
Here Simon de Beauvoir makes a pertinent remark:

A witch, a bitch, and a goddess may actually be

the same person; the difference in the image is
in the eye of the beholder. A beautiful woman is
despised as a bitch if she uses, her 'weapons' of
tongue and sex to diminish a man's sense of worth
(as in Norman Mailer's An American Dream). 39

L. H. Goldman argues that "in Seize the Day, Margaret is

the precursor of Bellow's fictive bitchy wives. " 4 0 There
is textual evidence to this effect though only from
Wilhelm's point of view. He recalls how Margaret was
uncompromising even when it came to parting with their pet
dog. Note for instance his grouse against Margaret:

Four years ago when we broke up I gave her

everything--goods, furniture, savings. I tried
to show goodwill, but I didn't get anywhere. Why
when I wanted Scissors, the dog, because the
 animal and I were so attached to each other--it
was bad enough to leave the kids--she absolutely
refused me ( 5 3 ) .

The typical moral masochist in Wilhelm is exposed when he

complains to his father that Margaret enjoys punishing him
by demanding money frequently. He compares her to a
strangler. He confesses that from the moment he met her,
he has been a slave "with an iron collar" ( 5 5 ) .

In Seize the Day, there is no positive dialogue

between the conjugal pair. Conflicts get accumulated
rather than resolved. From Dr Adler we learn that Wilhelm
was a womanizer too. This could happen if there is sexual
incompatibility. Trainer cites the observation of a
marriage counsellor on sexual incompatibility. "If one of
very high drive is mated to one of very low drive, a
disaster is predictable from the onset. "41 This aspect of
marital life is touched upon in Chapter I11 of the novel
by Dr Adler and Wilhelm:

With sudden and surprising bluntness his father

said, 'Did you have bed-trouble with her? Then
you should have stuck it out. Sooner or later
everyone has it. Normal people stay with it. It
passes. But you wouldn't, so now you pay for
your stupid romantic notions. Have I made my
view clear?' ... Finally he said, 'I guess
 that's the medical standpoint. You may be right.
I just couldn't live with Margaret. I wanted to
stick it out, but I was getting very sick. She
was one way and I was another. She wouldn't be
like me, so I tried to be like her, and I
couldn't do it' ( 5 7 ) .

It is Wilhelm who takes the initiative to break away from

Margaret. But his impulsive action is promoted by his new
alliance with a young girl, Olive. If Margaret had not
kept away their children from Wilhelm, probably this
extra-marital relationship would have been on a low key.
But "it hurt him [Wilhelm] greatly and he blamed Margaret
for turning them against him. She wanted to ruin him,
while she wore the mask of kindness" (102). The role of
the mother, wife and mistress is satisfactorily discharged
by Olive. Therefore, Wilhelm "trembled at offending this
small, pretty dark girl who he adored" (102). He would
rather separate legally in order to lead a happy life with
Olive. Margaret, however refuses to accept his
justifications. Lack of responsibility, lack of success
and money and lack of emotional maturity prevent Wilhelm
from having proper rapport and intimacy with Margaret.
Where there is no intimacy there is no sexual
compatibility and where there is no sexual compatibility
there is no fidelity. This is the vicious circle round
which Tommy Wilhelm and Margaret move.
 Bellow leaves the loose ends of the tangle untied but
the novel ends on an optimistic note with Tommy Wilhelm
succumbing to a change of attitude at the funeral parlour.
"Wilhelm's recovery appears possible because of his
instinctive realisation that he is not exceptional in his
suffering and shares the general condition of mankind. , , 4 2
He announces that ". . . he could, and would recover the
good things, the happy things, the easy tranquil things of
life. " 4 3 Bellow tries to pinpoint the truth that
conflicts and sufferings are an inseparable part of the
human condition:

'Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains

and troubles is to school an Intelligence and
make it a soul?' Keats rhetorically asks.
Bellow's version of the carpe diem philosophy is
very similar to that of the English romantic
poet. Life itself with all its joys and sorrows
is the highest value. 44...
There is redemption for Wilhelm and Margaret if they are
willing to accept this truth.

The Adventures of Auqie March directs i t s focus on

contemporary social life from a different angle. Here
Bellow examines the far-reaching impact of female
dominance over the male, ranging from role transference in
the form of surrogate motherhood to sexual hegemony over
male and the resulting male insecurity and inadequacy
leading to either extra-marital sexual escapades or
cohabitation.

The value of family as a social unit is reiterated in

this novel too. Barbara Gitenstein describes the novel as
"an exuberant, picaresque tale 1 1 4 5 of a Chicago boy, born
to a retarded mother. He is a jewish bastard who is
forced to fend for himself in a constantly changing
world, where he "encounters abortion,
political
manipulation, the black-market, and sexual perversion. ,,46
In the light of this cultural onslaught, "Augie, like all
Bellow's heroes, is Bellow's representative in determining
whether life can go on. This is Bellow's main question,
and his answer is an anguished 'yes.' 1 1 4 7 In "The Writer
as Moralist," Bellow argues, "Either we want life to
continue or we do not. ... If we do want it to
continue . . . in what form shall life be justified?,,48
Augie March is yet another attempt by Bellow to answer
this question.

Augie March belongs to a lower-middle class Jewish

family. Writing of his mother, who had three bastard
children by a travelling man, Augie compares her to "those
women whom Zeus got the better of in animal form" (10).

Deserted by her husband, Augie's mother, Rebecca, is left

with three little children of whom George is mentally
retarded. They come to live under the roof of Grandma
Lausch which heralds the gradual transference of role and
the assumption of Grandma Lausch as mother-surrogate. It
is she who shows them "how to practice in the world" ( 3 4 ) .
Bellow tries to show here how Grandma Lausch succeeds
initially in spreading her hegemonistic rule over the
family but she gradually loses all control over the
siblings. Simon is the first to break away from this
surrogate bond.

The basic tenet of life propounded by Grandma Lausch

"that practicality and sentimentality do not mix, and the
practical must supercede all consideration^"^^ is put to
use in two distinct ways by Simon and Augie March.
Symptoms of male insecurity are noticed in both very early
in life. Dr Sidney B. Simon ascribes the experience of
insecurity to what he prefers to call "skin hunger." He
believes that "the hunger for contact with another person
through touching and being touched drives some people to
sexual promiscuity, renders others unable to form sexual
relationships, and reverberates into every aspect of their
lives. "50 The earlier pattern of female dominance of
Grandma Lausch is stretched into later years by one woman
or other giving the male a perpetual feeling of
castration.
 Very early in life, Simon realises the importance of
money and social success. He becomes a bread-winner quite
early in life and "buys small gifts for George, Augie and
even his mother" ( 3 2 ) . Aware of his good looks, Simon
conscientiously cuts out' a social niche for himself
thereby drawing the notice of a very prosperous and
respectable Jewish family, the Magnuses. At the surface
level, Simon succeeds in achieving all the factors
identified by sociologist Ira Reiss in her Wheel Theory of
Love model. There is rapport, self-revelation to a
limited degree, mutual dependence and personality need
fulfilment in the Simon-Charlotte Magnus relationship.
At the deeper level, in this marriage transaction, there
is a mutual sell-out of male freedom for money.

From the limited textual accounts available on

Charlotte Magnus, we learn that she comes from a
traditional Jewish family and therefore finds no
difficulty in enacting the role of the submissive wife up
to a point. What Bellow diagnoses as the flaw in the
Simon-Charlotte relationship is that while there is enough
love and commitment to keep the marriage together, money--
more money than one could use is in itself a springboard
from which Simon plunges into the vice of extra-marital
relationship. Simon draws up an ambitious scheme to raise
Augie March to the upper rungs of life. He prompts him to
dress well and move in elite society so that he could
get inCo the magic circle of the Magnuses and marry Lucy
Magnus, Charlotte's sister. Augie succeeds in his
mission:

I got through examination by Lucy's set, not

hearing what I didn't want to hear, or forcing
others to give ground, and even if it did
strengthen the hypocrite's muscle in my face and
harden my stomach I thought it did me credit to
bluff it through (245).

The relationship suffers a cruel jolt when Augie goes out

of his way to get a one-time friend Mimi to the hospital
for an abortion. The Magnus family comes to look at it as
a serious lapse in good conduct and summons Augie to
announce their unanimous decision to break off Lucy's
relationship with him. Since then Augie receives a cold
reception from both the Magnuses and Simon. Negation of
dreams about the future of his family converts Simon into
an alcoholic addict.

It is at this point in his life that Simon

consciously or unconsciously gets himself drawn into an
extra-marital relationship with an attractive, young girl
4
named Renee, whose only watchword in life is "games and
games, games within games" (462). According to Playboy's
latest survey, in which answers came in from some 40,000
married people, men rank their reasons for extra-marital
sex in the following order: sexual variety, reassurance of
their desirability, change of routine, better sex, and sex
without commitment.51 All these factors could possibly
have influenced Simon to make his sexual escapades with
~enge. On the influence of this category of female on the
male, Mary Anne Ferguson has this to say:

Although public acknowledgement of extra-marital

relationships has in many societies been
disapproved of, the mistress has been admired for
her power, her ability to seduce; her
overwhelming attractiveness exonerates the male
for succumbing to her. 52

Frequently, such extra-marital relationships are assumed

to be destructive and disastrous. Simon upsets the
emotional balance of his marital life and it gets
reflected in his occupational enterprises. He tries to
move in an illusory world of high frequency sex and denies
all sensible thought about his otherwise successful
marriage. Emotional distancing between Simon and
Charlotte creates a certain degree of superficial
separation but it does not pull the relationship to the
point of a divorce. There's a home-coming and a
refurbished self to be discerned, which makes him realise
that adaptability is equally important when it comes to
marital demands.
 Augie March's relationship with the three women of
his life namely Lucy Magnus, Thea and Stella is in some
ways related to his first encounter with the fair sex in
his adolescence. It is Einhorn who takes Augie out on his
graduation night and initiates him by arranging a call
girl, who happens to be older and more experienced in the
game. Augie March's next prolonged encounter with a
female is in the Mrs Renling's episode. The childless
rich couple try to adopt Augie March. Mrs Renling
predicts and prepares the ground for his later encounters
with other females. Augie March initially does allow
himself to be dominated and led by Mrs Renling and her
elite ideas:

I have to marvel at my social passes, that I

was suddenly sure and efficacious in this
business . . . so that Renling had to grant that
I had beat all the foreseen handicaps (130).

But very soon, Augie March sheds himself free of the

prot6ge role in order to secure male freedom from female
dominance. These are two of the landmark events in
Augie's life which have their repercussions on his later
relationships.

It is interesting to note here that all the women

with the exception of Lucy Magnus are married women who
have strained or severed relations with their husbands.
"Viragoes far outnumber victims, making a continual
warfare of marriage, in fact of any relationship between
the sexes. "53 Even among the minor characters like
Mrs Kriendl, Mrs Sylvester and Anna Coblin, there is
conflict between the sexes. The acquaintance with such
relationships, probably, explains the male sense of
insecurity and inadequacy in Augie. The logic that
drives him from Mrs Renling is:

Why should I turn into one of these people who

didn't know who they themselves were? And the
unvarnished truth is that it wasn't a fate good
enough for me, because . . . I was not going to
be built into Mrs Renling's world . . . (151).

It is the same logic that surfaces when his prospective

relationship with Lucy Magnus is unexpectedly grounded.
There is social as well as power incompatibility in the
Augie-Lucy relationship which unlike Simon, the former
fails to surmount. Even when they go steady, the Mimi
episode breaks the bubble of pre-marital sex casting in
effect the shadow of mistaken infidelity. But as Goldman
remarks,

[Augie] refuses to lead a disappointed life.

Therefore, his character becomes his fate. ...
Augie is not formed by his environment or
adventures. He has the resiliency or
 'opposition' to resist them. The disappointments
do not make him bitter, but refuses to become
what others wanted to make of him. 5 4

"Augie is called a "man of feeling" (483) and therefore he

"enjoys life; enjoys relationships with other people, even
those that are not of long duration, and has a positive
outlook concerning existence. "55 It is this resilience
and will to survive that make him fight back and secure
his freedom whenever he is made to lead a tailored life.
As John Berryman has said,

Augie does not aim at success [like Simon] and

his story is a comedy, having for theme the
preservation of individuality against the
pressures in American life toward uniformity, the
adoption of socially acceptable roles: pressures
exactly toward success, or at any rate
security.5 6

He is rather a man who wants "freedom from commitment. ,157

When his marriage with Lucy Magnus fails to take off,
Augie puts to use "a new attitude toward experience in
America: instead of the blindness of affirmation and the
poverty of rejection, Augie March rises from the streets
of the modern city to encounter the reality of
experience." 58 If Augie March's relationship with Lucy
Magnus bordered on 'light' pre-marital sex which included
petting and kissing, his later encounters with Thea and
Stella show him as sexually learned.

If Bellow brings up money and female controlled

marital life in the Simon-Charlotte tie, in the Augie-Thea
and Augie-Stella (before marriage) relationships, he
examines the salient features of cohabitation.
Cohabitation is when a couple live together without
marriage. Unlike other family forms, cohabitation is not
recognized by society as a family institution. It does
not afford the kind of buttress that is found in marital
life. It is interesting to note here that sex "is a more
important brand in cohabitation than in marriage because
cohabitors don't have the security and future orientation
of marriage to cement their relationship. "" There is,
therefore, no commitment. There is only sex and romance.

In the Augie-Thea relationship, Thea is married but

expects a divorce from her rich husband, Smitty. Here, we
have another instance of arbitrary female dominance, a
pattern that can be traced from Augie-'s childhood days
onwards. As L. H. Goldman concludes: "The three women
whom Augie at separate times thinks of marrying, are
figures that traditionally appear in literature as
destructive goddess figures. ,,GO Augie decides to go with
Thea to Mexico ostensibly to train her eagle, Caligula, to
catch iguanas. The eagle, "a symbol of her own high
aspirations and desires to dominate" suggests a modern
woman who "delights in the sadistic pleasure of
emasculating her male lovers. "61 When Augie fails to fit
into her scheme of things, there is lack of rapport and
understanding. His usefulness to Thea comes to an end
when he gets injured on the head by Caligula. This is
when Augie meets Stella. As Wendkos Sally Olds believes,
"some affairs are born ... where some vital nutrient is
lacking. ... The missing element may be satisfying sex,
a sense of trust, or the intimacy that one partner yearns
for and the other is incapable of giving. " 6 2 There is an
underplay of female jealousy in the words of Thea when she
learns that a passing acquaintance with another woman,
Stella, has turned serious though by coincidence. Thea
accuses Augie saying that "by a little flattery anyone can
get what he wants. ... I came after you--I flattered
you. But I can't outflatter everyone in the world" (387).
There is remorse from Augie but the relationship has
soured.

With the unexpected rupture of Augie-Thea

relationship, Augie writhed in remorse. "I knew I had
done wrong. . . . My mistakes and faults came from all
sides and gnawed at me" ( 4 0 0 ) . As Ben Belitt remarks:
"The advantage of failure is that it prepares
consciousness and response, it makes a man morally
amenable, suited fcr living in the society of others. , , 6 3
After these experiences, he longs for "settled life."
Stella is Ishtar, the goddess of love of the ancient
world. Iris or Ishtar is a destructive goddess who
impedes the aspirations of Augie March. Thus in the final
chapters when he marries Stella, hoping to start a
foundling school together, Augie finds "matrimony . . . to
have transformed her from nymph to nag. "64 Overbeck
would describe Augie's marriage to Stella as basically a

regression as there is no pretense of sublimity but only

the inevitability of human passion. 6 5 In all his
relationships with women, the image of male superiority is
throttled. The pattern of female dominance is
systematically negated in all these relationships. Joseph
McCadden commenting on the second half of the novel
remarks :

Augie changes from a happy-go-lucky adolescent

wishing only to bring joy to others into a
frustrated dreamer whose ambitions to have a
happy marriage as well as to start a school for
foundlings will never be fulfilled. ... Augie,
anticipates Herzog, trying to reorder his life by
ending his involvement with his unfaithful wife,
Stella. 6 6

Bellow makes it amply clear that "Augie's failure

lies not in his high ideals but in his refusal to live
them through positive action and personal involvement. ,067
To be an androgynous couple, the 'instrumental' (male) and
the 'expressive' (female) traits should go hand in hand.
Augie is "expressive" but not "instrumental" like Simon.
He remains a perpetual wanderer who "plunges into the
aimless ruck of experience"68 which leads him to
philosophy and a recognition of the axial lines of life.

Bellow goes off the beaten track when he gives a

mythical turn to his examination of certain aspects of
marital life in Henderson the Rain Kinq. Here, Bellow
deals with an eccentric couple who are intellectually and
sexually incompatible and with the resultant sense of
male inadequacy, male insecurity, irresponsibility, lack
of communication and intimacy, marital instability, extra-
marital relationship, male and female infidelity,
conflict, male insatiety, renewal and adaptation. What
makes Henderson the Rain Kinq different from the other
novels of Bellow is that here, the husband separates from
the wife with mutual consent and goes to Africa. There he
undergoes certain mythical experiences which serve to
purge his character of all elements detrimental to a happy
family life. Joseph McCadden observes: "Henderson the
Rain Kinq combines anthropological, biblical, and
psychological images to suggest both the extent of
Henderson's emotional problems and more importantly, the
method of his spiritual regeneration.' 6 9 He returns to
his wife a reformed man fit for a meaningful and
purposeful life.

Henderson's early childhood is marked by lack of

paternal recognition. His father doted on his brother
Dick, who met with a tragic death. His sister also having
died, he was the only surviving child in the family. To
please his parents, Henderson had married a girl of their
own social class. But Henderson confesses that both of
them were schizophrenic to some extent:

None of her family can quarrel with me if I add

that she is a schizophrenic, for she certainly is
that. I, too, am considered crazy, and with good
reasons--moody, rough, tyrannical, and probably
mad ( 8 ) .

In the Henderson-Frances relationship, the bone of

contention is the latter's intellectual pursuits and the
consequent negligence of other duties. Having grown up
without enough parental love, Henderson becomes
emotionally dependent on his first wife, Frances. On the
contrary,

Frances is a deep reader and an intense letter

writer and a heavy smoker, and when she got on
one of her kicks of philosophy or something I
would see very little of her (11).
There is intellectual incompatibility between Henderson
and Frances which prevents the former from appreciating
the intellectual pursuits of the latter. When Bellow
makes a non-jew protagonist like Henderson react
negatively, he makes it quite clear that the male
superiority so predominant in Jewish families is not
confined to Jews alone. This complex can be discerned
among Gentiles too. Vinoda emphasizes this fact in "The
Dialectic of Sex in Bellow's Fiction," thus:

One of the things that function as the ordering

principle in man-woman relationships in Bellow's
novels is the arrogant male assumption that women
cannot rise above the paltry concerns with
physical pleasures, clothes, things,
entertainments, etc. 70

In Henderson the Rain Kinq, Frances appears to be "a

precursor of the beautiful, intellectual, but emasculating
bitch, Madeleine, who appears in his next work, Herzpq. ,,71
Bellow argues that when the woman leaves the domestic
circle and becomes preoccupied with intellectual pursuits,
she unconsciously abdicates her place at home and leaves
room for extra-marital relationships. There is no love in
this relationship as there is no rapport, self-revelation,
mutual dependency or fulfilment of the need for intimacy,
the four processes through which love develops. Rather,
one finds female inexpressiveness and lack of
communication. Henderson himself admits: "Only once
after I came back from the Army, did anything of a
personal nature take place between us, and after that it
was no soap, so I let her be, more or less" (15).
Henderson's extra-marital relationship with Lily soon
after their first encounter at a party is a pointer to the
deteriorating relationship between Frances and himself.
On this aspect of marital relationship, Spanier and
Thompson observe:

Since sexual fidelity is usually an important

element in marriage, becoming sexually active
with someone other than one's spouse is a
dramatic symbol that the old marriage vows are no
longer valid. 7 2

Divorce is the only alternative for Henderson, who, like

most Americans thinks it a part of normal life.

Bellow shows how most men marry with absolutely no

knowledge of how to build a meaningful relationship.
Henderson's relationship with Lily is marked by conflicts
from the very beginning. He carries into his second
marriage his sense of inadequacy, insecurity,
irresponsibility, aggressiveness and inconsiderateness.
Having failed in his first marriage, he develops a
protective guard, an emotional insulation to avoid being
hurt. But this only serves to distance his wife, Lily.
It is quite obvious that if you take your resentments with
you into the next relationship, you've had it. You can't
make your new partner responsible for something your
previous partner did as it would cost the second marriage
too. 7 3 This is exactly what happens to Henderson. He
gave Lily a lot of trouble and it affected her unlike in
the case of Frances. "Whenever Frances didn't like what
I was doing, and that was often, she turned away from
me. ... Not so Lily; and I raved at her in public and
swore at her in private. I got into brawls" ( 8 ) .

The male insecurity and inadequacy experienced in his

first marriage return when soon after their marriage,
Henderson wanted to spend the honeymoon among the Copper
Eskimos and Lily wouldn't agree. He recalls how he built
an igloo with a knife and during zero weather Lily and he
fell out because she wouldn't bring the kids and sleep
with him under skins as the Eskimos did. Like Bellow's
earlier protagonists, Henderson, too, complains that Lily
"is reckless, and a spend-thrift and doesn'k keep the
house clean . . ." (206). It is interesting to note here
that most of Bellow's women are exploiters who live on
their husbands. Henderson's grouse is that Lily is
irresponsible about her household duties. As L. H.
Goldman says, "the impression of Henderson's family is not
that of a cohesive unit, but of separate entities, each
going his own way, and only peripherally related to one
another. " 7 4 Henderson fails to prevent her craze for
portraits and, instead, becomes an easy prey of the
dysfunction called displacement whereby "spouses who lack
assertive skills may be unable to express their
dissatisfactions to their partners and may displace their
hostilities through scapegoating."75 Henderson takes to
alcohol and under its cover tries to humiliate Lily in
public, just to cut her down to size.

Henderson fails because his love is immature.

Emotions like jealousy, envy, anger, loneliness and fear
are typical of immature love. What Bellow is doing is
holding upto ridicule the American male who never
thoroughly matures and never puts behind him his childish
desires and interests. Bellow seems to argue here that
the major stumbling block for most husbands in developing
a lasting love for their wives is their failure to meet a
woman's needs from her viewpoint. A woman needs to be in
harmony with her husband for a deep, intimate
relationship. She needs comradeship, harmony and a
feeling of togetherness. The Henderson-Lily relationship
is conflict-ridden. An instance of this is their
holidaying in a resort hotel on the Gulf. Henderson
smashes bottles with a slingshot on the beach, attracting
the complaints of the other guests. When the manager
takes it up with Lily, the latter tries to reason with
Henderson:

We were in our suite, and I was in swimming

trunks and she opened the discussion on slingshot
and the broken glass and my attitude toward the
other guests. Now Lily . . . doesn't scold, but
she does moralize. ... But as it got her
nowhere to discuss it with me she started to cry,
and when I saw tears I lost my head and yelled,
'I'm going to blow my brains out! Ilm shooting
myself. I didn't forget to pack the pistol.
I've got it on me now' (10-11).

Bryan Strong and Christine De Vault agree that men

demonstrate higher degrees of aggression, especially
violent aggression and seek to dominate; this is rarely
helpful in a man fulfilling marital and family roles
requiring understanding, cooperation, communication, and
nurturing.76 Having failed to assert himself, Henderson
makes use of what Kate Millett called 'sexual politics'7 7
to subjugate his wife. Lily's father had shot himself
dead and so the very mention of a pistol upset her.
Henderson seems to make use of this ploy to bring her
round.

Henderson seems to follow a natural pattern in the

face of conflicts. Mentally, he is more alert to the
flaws of others. Emotionally, he feels estranged.
Physically, he avoids Lily. And spiritually he distances
himself from the offender. On the other hand, if Lily
keeps away from home under the pretext of portrait
painting, it is because Henderson has crushed her spirit.
Both reach the point of emotional divorce.

Matters come to a head when Henderson's rage and

inconsiderateness have their repercussions on the other
members of the family. It even costs the life of
Miss Lennox, who did odd jobs in the kitchen. Her death
jolts him back to reality. Henderson decides with Lily's
consent to separate himself from the family and go to
Africa perhaps as a convalescent to recoup his health and
strength. Melvin Maddock commenting on Henderson's
African tour concludes:

In his headlong wanderings, Henderson seeks

nothing less than a second birth. . . . Henderson
yields himself to chaos in the hope of finding
order. ... In short, he has discovered faith in
a law of regeneration to replace his law of
decay. 7 8

Henderson's sojourn in Africa is marked by his

encounter with two native tribes, the Arnewi and the
Wariri. Henderson describes himself to the native
Africans as "a millionaire wanderer and wayfarer. A
brutal and violent man driven out into the world. A man
who fled his own country, settled by his forefathers. A
fellow whose heart said, 'I want, I want. .. 1 9,
(67).
He is not at all happy, because he has not yet undergone a
needed transformation himself. His first confidence
boosting experience comes in his encounter with Queen
Willatale who reveals that the former possessed "Grun-tu-
molani. Man want [sic] to live" (74). Henderson is
introduced for the first time to a truly androgynous
character in the grand old lady, Queen Willatale, the
woman of Bittahness:

A Bittah was a person of real substance. ... A

Bittah was not only a woman but a man at the same
time. . . . She had plenty of both. The wives
called her husband, and the children called her
both father and mother (661.

H. Porter Abbott observes, "She has transcended such

limitations as sexual differences, which cause much
torment for most of mankind, and is a complete being in
herself. "79 Bellow seems to suggest here that in the
post-industrialized American society when women have
modern outlook, it is no longer feasible to follow the
Judaic norm of female submissiveness to male dominance.
Rather, it calls attention to the need for androgynous
gender roles in males and females.
 Henderson's lost parental affection is compensated
for by Queen Willatale. Joseph McCadden observes:
"Henderson gains the self-confidence ... from the
unqualified love of Queen Willatale, his substitute
mother.O'" It is she who teaches him that life is good as
well as purposeful. Like a mother, she instills positive
attitudes to life in Henderson. King Dahfu of the Wariri
tribe helps him discard his pessimistic feelings after his
fiasco among the Arnewis. It is he who teaches him "not
to be discouraged with momentary failure, assuring him
that 'the noble will have its turn in the world. "181 Both
try to impress upon Henderson that success cannot be
achieved overnight.

Bellow suggests that a better marriage doesn't just

happen. It needs to be nurtured. With a great deal of
self-discipline, learning and patience, things can be
worked out in the right direction. This is the underlying
message in Henderson taming the Mummah goddess and the
lioness Atti. Henderson's hurt male superiority gets a
boost when he lifts Mummah, the goddess of cloud. "And so
my fever was transformed into jubilation: My spirit was
awake and it welcomed life anew" (164). He subjugates
the goddess not by mere force but by cajole. He views her
as "an animate woman ... a femme fatale: ,,82
 I encircled Mummah with my arms. . . . To me she
was a living personality, not an idol. We met as
challenged and challenger, but also as intimates.
. . . I laid my cheek against her wooden bosom.
I cranked down my knees and said to her, 'Up you
go, dearest. No use trying to make yourself
heavier. . . . I'd lift you anyway.' The wood
gave to my pressure and
her fixed smile yielded

This has a parallel implication in man-woman

In "Marital Conflict as a Positive Force," Scanzoni argu
that in understanding the dynamics of husband-wife
interaction, one must accept the fact that conflict is
quite normal. According to him,

Conflict brings into the open the issues that one

or the other partner considers unjust or
inequitable. If disagreement is brought into the
open, bargained over, and resolved in a way that
is satisfactory to both partners, the outcome may
be a new, more positive level of marital
adjustment or solidarity.83

Marriage is like a ship whose smooth-sailing requires the

intelligent manoeuvring of its occupants.
 Henderson's experiences with the lioness Atti teaches
him to put in leash his run-away animal nature. In this
context Frank D. McConnell points out the Biblical
correlation:

The self-image most frequently in Henderson's

mind is that of King Nebuchadnezzar . . . who was
punished for his presumption against God with the
fulfillment of the prophecy 'They shall drive
thee from among men, and thy dwelling shall be
with the beasts of the field. , 8 4

As in Queen Willatale, Henderson finds in Dahfu, the King

of the Wariri tribe, "a combination which suggests the
unification of the rational and instinctual [the
instrumental and the expressive] which in Henderson are
divided and opposed. " 8 5 It is Dahfu who helps Henderson
"to purge his character of pig-like elements to become a
lion-like man through a therapy that involves learning to
imitate both the posture and the voice of the lion. ,,86
Bellow suggests here that man is the noblest creation of
God and that therefore "the behaviour of an animal can in
no way be a measure for the behaviour of man. Whether he
roars like a lion or grunts like a pig, the effect is the
same: he remains a beast. Man's wisdom has to come from
another source." 8 7 His co-habitation with animals must
teach him to keep in leash the bestial side of his nature.
Karl F. Knight believes that "the purpose of Dahfu's
instruction is to provide "resurrectability" 8 8 for
Henderson's atrophied nobler qualities.

From the zone of separation, Henderson shifts to the

phase of adaptation when he learns "to live for others, to
fulfill the 'service ideal' which has been a constant,
though often eccentric, characteristic of his family and
of American history, too. "89 This transformation is
manifested in his letter to Lily that "everything is going
to be different from now on" (239). Henderson's new
approach to life teaches him the importance of flexibility
and adaptability in everyday life.

The foregoing analysis of Saul Bellow's earlier

novels, namely, Dangling Man, The Victim, Seize the Day,
The Adventures of Auqie March and Henderson the Rain King
reveals that the egoistic trait of the male characters
contributes to the marital disharmony in their
relationships. Most of them have or attempt to have
patriarchal designs over their women. It can be found
that men generally are the decision-makers in these novels
whether it is separation, divorce or reconciliation.
Unlike in the later novels, namely, Herzoq, Mr Sammler's
Planet, Humboldt's Gift, More Die of Heartbreak and
A Theft, women here seem to be often at the receiving end
as prey to male dominance and violence. Bellow does not
hold out any idealized vision for the future, but he does
90
initiate the "the first step, the first real step"
towards reconciliation in all these novels. Therefore,
Joseph in Dangling Man, Asa Leventhal in The Victim, Tommy
Wilhelm in Seize the Day, Augie March in The Adventures of
Augie March, and Henderson in Henderson the Rain Kinq opt
for a change of heart and develop "the firm belief in the
possibility of a new start in life. "91 All of them
recognize that androgyny and spirituality must supplant
harmful egoistic aspirations.
 NOTES

William James, Principles of Psychology (New York:

Holt, 1890), quoted in R. K. Sarawat Self-Concept:
Dimensions and Determinents (New Delhi: Commonwealth
Publ., 1989) 2.
Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id (London: Hogarth,
1927), quoted in Sarawat 2.
Harry Stack Sullivan, The Interpers~nalTheory of
Personality (New York: Norton, 19531, quoted in Sarawat 2.
Sarawat 3.
D. Snygg and A. W. Combs, Individual Behaviour: A
New Frame of Reference for Psycholoqy (New York: Harper,
1949) 78.
Muzafer Sherif and Carolyn W. Sherif, An Outline of
Social Psychology, rev. ed., ed. Gardner Murphy (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1956) 581.
Sherif and Sherif 590.
8 D. P. Ausubel, Ego Development and the Personality
Disorder (New York: Grune and Stratton, 19521 44.
M. Sherif and 0. J. Harvey, "A Study in Ego
Functioning: Elimination of Stable Anchorages in
Individual and Group Situations," Sociometry 15 (1952):
272-305, quoted in Sherif and Sherif 602.
Carl Gustav Jung, quoted in Knox 321.
 Jo Brans, "The Dialectic of Hero and Anti-hero in
Rameau.!~ Nephew and Dangling Man," Studies in the Novel
16.4 (1984): 436.
l2 Joseph McCadden, The Flight from Women in the
Fiction of Saul Bellow (Lenham, MD: UP of America, 1980)
21.
l3 Strong and De Vault 215.
l4 Brans 443.
l5 Mary Anne Ferguson, Images of Women in Literature

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1973) 10.

Robert Boyers,et al., "Literature and Culture: An
Interview with Saul Bellow," Salmaqundi Quarterly 30
(1974): 17.
l7 Goldman, Moral Vision 6.
l8 Strong and De Vault 5.
l9 Goldman, Moral Vision 21. A number of critics
have noted parallels between The Victim and Fyodor
Dostoyevsky's "The Eternal Husband." The Short Novels of
Dostoyevsky, trans. Constance Garnett (New York, 1951)
443. For details on this aspect see Clayton 141-43;
Marcus Klein, After Alienation (New York: World Publ.,
1964) 37; Keith Michael Opdahl, The Novels of Saul Bellow:
An Introduction (U Park: Pennsylvania UP, 1967) 59. Other
critics have traced the influence of Kafka's The Trial,
Joyce's Ulysses, and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. See
M. Gilbert Porter, Whence the Power? The Artistry and
Humanity of Saul Bellow (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1974)
52-59.
20 McCadden 44.
McCadden 44.
22 Judith Hauptman, "Images of Women in the Talamud,"

Religion and Sexism 197-98.

23 Hauptman 207.
24 McCadden 53-54.
25 Robert Alter, "The Stature of Saul Bellow,"
Midstream (Dec. 1964) 12. Alter also makes an important
distinction between the necessity of living with suffering
that marks much of the Jewish diaspora and the modern view
of the Jew as an archetype of alienation which implies
fulfilment through such suffering.
26 Stanley Trachtenberg, Introduction, Critical
Essays on Saul Bellow (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1979)
xiii.
27 D. Mace and V. Mace, "Counter-epilogue," Marriage
and Alternatives: Exploring Intimate Relationships, eds.
R. Libby and R. Whitehurst (Glenview, 111: Scott,
Foresman, 1977) 391.
28 Diana Trilling, "Fiction in Review," Trachtenberg
6.
29 Alfred Kazin, Briqht Book of Life: American
Novelists and Story-tellers from Hemingway to Mailer
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1973) 135.
 30 C. L. Kundu, Personality Development (New Delhi:
Sterling Publ. Pvt. Ltd., 1989) 58.
31 Kundu 58.
32 J. M. Brown, et al., Applied Psychology (New
Delhi: Amerind Publ. Co. Pvt. Ltd., 1972) 108.
33 Brown, et al. 109.
34 Eusebio Roderigues, 'Reichianism in Seize the
m," in Trachtenberg 90.
35 Roderigues in Trachtenberg 91, quoted from
Character Analysis, 3rd enl. ed. (New York: Farrar, Straos
and Giroux, 1971) 219.
36 Daniel Weiss, "Caliban or Prospero: A Psycho-
analytic Study on the Novel Seize the Day," American Imago
21 (Fall 1962): 277-306, cited in Twentieth-Century
American Literature, ed. Harold Bloom Vol.1 AB (New York:
Chelsea House Publ., 1985) 381. Weiss in this article
discusses Tommy's infantile state and shows, for example,
that Tommy's sucking of his coke bottle is symptomatic of
regression to the nursing infant (286-87).
37 Weiss 381.
38 McCadden 96.
39 Simone de Beauvoir, quoted in Ferguson 2.
40 Goldman, Moral Vision 73.
41 J. B. Trainer, "Sexual Incompatibilities," Journal
of Marriage and Family Counsellinq 1.2 (1975): 124.
 42 Chirantan Kulshrestha, "Novelist as Visionary,"
The Saul Bellow Estate (Calcutta: P. Lal, 1976) 34.
43 Gloria L. Cronin, "Holy War Against the Moderns:
Saul Bellow's Antimodernist Critique of Contemporary
American Society," Studies in Jewish American Literature
8.1 (Spring 1989): 81.
44 Allan Chavkin, 'The Hollywood Thread and the First
Draft of Saul Bellow's Seize the Day," Studies in Saul
Bellow 14.1 (Spring 1982): 86.
45 Gitenstein cited in Twentieth Century Fiction 77.
The unpublished novel written simultaneously with -
The
Adventures of Augie March was entitled "The Crab and the
Butterfly," of which one section "The Trip to Galena," was
published in Partisan Review in 1950. See also Bellow's
remarks to Bernard Kalb, "Augie was my favorite fantasy.
Everytime I was depressed while writing the grim one, I'd
treat myself to a fantasy holiday. . . . In Augie one of
my greatest pleasures was in having the ideas taken away
from me, as it were, by the characters. They demanded to
have their own existence," in "The Author," Saturday
Review of Literature (13 Sept. 1953): 13.
46 Gitenstein 77.
47 Clayton 4-5.
48 Clayton 5.
49 Goldman, Moral Vision 49.
 50 Wendkos Sally Olds, The Eternal Garden: Seasons of
Our Sexuality (New York: Times Books, 1985) 36.
51 olds 137.
52 Ferguson 7.
53 Pat Trefzgar Overbeck, "The Women in Augie March,"
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 10.4 (1968): 475.
Overbeck concludes that at the end of the novel Augie
reaches an understanding of his wife and realizes that
Mrs March is correct when she says that she and her
husband are "very similar." On the contrary, Augie
discovers that his wife had illicit relations with other
men in Paris which prompts him to end his marital
relationship with Stella.
54 Goldman, Moral Vision 36.
55 Goldman, Moral Vision 39.
56 John Berryman, "A Note on Augie," The Freedom of
the Poet 1976: 222-24, cited in Bloom 375.
57 Robert Penn Warren, "The Man with No Commitments,"
New Republic 2 Nov. 1953: 22-23, cited in Bloom 377.

Delmore Schwartz, "Adventures in America, "

Partisan Review Jan. 1954: 112-14, cited in Bloom 377.
59 Strong and De Vault, 204.
60 Goldman, Moral Vision 46.
Goldman, Moral Vision 47.
62 Olds 204.
 63 Ben Belitt, "Saul Bellow: The Depth Factor,"
Salmaqundi Quarterly 30 (1975): 57.
64 Robert Baker, "Bellow Comes of Age," Chicago

Review 11 (1957): 107-10, cited in Bloom 380.

65 Overbeck 482.
66 McCadden 66.

67 Robert R. Dutton, Saul Bellow, rev. ed. (Boston:

Twayne Publ., 1982) 52.
68 Dutton 53.
69 McCadden 113.
70 Vinoda, "The Dialectic of Sex in Bellow.'s
Fiction," Indian Journal of American Studies 12.1 (Jan.
1982): 84.
71 Goldman, Moral Vision 92.
72 Spanier and Thompson, quoted in Strong and De
Vault 469-70.
73 Knox 331.
74 Goldman, Moral Vision 92.
75 Knox 330.
76 Strong and De Vault 96.
77 Kate Millett, cited in Ferguson 8.
78 Melvin Maddocks, "The Search for Freedom and
Salvation," in Trachtenberg 24.
79 H. Porter Abbott, "Saul Bellow and the '.Lost
Cause' of Character," American Classics Revisited, eds. P.
C. Kar and D. Ramakrishna (Hyderabad: ASRC., 1985) 625.
 McCadden 114.
81 McCadden 125.
82 Sarah Blacher Cohen, Saul Bellow's Enigmatic
Laughter (Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1974) 129. See Donald
Markos, "Life Against Death in Henderson the Rain King,"
Modern Fiction Studies 17.1 (Spring 1971): 198 which
suggests that this bi-sexual queen "has transcended such
limitations as sexual differences, which cause much
torment for most of mankind, and is a complete being in
herself. She is the very image of an impossible ideal--
the fully integrated personality, without unsatisfied
needs. . . ." Goldman disagrees with this statement
because Bellow does not entertain impossible dreams or
"ideals." The "ideal' for him is the good man, not the
unicorn or bisexual creature. (Goldman, Moral Vision 111-
112). Willatale's depiction may be looked at as an
example of an androgynous person who displays a perfect
amalgamation of the masculine (instrumental) and the
feminine (expressive) traits. The social rather than the
bisexual implication of androgyny is highlighted here.
83 Scanzoni, quoted in Eshleman 442.
84 Frank D. McConnell, "Saul Bellow and the Terms of
Our Contract," Four Postwar American Novelists, 1977, 30-
36, cited in Bloom 383.
85 Abbott in Kar 628.
86 McCadden 126.
 87 Goldman, Moral Vision 103.
88 Karl F. Knight, "Bellow's Henderson and Melvillels
Ishmael: Their Mingled Worlds," Studies in American
Fiction 12.1 (Spring 1984) 96.
89 Abbott in Kar 632.
Gordon L. Harper, "The Art of Fiction XXXVII: Saul
Bellow," Paris,Review 9 i1966): 70.
91 Brigitte Scheer-Schazler, Saul Bellow (New York:
Frederick Ungar Publ. Co., 1972) 89.