Self-indulgent feminism

Press, 28 December 1985, Page 14

Self-indulgent feminism

Running Backwards Over Sand. By Stephanie Dowrick. Viking, 1985. 348 pp. $22.95. (Reviewed by Diane Prout)

The chief, distinction in this overly long and highly Freudian novel is that it is written by an expatriate New Zealander living in Australia. Stephanie Dowrick’s bio-synopsis on the dust jacket suggests all the “Been-there-done-that” of the liberated feminist abroad. After a succession of jobs, including those of law clerk and library assistant, she co-founded the Women’s Press and was the first winner of the Pandora Award for the best contribution to the positive image of women. This literary background should alert the reader to the kind of preoccupation with the sexual roles of men and women they can expect to find in the book. Early family relationships, including the premature death of a beloved mother, the repressive influence of an imposed Catholic education by an unhappily remarried father, and the obsessive need to find a mother-substitute take Zoe Delighty from New Zealand to London and Berlin.

Her emotional dependence on her German lover, his rejection of her and her struggle to become an independent, fully functional, adult woman are the substance of the story. Idiosyncratic in style and point-of-view, it is for the most part overwritten, especially the explicit descriptions of the lesbian love scenes. Zoe comes the long way round to working out her problems and though there are some memorable characterisations, especially in the early childhood sections (yes, Katherine Mansfield is one of Zoe’s literary heroines), there is a good deal of attitudinising. Rarefied and metaphysical conversations in German cafe society may be fine if one is actually taking part in them, but they come across as stagy and selfconscious. Emily Bronte may well have been a closet feminist, but we don’t need the heroine’s intense little lectures to remind us of the fact

“Running Backwards, Over Sand” does deal with serious women’s issues, but a novel is not a polemic and the book just misses. One longs to give Zoe Delighty a good shake and tell her selfindulgence is no substitute for sensibility. Jane Austen would have made short work of her.