Dominated by sensuality

Press, 10 January 1987, Page 19

Dominated by sensuality

The Madness of a Seduced Woman. By Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. Pavanne/Collins, 1986. 656 pp. $15.96 (paperback). Anya. By Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. Pan/Collins, 1986. 616 pp. $15.95 (paperback).

(Reviewed by

Ralf Unger)

Mrs Schaeffer, from New York, first published “Anya” in 1974, and “Madness” in 1983. With almost 1300 pages between them they are both described as “best sellers,” but with entirely different themes.

“The Madness of a Seduced Woman” is a formal “diagnosis” given to a patient before a court for the murder of another young woman in Vermont in the early years of this century. When she is acquitted of the charge on the grounds of insanity, and all the women in the courtroom applaud, it “was that girl’s womb talking to all the other wombs.” The defence medical adviser adds, “I think the womb has a mind of its own ... it is like the queen bee of the woman’s body and every part of the female body works to carry out its commands.” What this is all about is that Agnes Dempster, at 18, has had a messy abortion which has rendered her sterile, has been betrayed by her lover, killed her rival, and attempted suicide. The first 500 pages deal with Agnes’s home background, spurned by her mother and convinced of her own

ugliness and unworthiness in spite of her striking beauty. When she is finally "seduced” — by carefully planning to make her confused male friend remove her virginity and give her rhapsodies of sexual ecstasy — the stage is set for her extreme romantic possessiveness to lead her to tragedy. The murder and court case are mildly interesting, but her long period of mental hospitalisation is rather skimmed over. She dies in the institution in her 70s with her face partially paralysed after she has shot out one of her eyes. It is amazing that, according to the publicity, this book is seen as "feminist.” In fact, Agnes is completely dominated by her rather superficial sensuality and reproductive organs, and by her worship of a dull and indecisive male. • “Anya" is Schaeffer’s account of the Holocaust With a great deal of research and obvious sympathy, this professor of English in Brooklyn has written her account of that appalling story. The central character grows up in a town close to Warsaw and there are careful descriptions of a typical Eastern Jewish childhood, adolescence, and marriage. The family, like so many Jewish Poles, originate from Russia and their traditional ways and the new generation’s attitudes inevitably lead to some clashes, but loyalty to parents finally wins the day. Along comes the Soviet-German pact and finally the invasion by the Nazis and confinement in the Ghetto. Anya manages to save her daughter by handing her to gentile foster parents at the last moment, but she herself goes to a concentration camp where the remainder of her family are casually and methodically liquidated. She survives to end her days in the United States with her daughter and a kind husband who went through similar scarring experiences. Obviously the scenario is a dramatic one, even though the story of similar experiences has now often been told. Unfortunately this account at no stage has any ring of realism or empathy in all the huge number of words. The author never quite manages to take the reader there, even though the ingredients are trundled out, from accounts she has heard of the horror of the camps to the confused aftermath of liberation and the survival through it all of human affection.