The Plague, aka, Insipid Women
The city of Oran, the site devastated by Albert Camus’ plague, is an ugly place. It is also overwhelmingly masculine. By far, the only characters who do or say anything interesting in this book are men. Even the rats that infested the city are more intriguing, and given more attention, than the women. Throughout the story, men (and rats) act and women are occasionally granted permission to watch them; men speak and women are occasionally allowed to listen. Sometimes, the women are even allowed to converse with the men!
Glory, hallelujah! Thank men for all of the small blessings and favors they bestow on their womenfolk.
The women in this novel aren’t characters, they’re stage props!
The women in this book are used primarily as the objects of men’s longings. Early in the story, Rieux’s wife is dispatched to a sanatorium to recover from an undisclosed illness unrelated to the plague. Rambert, a visitor to Oran, is forcefully separated from his lover by the city’s quarantine. And Grand longs for the wife who left him long before the plague visited his hometown. The male longing for female companionship is made abundantly clear. Reciprocal longing on the part of the women can only be inferred. Neither the women nor the narrator provide any accounts of the female point of view on any of the book’s themes: longing, separation, fear, isolation, death, anxiety… The men in this book feel deeply. The women don’t seem to feel anything at all.
The book’s primary female character, Rieux’s mother, spends her days looking quietly out the window and thinking about her son:
“Don’t you ever feel alarmed, Mother?”
“Oh, at my age there isn’t much left to fear.”
“The days are very long, and just now I’m hardly ever at home.”
“I don’t mind waiting, if I know you’re going to come back. And when you aren’t here, I think of what you’re doing.”
Bind me, gag me and whip me! Please! Do something to put me out of my misery! Is this not one of the most pathetically bland female characters ever to populate a novel? Rieux’s wife is even blander, a literary accomplishment that I would have presumed impossible had I not read it myself.
Shortly after the story opens, the reader is informed that Mme. Rieux (the younger) is seriously ill. In fact, plans had already been made for her to leave Oran and spend a year in a distant sanatorium. This plot device serves several purposes. First, it demonstrates that Bernard Rieux, the book’s hero, is an affectionate, compassionate man. Second, it immerses Bernard in one of the book’s major themes, the stresses of separation and isolation. Third, Mme. Rieux’s death near the end of the book allows Bernard to experience the penultimate loss, that of one’s life partner to death.
Mme. Rieux is so uninteresting that the account of her death and her husband’s grief is the most dispassionate, underwhelming such scene I’ve ever read. Still grieving the death of a close friend, Bernard was emotionally numb when he learned of his wife’s death – via telegram. Informing his mother of his loss, Bernard’s only words are:
“Yes,” he said, “that’s it. A week ago.”
Shortly after this, Bernard “told his mother not to cry, he’d been expecting it, but it was hard all the same.”
Right. Forgive me if I failed to see, let alone share, Rieux’s grief. That touching scene has roughly the same emotional impact as a recitation of the recipe for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Bernard Rieux shed tears over the death of a friend. He was outraged at the suffering of a child unrelated to him. He apparently had few feelings, and no tears, left for his wife, the woman who died alone, far away from home and the family she had not seen, or spoken with, or touched, in nearly a year.
If I can say anything in the favor of the two Mme. Rieux’s, it is this: they resemble, in some small degree, humans. In contrast, the matriarch of an ordinary family observed by Tarrou, is described as mouse-like, and subsequently referred to simply as “the mouse.” Nice. Believe it or not, these are the only female characters in this entire book that merit any discussion at all.
If you’ve read this much, you may think that I hated this book. Actually, I didn’t. In fact, I enjoyed it because of the things that Camus did so well. He explored admirably the costs of insuperable suffering. The male characters in this book are ordinary men who confront extraordinary challenges heroically. The male characters in this book do not simply analyze problems or build things and blow them up. Far from it. The male characters in this book feel despair and loneliness, they form friendships, they abhor senseless suffering, they grieve agonizing deaths and they love life and people passionately. Camus applies these complex characteristics liberally to all of his male characters. The one thing Camus fails to explain is this: why such a grand group of men would squander their passions on such an assortment of insipid women.
– the chaplain
When I read a post like this, I am instantly reminded of how oblivious I can be to gender issues, and, for that, I sincerely thank you, Chappy. I read the whole book– in fact, I’ve read it before, so I’ve now read it twice– and it never dawned on me that the female characters are entirely two dimensional.
Fortunately, we have the likes of you out there to remind us. You and the rest of the “Ladies of the Atheosphere” are far more like a spicy jambalaya than a bland PBJ sandwich!
I’m not so sure that this was accidental. For me, the lack of depth in women characters stopped annoying me once the revelation was made of who the narrator was. That makes this a deliberate withholding from us of almost all of his emotions. There are few if any women here, yes, but I see that as a facet of Rieux’s character more than Camus’ – though I don’t know enough about Camus to speak to that.
Well, chappy, I’m not convinced that even the male characters are three-dimensional, but you’re certainly right that there are essentially no female characters to speak of. Like Lifey, I didn’t notice that. Shame on us. I’m trying to figure out how Camus might have used a female character effectively. Had it not been for some of the prejudices of his time, some of the main characters could just as well have been women. It’s actually not too hard for me to imagine the book with a female version of Dr. Rieux, or Tarrou, or Joseph Grand.
Great point, and great post.
See, what I wonder is whether or not Camus deliberately depicted the female characters that way. I don’t know why he would do that or what the intention might have been, but I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on that.
Ridger:
Your point that the dismissal of the women in this book may be integral to Rieux’s character is one to consider. I can see a generally dismissive attitude towards women being congruent with his character, who is, after all, a citizen of the 1940s.
I scanned the Internet for some clues regarding Camus’ attitude toward women and got mixed results. Some say he had little regard for women, others say he respected them greatly. Camus described himself as inconsistent on the matter:
“I always found misogyny vulgar and stupid, and I found almost all the women I have known to be my betters. However, placing them so high, I used them more often than I served them. How does one make sense of this?”
So, the question remains, is Rieux’s dismissal of women merely a fictional trait of a fictional character, or is it an unconscious revelation of the author’s own mind?
I thought about writing about this as well. I know exactly what you mean about seeing female characters whose entire life and death exists merely to illuminate the male protagonists. This was the subject of my most infamous post on the feminist film blog The Hathor Legacy.
Note that the examples you cite aren’t the only ones. Tarrou — who is so completely traumatized by his father’s role in executions — dismisses his mother’s complicit role without even considering it because he decided her poverty had rendered her passive. Then there was another part where somebody (maybe Tarrou again?) described his mother’s invisibility as almost a virtue and/or regarded her death as just a logical extension of her natural invisibility. I can’t tell you the precise quote here because by that point I was so disgusted with this aspect of the story that I was actively skimming and blocking it out. The portrayal of women as cyphers was just so relentless, without a single example of an active female character to balance it out. And reading the usual “on a pedestal” crap about women being morally superior makes the lack of empathy behind this portrayal just that much clearer.
For me, it’s not so much the Rieux is dismissive or mysogynistic, as jealously guarding his identity up to the end. Someone – I can’t remember who – was miffed at the way conversations were presented, with much of it being a summary of what was said. This too I think is because Rieux-the-narrator does not want to intrude his personal feelings into the narrative. He could have written it in first person, but instead tried to mimic the limited third person (fly on the wall) author instead. For me, trying to guess which of them was the narrator was part of the interest, though I did fairly soon – I had it narrowed to Rieux or Rambert, with Grand a distant surprise possible, but Rieux was my odds-on favorite. There were so many little places where the narrator suddenly stepped away from what Rieux was doing or saying … I want to read some more Camus to see if this was all deliberate on his part.
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I think the fact is that mostly there were no women in Rieux’s life, and the ones he did know and love he tried to keep well out of the story in an effort to keep himself from contaminating the story he wanted to tell with extraneous personal details.
I could be wrong, though. It might just be that Camus can’t write women.
No OTHER women in his life, I mean.
I’m wondering if I had read it, whether my reaction would have been like Lifeguard’s. Hmmm…
Well, chappy and Ridger, I must confess that as I was reading, my guess for the narrator of the story was Mrs. Rieux. That would have been a lovely ending, with Rieux himself dying at the end and his wife living to tell the tale from a distance.
Of course, I read far too many mysteries. At one point, I thought the narrator was Joseph Grand, who had finally finished his damn book and The Plague was it.
But where were the young woman, the sorrel mare, and the flowers on the Bois?
Well, I can proudly and honestly announce that this is one male who DID notice the absence of substantial female characters. This said, I think one of the things we overlook here is the era the book was written in.
You can go back to any classic literature and find egregious examples of social gaffs based on our current understanding. To me, while your reaction is understandable, is like dwelling on the word “nigger” and its repeated use in Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn”.
I’m glad you were able to see past this stylistic flaw and appreciate the quality of the work.
John Evo said: I think one of the things we overlook here is the era the book was written in….To me, while your reaction is understandable, it is like dwelling on the word “nigger” and its repeated use in Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn”.
One could argue that Twain’s used of the word “nigger” was an appropriate tool by which Twain’s characters embodied a common attitude of the era about which he wrote. Thoughtful discussions of Huck Finn should refer to both the attitude as it is portrayed and Twain’s own attitude toward race. If students consider the latter carefully, they can gain deeper appreciation for why Twain used the term at all. The book should be used as a starting point for discussions about bigotry, discrimination, etc., It most certainly should not be banned from classrooms because its portrayal of race is not PC by today’s standards.
I’d make a similar argument regarding Camus’
StepfordOran Women. I’m still uncertain whether his portrayal of these women was a plot device that revealed something about the narrator, Rieux, or simply the unconscious product of Camus’ own seemingly ambiguous attitude toward women. Questions like these merit discussion in literature classes (and literati posts), not to belittle and condemn authors, but to gain greater understanding of both texts and writers. In the cases of both Twain and Camus, it is demeaning to them – as well as to African-Americans and women – to dismiss such questions and simply excuse them by saying, “Oh, well, those guys were just products of the eras in which they lived. Stop being so oversensitive about such things.” To the contrary, questions like these should be explored, not ignored. If Camus and Twain’s works merit serious attention, and I believe they do, then examining tough questions like these should be regarded as legitimate means for gaining greater understanding and appreciation of their writings.Agreed.
Questions like these merit discussion in literature classes (and literati posts), not to belittle and condemn authors, but to gain greater understanding of both texts and writers.
This is exactly right. In the case of my Hathor post I linked to above, the root problem was that the script was such a mindless rehash of the standard formulas that it appeared to have been written by a computerized script-generating program (see here). That’s really all the analysis that particular work deserves.
The case of The Plague, however, is completely different. In it Camus demonstrates remarkable insight into human nature, which makes his blind spot towards women all the more strange (and interesting to analyze).
I don’t think this case can be simply dismissed as “that’s the way people thought back then.” Even if male society at the time expected women to be subservient shadows in the back of the kitchen with no passion or motivation of their own, a keen observer of human nature could easily be expected to notice the disconnect between that social expectation and the reality. There are a whole lot of stories (even ones written by men) where female characters are whole people, despite being written from within more sexist cultures than 1940’s France. So why wasn’t Camus interested in women as humans? Are his other books like this? I wonder…
John Evo Says “I’m glad you were able to see past this stylistic flaw and appreciate the quality of the work.”
I think it is more than a stylistic flaw, and is nothing like the use of “nigger” in Huck Finn (which is also not a stylistic flaw). Jim, the runaway slave, was a compassionate, wise and valued character. It would have been impossible for Mark Twain to render the characters authentic without using the real language of the time. The central message of the book was in Huck’s lesson that he had to question widely held assumptions and think for himself (in particular about race). Race is central to Huckleberry Finn – gender isn’t to Camus (according to the blog). Whether this undermines what Camus has to say is another question. What I would assert, though, is that an indifference to the lives of women is not a style problem.
Debbyo:
I agree that Twain’s use of “nigger” and Camus’ apparent blind spot toward women are not analogous. They are two significantly different phenomena.
It’s hard to judge on the basis of one book. I’d have to read more Camus to guess – if this attitude persists, it’s him; if not, it was part of something he was trying to say about Rieux. Or the people of his time. I have to get more of his stuff.
Ridger:
I’m thinking of reading Camus’ The Stranger soon. Where do you think you’ll start?
I didn’t want to get into a discussion of Huckleberry Finn, so I let Evo’s comment go. But now that others are reacting, let’s just put the silly analogy to rest, thusly:
Twain intentionally used “nigger” and other disparaging sentiments toward black slaves. First of all, that was the way his characters would have talked and felt. But second, and more important, Twain needed to show that, although Huck continues to talk the talk and accept some of the basic assumptions of white superiority, he gradually learns NOT to walk the walk. His public verbal expressions are still rooted in the past, but his thoughts and feelings more and more conflict with everything he has ever “known.”
You might say that he’s in the process of de-converting from a belief in slavery.
This is nothing like Camus’ neglect of women characters, which is just the author’s extreme near-sightedness.
Something Evo said about the book when he introduced it led me to believe that Rieux was the narrator. I never questioned it and I would have been surprised if it had been someone else.
I agree with Ex, that all of the characters were two-dimensional to a large degree. They never felt real to me. And the writing style jarred me. I kept expecting to feel the emotion instead of just having it described to me.
But you’re right about the women being mere props. I ignored them as I read through because their quiet nothingness bothered me.
I love this! Hooray for variety in reactions! You’re right. This needed to be said. The women in this book don’t amount to much, and it’s a serious flaw in a rather good book.
Now I’m going to read the other comments to this post.