The Disappearance
Philip Wylie's The Disappearance was published in 1951 and absolutely reeks of the 1950s, from the gender roles and attitudes about sexuality (homosexual and heterosexual) to its Cold War era fears and technologies.
The premise of the novel is that "one minute it was the world as we know it. Then suddenly it became two worlds--one male, one female, each as before, but each without the opposite sex!" No scientific explanation is ever provided for this; the point is not, in the end, the science behind the Disappearance but the sociology and psychology behind and following the event. The novel follows the men's and women's stories in separate (generally alternating) chapters, focusing on one married couple in particular, Bill and Paula Gaunt. In the women's world, chaos quickly ensues as technology grinds to a halt (the men ran those things); in the men's world, however, things are no better. Where the women must struggle to find food and energy and to fight disease, the men find themselves giving in to violence, both on a local and global level. Much of the U.S. is destroyed as a result of the continuation of Cold War threats and tensions and nuclear warfare.
The Disappearance lasts for four years and during that time both men and women must learn about who they really are, who their men/women really were (as much as that can be known), and the ways in which they are not really that different from each other. Wylie attacks religion, sexual mores, and the social training that has grown up around gender roles, arguing that these things have stunted both men and women and that the only real solution is to see "man-plus-woman" as a whole person, complementary and equal in importance.
In this, Wylie is ahead of his time, prefiguring the free love movements of the 1960s and the feminist movement of the 1970s. However, he cannot escape the prejudices of his time. Left alone to run the nation, women give in to silliness, spending their energy at first on designing official outfits to be worn; homosexuality is seen as ridiculous and regressive; and men prove incapable of fending for themselves around the house while women's homes, despite the other difficulties they face, are nice, homey, and decidedly not tacky (as the men's homes apparently are). These remaining sexist and homophobic moments are disheartening given the otherwise positive momentum of the book, but they are valuable as relics of the 1950s. For a contemporary reader, the book is occasionally painful because of these moments, but it serves as a potent reminder of where relations between men and women stood at the time.
This combination of outdated ideas and prescient critique would make The Disappearance a really interesting book to teach if it weren't for the other element of the book that marks it as thoroughly of its time: the style. To modern tastes, the book is overexplained, overnarrated, and unaccountably formal and thus requires time to get used to. And at nearly 400 pages, I'm not sure undergraduates would be willing and able to spend the time and energy required to accustom themselves to such an old-fashioned style. I'll provide just a couple of examples from early in the book. Here is the first paragraph of the book:The female of the species vanished on the afternoon of the second Tuesday of February at four minutes and fifty-two seconds past four o'clock, Eastern Standard Time. The event occurred universally at the same instant, without regard to time belts, and was followed by such phenomena as might be expected after happenings of that nature. (3)
Wordy, with lots of prepositional phrases, strangely formal and distant, this is not writing that reaches out and grabs a modern reader, even if the premise is immediately intriguing. Here is one more example from the beginning of chapter 2, the reader's initial introduction to Paula Gaunt:Paula Gaunt was a woman of warmth, of engagingly varied moods, and of many capacities. She was perceptive and sympathetic--as a rule. She had one minor vanity: she dyed her hair the shade of red she'd been born with. As far as she could tell, Bill had not caught on, although she'd begun to dabble with henna fifteen years ago when the first gray strands had appeared. She called the original color 'copper pink'--and henna had not restored it. But other chemicals had been effective. Through frequent visits to expert hair-dressers she had maintained to the age of forty-six the hue and luster of her unusual adornment. The trouble was, not to know whether Bill knew. Since this was a matter of pride, and slightly obsessively, she gave it undue importance. (17)
Again, wordy and not the kind of writing that grabs a reader. It also suffers from the tendency to produce characterization through omniscient description instead of through seeing the character in action.
Perhaps the most obvious flaw of the book, to my view, is the lack of any convincing explanation for the Disappearance, however. Even taking into consideration that Wylie's main concern is not the science of the event, using it primarily as a leaping off point for his reflections and arguments, the resolution is so weak as to be irritating. The men and women disappear from each other's lives suddenly and mysteriously; they reappear in the same way. Edwinna, Bill and Paula's daughter, provides one speculation about what caused the separation and reunification: I always told myself, this is a penance We asked for it; if we stick through it--keep our hopes quiet--then, some afternoon, they'll put us back the way we were. (370)
This is the best we get and this is far from scientific or logical. This is, in fact, downright mystical, making The Disappearance a 400 page morality tale/fable. At the end, lesson learned, everyone can live happily ever after, and we, the readers, can hopefully learn this lesson without having to experience the same thing ourselves.
The premise of the novel is that "one minute it was the world as we know it. Then suddenly it became two worlds--one male, one female, each as before, but each without the opposite sex!" No scientific explanation is ever provided for this; the point is not, in the end, the science behind the Disappearance but the sociology and psychology behind and following the event. The novel follows the men's and women's stories in separate (generally alternating) chapters, focusing on one married couple in particular, Bill and Paula Gaunt. In the women's world, chaos quickly ensues as technology grinds to a halt (the men ran those things); in the men's world, however, things are no better. Where the women must struggle to find food and energy and to fight disease, the men find themselves giving in to violence, both on a local and global level. Much of the U.S. is destroyed as a result of the continuation of Cold War threats and tensions and nuclear warfare.
The Disappearance lasts for four years and during that time both men and women must learn about who they really are, who their men/women really were (as much as that can be known), and the ways in which they are not really that different from each other. Wylie attacks religion, sexual mores, and the social training that has grown up around gender roles, arguing that these things have stunted both men and women and that the only real solution is to see "man-plus-woman" as a whole person, complementary and equal in importance.
In this, Wylie is ahead of his time, prefiguring the free love movements of the 1960s and the feminist movement of the 1970s. However, he cannot escape the prejudices of his time. Left alone to run the nation, women give in to silliness, spending their energy at first on designing official outfits to be worn; homosexuality is seen as ridiculous and regressive; and men prove incapable of fending for themselves around the house while women's homes, despite the other difficulties they face, are nice, homey, and decidedly not tacky (as the men's homes apparently are). These remaining sexist and homophobic moments are disheartening given the otherwise positive momentum of the book, but they are valuable as relics of the 1950s. For a contemporary reader, the book is occasionally painful because of these moments, but it serves as a potent reminder of where relations between men and women stood at the time.
This combination of outdated ideas and prescient critique would make The Disappearance a really interesting book to teach if it weren't for the other element of the book that marks it as thoroughly of its time: the style. To modern tastes, the book is overexplained, overnarrated, and unaccountably formal and thus requires time to get used to. And at nearly 400 pages, I'm not sure undergraduates would be willing and able to spend the time and energy required to accustom themselves to such an old-fashioned style. I'll provide just a couple of examples from early in the book. Here is the first paragraph of the book:The female of the species vanished on the afternoon of the second Tuesday of February at four minutes and fifty-two seconds past four o'clock, Eastern Standard Time. The event occurred universally at the same instant, without regard to time belts, and was followed by such phenomena as might be expected after happenings of that nature. (3)
Wordy, with lots of prepositional phrases, strangely formal and distant, this is not writing that reaches out and grabs a modern reader, even if the premise is immediately intriguing. Here is one more example from the beginning of chapter 2, the reader's initial introduction to Paula Gaunt:Paula Gaunt was a woman of warmth, of engagingly varied moods, and of many capacities. She was perceptive and sympathetic--as a rule. She had one minor vanity: she dyed her hair the shade of red she'd been born with. As far as she could tell, Bill had not caught on, although she'd begun to dabble with henna fifteen years ago when the first gray strands had appeared. She called the original color 'copper pink'--and henna had not restored it. But other chemicals had been effective. Through frequent visits to expert hair-dressers she had maintained to the age of forty-six the hue and luster of her unusual adornment. The trouble was, not to know whether Bill knew. Since this was a matter of pride, and slightly obsessively, she gave it undue importance. (17)
Again, wordy and not the kind of writing that grabs a reader. It also suffers from the tendency to produce characterization through omniscient description instead of through seeing the character in action.
Perhaps the most obvious flaw of the book, to my view, is the lack of any convincing explanation for the Disappearance, however. Even taking into consideration that Wylie's main concern is not the science of the event, using it primarily as a leaping off point for his reflections and arguments, the resolution is so weak as to be irritating. The men and women disappear from each other's lives suddenly and mysteriously; they reappear in the same way. Edwinna, Bill and Paula's daughter, provides one speculation about what caused the separation and reunification: I always told myself, this is a penance We asked for it; if we stick through it--keep our hopes quiet--then, some afternoon, they'll put us back the way we were. (370)
This is the best we get and this is far from scientific or logical. This is, in fact, downright mystical, making The Disappearance a 400 page morality tale/fable. At the end, lesson learned, everyone can live happily ever after, and we, the readers, can hopefully learn this lesson without having to experience the same thing ourselves.