The White Album

Didion uses an ironic and derisive tone to convey her contempt for feminism. She includes scare quotes to mock their claims and terminology. Thus, oppressed turns into “oppressed,” class becomes “class,” and idea is “idea” (96). Didion doesn’t believe society oppresses all women, and she doesn’t think of women as a revolutionary class. As for ideas, Didion uses hyperbole or exaggerated language to articulate what she considers feminism’s absence of consequential ideas. She calls it “a yearning absolutely devoid of ideas” (96).

Didion’s disdain for feminism is explicit, and her rejection of the women’s movement relates to the themes of Storytelling and The Construction and Subversion of Identity. The feminist literature Didion cites creates an identity for women—they’re “everyone’s victim but her own” (101). The story the feminists tell about themselves reinforces their perceived status as oppressed. The hypothetical woman must cook and raise children. She’s routinely raped, brainwashed by the makeup industry, and ashamed to eat alone. Didion sets hyperbole aside and concedes that “many women are victims of condescension and exploitation and sex-role stereotyping,” adding that “other women are not: nobody forces women to buy the package” (102).

Presumably, Didion identifies with the other women. She doesn’t buy the package and doesn’t create a story or identity for herself that links to oppression. Didion defines womanhood as mysterious—“that sense of living one’s deepest life underwater, that dark involvement with blood and birth and death” (103). Her idea of womanhood links to motifs of violence and pain. Meanwhile, feminists portray women as “too ‘sensitive’ for the difficulties of adult life [and] unequipped for reality” (102). They can’t confront the truth of birth, blood, and death. They’re stuck in “perpetual adolescents” (103), where they dream of “Eternal love, romance, fun. The Big Apple” (104). Didion creates a juxtaposition. She pits feminists against adults to spotlight how the former lack maturity.

The essay ends with the witty and ironic statement, “[T]he movement is no longer a cause but a symptom” (104). Didion plays with the terms “symptom” and “cause.

 The women’s movement isn’t a cause by her definition: It doesn’t help women achieve a tangible goal. Instead, it’s a symptom—an indication that these women don’t want to face the complexities and disappointments that compose adult life regardless of gender. Didion sees it as a copout and portrays the feminist authors as “women scarred not by their class position as women but by the failure of their childhood expectations and misapprehensions” (103). To Didion, the women’s movement isn’t fighting oppression but constructing an infantile fantasy. Her harsh, punchy tone reveals her deep scorn for sophomoric feminism.

Didion links Doris Lessing to the women’s movement. She sees Lessing as “assaulted at every turn by fresh evidence that the world is not exactly improving as promised” (108). However, Didion’s tone is softer in this essay. She doesn’t agree with Lessing’s drive to find solutions or create narratives but admits that “there is something finally very moving about her tenacity” (111). With Lessing, Didion reveals she can disagree with someone but still admire their drive to produce. Lessing created a prodigious amount of literature, and her work ethic earns Didion’s esteem.

The O’Keeffe essay reveals the personal side of Didion. She and her daughter examine an O’Keeffe painting at a museum. Her daughter asks, “Who drew it?” Didion tells her, and her daughter says, “I need to talk to her” (112). The exchange links to one of the book’s main themes: The Construction and Subversion of Identity. The daughter creates an identity for O’Keeffe based on the painting: The work is amazing, so O’Keeffe must be too. Didion portrays O’Keeffe as admirable. The scorching diction she uses for the feminists is absent. She doesn’t mention feminism in the essay, but it’s as if Didion implicitly juxtaposes O’Keeffe with the women’s movement. O’Keeffe faces sexism and criticism in school and from male artists but doesn’t “buy the package” (102). Didion notes, “She is simply hard, a straight shooter, a woman clean of received wisdom and open to what she sees” (113). Didion’s laudatory tone turns O’Keeffe into an icon. She’s an honest woman worthy of emulation. What other people do and say doesn’t bother her. She paints what she wants and lives where she likes. Her story and identity center on toughness and independence. She’s an adult.