The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/“Her Problems Were Everyone’s Problems”: Self and Gender in The Deer Park

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« The Mailer Review • Volume 13 Number 1 • 2019 »
Written by
Hujun Ren
Abstract: An examination of "Her Problems Were Everyone's Problems": Self and Gender in The Deer Park to the work of Norman Mailer.
URL: https://prmlr.us/mr16gord

Before its publication in 1955, The Deer Park had been refused by seven publishers in ten weeks for no reason than its “six not very explicit lines about the sex of an old producer and a call girl.”[1] After its publication, it received more criticism than praise, and “the most common objection to the book was its sexual explicitness”[2] because “in the early 1950s no description of sexuality, however evasive, was readily accepted.”[3] In spite of responses from publishers and critics, Mailer refused to make any change of the original lines about “the sex of an old producer and a call girl” and the novel came out as it is now, with the sexuality of his characters to play “the more significant role” in the story.[4] The issue of sexuality in The Deer Park has drawn much attention from critics. Nigel Leigh argues that “in The Deer Park sexuality is both foregrounded and incorporated into Mailer’s political epistemology”[5] and “Mailer investigates closely the sex lives of Sergius, Eitel, Elena, Faye and Lulu Meyers in a search of a discourse of pleasure.”[6] Robert Merrill holds that the novel is “only incidentally a satire on Hollywood or an outlet for Mailer’s philosophical predilections; at heart it is the story of a rather tragic love affair.”[7] Norman Podhoretz points out that “it is on the sexual affairs of his characters that Mr. Mailer concentrates in The Deer Park.”[8]

Why does Mailer concentrate on the sexuality of the characters in The Deer Park? Many critics have noticed that in The Deer Park, Mailer’s major concern moves from “the problem of the world” to “the problem of the self, or, from ideology to the individual or self.[a] As a result, he is highly concerned with the rebellious imperatives of the self, among which “none is more exigent than sex”.[9] A number of critics have directed their attention towards and made close investigations of the nature and meaning of the sexuality of the characters in The Deer Park, and, consequently, a variety of conclusions have been drawn. To Jennifer Bailey, the sexuality of the characters in The Deer Park is of great importance to themselves because it is “potentially redemptive.”[10] Nigel Leigh also believes that the sexuality of the characters in The Deer Park is of great significance because their sexual activities can decide whether they will be able to grow or decline.[6] Norman Podhoretz notes the relationship between the sexuality of the characters and themselves in The Deer Park, arguing that the world in the novel is populated with those “who have no true interest in anything but self” and for whom “sex has become a testing ground of the self.”[8] Like Podhoretz, Diana Trilling also considers the relationship between sex and self. She observes that in The Deer Park Mailer distinguishes two different kinds of sexuality, one “appears to be free but is really an enslavement,” as displayed by the movie colony in Desert D’Or, and the other “expresses a new, radical principle of selfhood,” as valued by Hipsterism.[11] Unlike the critics above mentioned, Jean Radford argues that in The Deer Park the sexuality of the characters functions as “an index of other things” and “at the more general level it is used to symbolize the moral state of the nation.”[12]

. . .

Notes

  1. ↑ See Lucid (1971, p. 82-83), Leeds (1969, p. 110), Leigh (1990, pp. 55-56, 62-63), and Glenday (1995, pp. 79-81).

Citations

  1. ↑ Mailer 1981, p. 330.
  2. ↑ Lennon 1986, p. 6.
  3. ↑ Mills 1982, p. 145.
  4. ↑ Mills 1982, p. 143.
  5. ↑ Leigh 1990, p. 77.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Leigh 1990, p. 78.
  7. ↑ Merrill 1978, p. 45.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Lucid 1971, p. 78.
  9. ↑ Lucid 1971, p. 123.
  10. ↑ Lucid 1971, p. 28.
  11. ↑ Lucid 1971, pp. 125-126.
  12. ↑ Radford 1975, p. 133.

Works Cited

  • Glenday, Michael K. (1995). Norman Mailer. St. Martin's Press.
  • Leeds, Barry H. (1969). The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer. U of London P Limited.
  • Leigh, Nigel (1990). Radical Fictions and the Novels of Norman Mailer. Macmillan.
  • Lennon, J. Michael (1986). Critical Essays on Norman Mailer. G. K. Hall & Co.
  • Lucid, Robert, ed. (1971). Norman Mailer: The Man and His Work. Little, Brown and Company.
  • Mailer, Norman (1955). The Deer Park. G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
  • — (1981). The Deer Park. Perigee Books.
  • Merrill, Robert (1978). Norman Mailer. Twayne.
  • Mills, Hilary (1982). Mailer: A Biography. McGraw Hill.
  • Radford, Jean (1975). Norman Mailer: A Critical Study. The Macmillan Press.
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