Feminism And The Harem Of An Arab Prince - Biological Destiny And An American Woman's Idyll

Drew Blanchard had never been satisfied with radical feminism.  Her mother had Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan on her office walls - two distinctly doughy, ugly women who were the icons of the women's liberation movement. 

Drew's mother had never retreated from the old feminism.  She was a tireless vigilante, a defiant defender of women's rights, and a vixenish harridan at home with her husband, a man who had for some peace and quiet cleaned the toilets and did the dishes. 

The Blanchards had more than enough money to hire a maid, but Alma Blanchard would have it no other way.  She channeled Miss Julie's mother in Strindberg's play - a misandrous harpy who turned the family farm upside down to make men do the milking and the women the heavy lifting.  Her husband, Julie's father, was a milquetoast, a complaisant, deferent man who was more of a fixture than a man; and so Julie grew up as brutally feminist. 

When she grew older she took her assumed role as uncompromising female seriously and had the valet, Jean, literally jump through hoops at her command. 

Alma Blanchard felt the same fire in her belly, a desire to pay men back for all their insouciance and patriarchal authority; and luckily she found a complaisant husband - remarkable, really, for most men would have run in the opposite direction. 

The rub of the story, the irony, was that Miss Julie was sexually attracted to Jean and wanted him to run away with her, two lovers away from the manor, their superiors, and those who dictated their lives. In other words, she behaved as a woman, one desirous of men, needing them for comfort and support, and wanting only the natural order of things. 

And so it was that Drew Blanchard, like Miss Julie, broke away from her mother's fierce feminism and charted her own course.  Like Julie, Drew felt herself complete only with a man, a dominant, decisive, sexually confidant man who would protect her, provide for her, and comfort her. 

The world had changed since her mother's day, and this wasn't the Fifties, the last era when a woman could have all this from a man, fulfill her destined biological role as mother, and be and loyal wife.  No, in this era men and women were equal before the law, and such judicial and legislative rulings gave women free reign.  They were free to choose whomever they wished, and not sit patiently across the dance floor waiting for a handsome prince to come to them and sweep them off their feet. 

These men were vagabonds - uprooted from their traditional provider role they found no place within the new, feminized world.  They either had to conform to the new rules, capitulate, or defer. Of course there were men who refused this bondage, who understood women's unchanged, permanent, ineluctable femaleness and had their choice. If there was liberation in the air, it was male.  The juiciest prize was the feminist woman who insisted that she was no different from a man but who swooned at the attentions of a desirous, sexually determined male. 

Drew was an attractive young woman and had many male suitors, from every point on the spectrum.  There were the apes, Pleistocene throwbacks who had plenty of sexual get-up-and-go but zero understanding of women.  At the other asymptote of the bell curve were the feminized men, the ones who actually bought into No Means No and the 'May I...Might I...Would it be alright if I...' algorithm of respect and dutiful distance. 

In between was the range of twerps, do-gooders, Type A's - the needy, the lonely, the clueless, and the desperate, none of which had any appeal whatsoever; and Drew began to despair.  She was far from her pull-by date, but like every woman she could not ignore the steady ticking of her biological clock.  Where was he? Did he exist? or was she being foolish?

Drew met Abdul el-Rahman al-Sayyid at a French Embassy gathering to celebrate Franco-Arabian friendship, a unique time of diplomatic congeniality increasingly rare in this time of Islamic radicalism. The French were not pleased with Saudi construction of mosques and madrassahs in their country, but relied on Saudi wealth for other more national interests.  Oil, of course, was always in the discussion. 

Al-Sayyid was a Saudi prince, close in family ties to the ruling patriarch of Saudi royalty, and a direct descent of King Saud and his forbears. 

Al-Sayyid had nothing of the former king's quarter horse face. He was befitting of a prince, handsome, dashing, tall, and elegant in his white silk kaftan and traditional headdress.  He spoke perfect English with just a trace of Arabic aspirants, and unaccented French.  He had been educated at Oxford and the Sorbonne and was an intimate of the high princes of the royal family. 

'You are beautiful', he said to Drew, kissing her hand, a European gesture he allowed himself as a prince, departing from the Islamic custom of remove; and then went on to ask about her, her life, her interest, and her ambitions. 

'Have you ever been to the Kingdom', he asked, to which she said no, regrettably, and then, 'but I would be delighted to go'.  The die had been cast. Drew was in his hands, his woman, his absolutely and certainly. 

Of course that was only an Arabian Nights dream.  Why would a Saudi prince take any interest in her, a simple American from the farmland? And what possibly could a relationship with a Wahhabi Muslim, a strict Koranic originalist living in an all-male world?

She had read Hillary Mantel's Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, a book about a British woman living in Jeddah, married to an Englishman who slowly but surely adopts the incarcerating mentality of the Arab clients he serves.  The stories of black-clothed, veiled women in burqas locked in their chambers by their husbands, allowed out only accompanied by male relative, and the female culture of the immured. 

Yet, why not?  There was something seditiously appealing about this life.  In the Kingdom married to a Saudi prince, even if she were one of many in his harem, she would be taken care of and able to fulfil her unique role of mother.  It would be a life of complete fulfillment. 

She had long ago dismissed the fanciful ideas of independence, ambition, breaking through the glass ceiling, boardrooms, and executive positions.  All well and good, but biology was destiny, after all. She wanted none of it, but the way her life was going, the interminable line of epicene suitors at her door, and the biological clock approaching midnight, she might have to settle for it. 

Until her Saudi prince, and it was with great delight and impossible eagerness that she returned his call, and agreed to meet again.  

It wasn't a traditional courtship by any means.  She would accompany him to the Kingdom and become part of his household - protected, cared for, respected, a princess in her own right if not by lineage. 

'If the arrangement is not suitable, you may leave. My responsibility for you is without bounds'; and she accepted his offer.  In the women's compartment of Royal First Class, she flew to Riyadh was escorted to the royal palace, fitted with the most finely-tailored silk raiment and shown her quarters.  The suite was filled with the scent of sandalwood and roses, sweetmeats were presented on a sterling silver platter and servants were at her service.  Only after a sumptuous dinner on her private balcony did al-Sayyid join her for the night.  It was marvelous.  A dream come true. 

Her mother couldn't believe the news. Of all people, a woman-hating, medieval, buggering Arab - an in his harem no less, one of many women, called into concubinage at his beck and call.  What had she been thinking?  My daughter!! Where did I go wrong?

In her letters, later compiled into a popular memoir very different from Mantel's semi-fictional account of woman in the Kingdom, she wrote of the consistent pleasures of the consort of a Saudi prince.  She was treated with respect, duty, and admiration and she had five children with him.  Life could not have been more satisfying and fulfilling. 

'There is still one place on earth where a woman can be a woman' she wrote of The Kingdom, and lived out her life happily in the company of Prince Abdul el-Rahman al-Sayyid. 

Ex Post Facto - After The Fact, The End Of Disillusionment, And A Welcome To God's Country

Braden Phelps believed in things - love, summer mornings, freshly baked bread, and Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses.  He was a romantic, an idealist, a believer that God had created a perfect world to which we could return if we did not stray from the path. 

As such Braden was the perfect political progressive - he not only had a firm historical grounding in the early labor heroes of the 20th century, Brandeis, LaFollette, and Gompers, lessons learned from the noble Russian experiment, and an almost spiritual belief in ultimate goodness. 

He had always been a good boy - respectful, hardworking, considerate, and affable.  Father Brophy thought he would be a good candidate for the seminary, and Fenton Abrams, his math professor, was certain he would make waves in quantum physics. 

Braden was sure of only one thing - doing good, making a difference, having an impact.  None of this was out of arrogance or presumptuous, but of good will.  It hurt him to see homeless men on the street, terminal cancer patients in the hospital wards, orphans, minorities, and desperate asylees.  He was seemingly born with 'a compassion gene', an oddity noted by Eugene L Franks of Bowdoin, geneticist and social philosopher. 

Individual strands of DNA cannot account for such behavior, nor even predict a soul given to kindness, charity, and compassion. These attributes are within the nurture side of the equation, at least for the time being. 

Yet such inspired outwardness often manifests itself in what would be considered the least compassionate and generous families.  What ever it is, whether Nature or Nurture, science is still perplexed by its occurrence. 

We are more perplexed by its current political expression.  Doing good, making a difference, setting the world on a utopian path has never before been witnessed.  Compassion has taken on defiance, and this is where psycho-pathology comes in. 

Dr. Franks could have been describing Braden Phelps, so accurate was his description of upbringing, psychological tendencies, and commitment to the larger community of progressive reformers. In later articles, most importantly in the journal Science, he expanded on the notion of 'collective goodness', 'this feverish, inchoate, inflexibility' - again describing Braden to a 'T'. 

Braden, because of his deep-seated, almost spiritual longing for a better world, his willful momentum towards an imagined utopia, and his growing defiance of all naysayers, indeed became 'feverish' in his assault on those who chose to disregard the truth.  Global warming, the continuing oppression of the black man, the federal SS troops deployed to round up and deport legitimate asylees, the brutal assault on gay men and lesbian women were undeniable truths, and those who were too ignorant to accept this reality no longer belonged within the body politic. 

Braden could be found on every front line against fascism.  He marched for sanctuary cities, protested for the adoption of the gender spectrum as canon and included in every school curriculum, cheered the street demonstrations of Black Lives Matter which recalled the black uprisings in Detroit, Newark, Watts, and Washington, DC decades earlier, and lived in a tent city outside the White House demanding an end to war. 

'The compassion gene' wrote Prof. Franks, 

is a very weak element in the psycho-pathology, too fragile to grow, easy to fracture, quick to dissolve in a solution of reality.  The true believer must come to grips with the inevitable rounds of perpetual war,  imbalanced social pyramids, the screeching and caterwauling for justice when none has ever prevailed on a universal scale

The coming of the end of Braden's 'febrile dreams' - another characterization of true belief coined by Dr. Franks - when his childhood Catholic education intruded on his most secular aspirations. Without thinking, he said a prayer, asking God for divine intervention.  Man's efforts alone would not be enough to stem the tide of ignorance and apostasy.  Again without thinking, he blessed himself, making sign of the cross as he had a thousand times as a boy. 

 

Now, the progressive movement had been most explicit in its condemnation of organized religion.  The Vatican was nothing but an instrument of doctrinaire authority, a bullying, intimidating, destructive force.  Protestant fundamentalism was ignorance at its very worst - a bathos of mindless charisma, and Judaism a prehistoric, bookish, academic world of mumbo-jumbo. 

So when Braden realized what he had done, he was chagrinned and embarrassed. He had broken the rules, ignored the canon, and dealt in self-serving fantasy. 

But how to account for The Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the centuries of inhumanity to man after Christ's sacrifice for the forgiveness of ins and for universal redemption? God had made a mess of Creation, and not even his only begotten son could right the ship.  Wasn't the only purpose of prayer to accept the inevitable?

The lesbians in a basement on Thomas Circle smelled bad.  They had a thing about washing, a telltale sign of a recidivist bourgeois upbringing. Bodily odors were positive emanations, radical pheromones, the perfume to attract the faithful.  They were also ugly and misshapen again in the spirit of militancy.  Attention to personal appearance, like personal hygiene, was counter-revolutionary.  Ugliness was a trope, a meme, an ethos. 

Braden asked for forgiveness for such anti-canonical thoughts.  These women should not be judged by anything except their principles; and yet, leaving the meeting and existing into the clear December night, he took a deep, long breath of fresh, crisp, cold air. 

And why should compassion come in only one size?  Wasn't there something to the old Chinese saying about giving a poor man a rod to fish with and not the fish itself, the ultimate reward of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility? Wasn't charity nothing more than the chains that bind?  Wasn't unaccountable generosity tantamount to economic enslavement?

He was clearly in a muddle.  Had logic simply come too late - had he been guilty of arrested development, hanging his hat where it looked good not where it belonged?  Was he only an emotional cripple, hobbled by years of fealty to the wrong gods?

Changing horses in midstream has never been a good idea, but when the horse you're riding rears and bolts, leaving you in a cold water wash, and you have no choice but to change direction, who could object. 

His newfound conservatism was not an epiphany by any means.  When Braden looked back on the last few years, he should have recognized and admitted his growing disillusionment. 

Again Prof. Franks was right on the mark - the compassion gene is a very weak bit which does not hold up to pressure.  It gives in because it is an anomaly in what is the more firmly established human nature which is aggressive, self-interested, territorial, and amoral.  It may try to wiggle its way into a position of influence in the double helix, but even if it finds some traction, it is not long for this world. 

Braden did not go around the bend with his new perspective.  He wasn't on the opposing front lines, howling and shouting for a conservative view of justice.  He just knew he was right, and that was enough. 

As for his former colleagues?  None of them had any semblance of a compassion gene. They were too stupid for any reflection that considered God, history, and human nature.  To give them their due, it was that stupidity which fueled The Movement, and everything needs something in the tank to keep it running. 

'Never The Same Love Twice' - F. Scott Fitzgerald And The Tale Of A Disillusioned Man

Peter Frampton was only twenty-three when he was sitting at the Blarney Stone bar on 2nd Avenue drinking Wild Turkey.  She hadn't left him, they left each other, and that was the point.  There are always good reasons for a breakup but there are always more bad ones.  We don't have enough patience to let things play out.  

His young wife might have returned to form, good girl from Lancaster Pennsylvania, Wellesley graduate, talented painter, career in advertising; but the signs were not good.  Plowing her own row, leaving him to tend to the garden, taking no responsibility for her adventures. 

'You're too young for this', said the bartender.  This was back in the day when bartenders were older men with life experience, and he hated to see Peter doubling down on the Wild Turkey, getting glassy-eyed when he should be out having fun somewhere.  'It can't be that bad'. 

Lucy had been the one, the perfect fit, the missing piece, the star in the firmament, the girl of his dreams, and he gave it all up.  Her escapades were too farfetched, too over-the-top, too contradictory.  Marriage was supposed to be a building, consolidating time; not this crucible of unsatisfied wishes.  He thought they were doing the right thing. 

Love fucks things up - everyone knows that - and that brief unsatisfying and unwholesome marriage stayed with Frampton until the day he died.  'There are many kinds of love in the world', wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Rich Boy 'but never the same love twice'. Peter was OK with that, moving on, but little did he know that Lucy would be a touchstone, against which all others would be measured. 

The thing of it all was that for all his star-stuck love, Lucy was no angel, and getting divorced was the best thing that could have happened.  Her cavalcade up and down Manhattan led the Village Voice's gossip columnist to write, 'Who was that beauty dancing with Ultra Violet at Max's Kansas City last night?'. No woman would be able to keep that kind of jamboree going for long. 

Besides, Peter came from a long line of Framptons, a historic family whose ancestors had planted their feet on both Plymouth Rock and Albemarle Sound - English colonists who built Jamestown and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, sounder old English stock was not to be found in the Boston social register.  Not only that, but his father's side of the family traced back to English nobility - the Duke of Northumberland's blood ran in his veins. 

 

His parents, and especially Uncle Charles, the patriarch of the clan, and his Victorian wife, Alice, were concerned.  'She's not for you', said Charles, meaning stick to your own kind, that unmistakable aristocratic adage which had proven true far more times than it had false. 

'But I love her', said Peter, and the old man just sat back, took a long draw on his cigar, and said, 'We'll see about that'. 

It was a matter of ups and downs after that.  Fitzgerald in all his short stories - The Rich Boy and Winter Dreams the best of them - writes of this unaccommodating first love. In Winter Dreams Dexter’s life is defined by his longing for a perfect, unattainable ideal, and his ultimate realization that such dreams are fleeting. 

She is unattainable both to Dexter and to everyone.  Her inexhaustible social whirl, her ever growing coterie of suitors, her ineffable desirousness leads nowhere.  She is as destitute as Dexter. 

The Rich Boy is a tragedy of missed opportunities.  There is something in Anson which is crippling.  After years of being the best man at his friends' wedding, the center of the social circle at the Yale Club, and a much sought-after bachelor, he like Dexter, ends up alone. 

Fitzgerald could have been writing about Peter Frampton, for he looked for Lucy as despairingly as Dexter.  He read the marriage announcements and the social columns of the New York Times, he read the class notes of the Wellesley Alumnae Magazine, and wandered around her old haunts. 

He married twice - Lucy did not prevent that at least - but both ended up in divorce, perhaps because in the first instance he had deliberately chosen an anti-Lucy, a woman of such moral rectitude and practical purpose that he found himself wandering and disaffected.  The second marriage was to woman was to Lucy's avatar, a woman meant for nothing but a life with her Ultra Violets and Andy Warhols. 

Not yet old, Peter found himself like Anson, Fitzgerald's rich boy, frequenting his clubs, spending summers on the Vineyard, an occasional skiing trip to Vail or Aspen, dinners at Lutece and Le Lion d'Or, but alone.  

Love fucks you up, and so it did Peter Frampton. He had everything - wealth, breeding, position, intelligence, and beauty - and still he was hobbling along, doing what was necessary, fulfilling obligations, writing thank you notes and sending flowers.  

The Psychopathology of Love by Harlan Finch, Dean of the Duke Medical School and a psychiatric scholar included this:

Petrarch ruined it for us all.  His medieval love poems to the unattainable Laura defined romantic love for centuries - an impossible, unendurable longing for one's fair maiden.  Laura was not a woman but a febrile fantasy, before whom he would have foundered.  There is no thing as perfection, but the human capacity to create it is limitless.

Lucy was Petrarch's Laura - updated for the times, but still an unattainable romantic version of reality.  The question that persists, and that Dean Fitch addressed in later articles was how such romantic, impossible love persists.  Despite the inevitable, demoralizing universal crush of reality Petrarch still is alive and well.  What is it that has such an interminable hold?

 

Idealists say that it is man's indefinable goodness.  The faithful say that it is an approximation of God's love for man.  Cynics insist it is the survival mechanism of the human race, God's little joke. 

Whatever it is and however it might be explained, Peter Frampton suffered from it, was marginalized by it,  was befuddled by it, and ended up with no answers and only a heart beating for Lucy Braddock.