By Rita Mae Brown
Ananya Dhote
“Why does everyone have to put you in a box and nail the lid on it? I don’t know what I am—polymorphous and perverse. Shit. I don’t even know if I’m white. I’m me. That’s all I am and all I want to be. Do I have to be something?”
Now, this got me hooked! The above lines script a struggle for personal and professional freedom between two worlds, rural Pennsylvania and glitzy streets of Florida and New York. Rubyfruit Jungle, authored by Rita Mae Brown is post-stonewall, autobiographical lesbian fiction that draws out the life of a woman who comes of age as a lesbian and an aspiring artist in the mid-twentieth century.
Rubyfruit Jungle By Rita Mae Brown
Molly Bolt, the lesbian protagonist, could be just another young girl of seven, living with her adoptive parents in poor rural Coffee Hollow, Pennsylvania. But strokes of individuality distinguish her from the rest. Intelligent and ambitious, she defies the so-called ladylike stereotypes, goes around playing ‘the doctor’ with her dim-witted cousin Leroy and couldn’t care less when her adoptive mother, Carrie tells her that she was born a bastard. However, Molly enjoys a beautiful relationship with her father Carl, who is always supporting. In the sixth grade, she develops a crush on a female classmate and has her first homosexual experience. Soon after, her family moves to Florida to look for work. As time moves along, Molly stands up for herself in myriad of situations, unapologetic of her difference and uncomplaining of the problems.
The story works on many levels, the foremost being personal. It’s easy to identify with Molly as a young gay woman growing into her sexuality. Her mother’s disapproval of her orientation and manners, estrangement of friends because of being lesbian, being outed by classmates and annulment of college scholarship because of her so-called moral turpitude; such feelings are just too familiar. Her short lived affairs with women and confrontations with hypocritical people can rattle your memory to throw up similar situations. Symbolically, beyond the evident theme of sexuality, it’s the story of ‘a woman in a man’s world’. Clichéd as it may sound; but an independent woman’s struggle has always been a thriving reality. And this novel is brimming with such a struggle as Molly, being unwelcome in her mother’s house, hitches a ride to New York, earns another scholarship, works part time to pay rest of the fee and enrolls in a film school- her evermore passion. Throughout the novel, the author uses humor as a method of inclusion and persuasion also, to cast a critical eye at how society mistreats women, gays, minorities, and the poor.
In the end, I would say that the novel, armed with some laughs, and the inevitable makings of a young lesbian life, does make for an unconventional read!
