Fear of Flying by Erica Jong is about twenty-nine-year-old poet Isadora Wing, who is bored in a middle-class marriage. She dreams of a sexual encounter with a stranger, and when she travels with her husband to Vienna and meets the attractive Adrian Goodlove, she indulges in this fantasy. At the time of the book's release in 1973, women were not supposed to fantasize about sex, and Jong wrote the book to give voice to women who were trapped in the same way Isadora was. Sexuality is important both metaphorically and thematically in the novel, and it is through the search for a more fulfilling experience that Isadora learns about herself, her insecurities, and how to deal with them. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Erica Jong states in the preface to the 2008 edition of the book that she wrote Fear of Flying to “tell the truth about women no matter what” (preface, viii), and one of the truths she wanted to say was that even women fantasized about sex, and that this is something that should be accepted in society. Her goal with the novel was to “cut off a woman's head and show everything that happens inside” (preface, ix), Jong states that no one had done this before her. She also writes that “it was up to a woman to expose the female imagination with the same frankness” as John Updike and Philip Roth who had “dared to bring literature into the precincts of the bedroom” (preface, ix). This is also mentioned by the protagonist, Isadora, in the novel. She discusses how until women began writing books only part of the story of sex was told and comments that "throughout history, books were written with sperm, not menstrual blood" (27 ). Here Jong clearly expresses one of his main intentions with the novel, through his main character. One of the reasons Erica Jong is still talked about today is because she was one of the first writers to introduce the concept of casual sex with a stranger. , without constraints. Jong called it "the zipperless fuck" in Fear of Flying, and this term is what many associate the novel with. When Isadora describes her fantasy of zipperless fucking, she explains that "when you join the zippers fall like rose petals, the underwear explodes in one breath like dandelion fluff." (14) One of the criteria for such a meeting is that the people involved do not know each other. For this reason in this situation “there is no power play” (14), thus making it “the purest thing there is” (14). The plot largely revolves around Isadora's pursuit of this experience, and it is Adrian Goodlove who is supposed to become Isadora's big sexual encounter in the story. Instead the opposite happens and she ends up meeting the unpleasant man that is Adrian, and what's more she almost never has sex with him. However, her relationship with Adrian is largely what pushes Isadora to know herself and what she truly wants, and is a driving force for the novel and Isadora's development. While Fear of Flying may seem like a book simply about a woman's search for sex and passion on the surface, there is more that Jong wanted to convey. Sex is a very important factor in the novel, not necessarily because it is supposed to be a pornographic tale that exclusively depicts a woman's thirst for sex. It's not a novel about sex in that sense, but sex is used to represent the struggles of women in the 1970s and before. The feminist movement was not a fight for sexual equality, although that was included in it, but in Fear of Flying sex represents the fight. Isadora's internal struggle for satisfactionsexual should help show how what was considered acceptable among men is unthinkable in terms of women. But the novel also directly addresses other feminist issues of the time. Comment and criticize what society sees as the role of women. The novel appeared in the midst of second wave feminism in the United States, and Jong attempts to express many of the issues faced by American women at the time that led to feminist activity. Isadora, like many other women in the 1960s, rejected what Betty Friedan, an important writer and feminist of the second wave of feminism, called “the feminine mystique” in her 1963 nonfiction book of the same title. Here she explains that women were led to believe that only with a husband and children to care for could they have a true identity. The protagonist of the novel goes against this expectation of being only a wife and mother, having a job and refusing to have children. Isadora married twice, but never felt the need to become a mother. One reason for this is because in that case the child would partly belong to the man who impregnated her. The world she lives in is dominated by men, and she refuses to get pregnant for this reason, also because becoming a mother would hinder her writing, and she sees her diaphragm as “a barrier between my womb and men. " (52)Jong here tries to convey the feelings that many women felt when the women's movement broke out in the 1960s. Many refused to have children because they were terrified of ending up like their mothers, housewives in unhappy marriages. Many girls have seen how their mothers ended up and saw motherhood as a trap from which they could not escape. Isadora gives voice to these women in her novel, asking: “What did being a woman mean, anyway? or what my mother was, then I didn't want it. If it meant simmering resentment and lecturing about the joys of pregnancy, then I didn't want it. Much better to be an intellectual nun than that. (53)But then Isadora decides that being a nun is not, either much better, because “they had no juice” (53). I imagined running away from a man, I imagined bonding with another." (86) It is because of her boring marriage to Bennett that she desires Adrian, but she wouldn't dream of divorcing Bennett for sex. This is because Isadora, like many others, wants the security and stability that comes from having a respected husband. “I simply couldn't imagine myself without a man. Without it, I felt lost like a dog without an owner; rootless, faceless, indefinite”. (86) Isadora would rather live in an unhappy marriage than endure living single right now. She observes that "there is simply no dignified way for a woman to live alone" (11) and that she could barely survive financially, and on top of that she would always be tormented by everyone around her for her "lack of husband, her lack of children - her selfishness in short. (11) In other words, according to Isadora and many other women, it is better to depend on a man than to be independent in a man's world. valid identity. As mentioned, Isadora knew that she, along with most other women, would never be able to be as financially secure on her own as she would be if she were married: "Damn smart, I thought about how men had made life so intolerable for single women that most would have instead willingly embraced as wellbad marriages. Almost everything was supposed to be an improvement over having to scramble for your livelihood by working a low-paying job and battling unattractive men in your spare time while desperately trying to track down the attractive ones. (87)She criticizes this reality and at the same time takes part in it. One of the reasons she marries and stays with Bennett is that he encourages her to write instead of pushing her aside. According to society, she wanted to write instead of giving birth, doing something wrong and selfish. Isador's sister Randy often makes an issue of it, telling her to "stop writing and have a baby", because "she will find it much more fulfilling than writing..." (49) She cannot understand why anyone would want to live outside what is the convention. Sex is an important part of the book because it is very important to the protagonist. Isadora mentions sex in many situations and many of her problems revolve around this. In describing Bennett, her current husband, she points out his "long, thin fingers, hairless balls, a nice roll on his hips when he fucked" (35), and also mentions that she "fell in love with Bennett partly because he had the biggest balls cleanest I've ever tasted. (33) While she may be exaggerating here for the sake of being witty, her sexual attraction to Bennett was a significant part of why she fell in love with him, proving that sexuality is obviously a part. very important of the protagonist's life. As mentioned above, Isadora has no desire to have children, so it is lust and the sexual act itself that is so important to her when it comes to sex. Isadora says that her husband is horny from Adrian's pursuit of her and rhetorically asks herself and the reader "what doesn't get to fuck in the end?" (33) Sex seems to sum up a lot for Isadora with Adrian, who cannot have sex with her, she questions the inability of men to have an erection in general: “Also, the older you got, the clearer it became that men were fundamentally terrified of women. Some secretly, some openly. What could be more touching than a liberated woman face to face with a limp cock? All the greatest problems of history pale in comparison with these two quintessential objects: the eternal woman and the eternal inert cock.” (97)As shown here, Isadora often seems to draw parallels between sex and life in general. But at the same time he criticized Freud for doing the same thing at the beginning of the novel. She comments that Freud assumes that women want a “hard pen” (27) because men want it. “A big problem,” said Freud, assuming that their obsession was our obsession.” (27) He also reflects on this because only men had written books, and therefore "there was only one side to the story" (27). But at the same time Isadora's life and issues revolve around sex, and in a way she confirms what she criticizes Freud for taking for granted. The protagonist often seems like a very insecure woman, even though she tries hard to appear independent and confident. She responds passively to most things that happen to her and seems to simply accept whatever happens to her, thus often ending up with men who are not entirely good for her. This may be why so many women responded positively to the book when it was published. Many recognized themselves in Isadora, stuck in boring marriages with only their secret fantasies to get them through the day. This is the reality that Betty Friedan had criticized ten years earlier, and Jong gave voice to many women with her novel. He conveyed what many, 1995.