Sunday Salon: Women's Extreme Adventure Stories

Part Two: Thoughts on Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books by Maureen Corrigan

Chapter One - Ain't No Mountain High Enough: Women's Extreme Adventure Stories

We read literature for a lot of reasons, but two of the most compelling ones are to get out of ourselves and our own life stories and--equally important--to find ourselves by understanding our own life stories more clearly in the context of others'. [pg 34]

When I read a book, the gender of the main character(s) fades into the background. I am able to immerse myself in the story and the lives of those in the novel, regardless of sex. The best authors are able to make me forget who I am for the short while I am lost in a book.

Still, I do find myself gravitating towards books that feature women often times, whether their stories are full of real life hardships or fantastical adventures. I am drawn to strong female characters. I look for myself in these women and occasionally draw on their strength and experiences.

In the first chapter of Maureen Corrigan's Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading, the author opens with a discussion about those strong female characters. Men have long held the mantle for extreme-adventure stories. Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air being a prime example.

The traditional extreme-adventure story is a one-shot testosterone expenditure of physical courage that pits man against nature/man/himself, with man (the narrator usually) left standing, bloody but unbowed, amidst the wreckage of his fancy sporting gear. [pg 6]

Less focus is given to the women who also risked much to do many of the same things. Corrigan earns another point from me for naming Nellie Bly as a true life extreme adventurer. She was an investigative journalist in a time when women were expected to stay in their place. She challenged powerful people, went undercover, and traveled around the world. She was not content writing puff pieces like so many women writers at the time were encouraged to do. She sought social changes for both women and the rest of humanity. Like Corrigan, I first came across Nellie Bly's name when I was a child, researching a school paper. She remains one of my favorite historical figures today.

There have been a number of real life women who have stepped outside of the traditional mold to stand up for what they believed throughout history. But what about in fiction? Maureen Corrigan takes a look at literature and genre fiction and examines its history as well.

She points out that, early on, women extreme-adventure tales were more likely to be found in young adult literature where it was more acceptable for a girl to be a tomboy. Take Nancy Drew as an example, or Pippi Longstockings. Detective fiction featuring female leads or out-of-the-box female characters also proved an effective method for pushing the boundaries of the set gender roles. It was more acceptable in those cases for a woman to be independent and think for herself. In the end, however, they often reverted back to a more traditional role in the end.

In today's genre fiction, it is more acceptable for women to be actively outspoken, bold and curious. Sara Paresky and Sue Grafton's characters attest to that. Where once such female leads stood out and went against the societal norm, today they have worked their way into our culture and influenced our ideas of ourselves as women. That isn't to say all of the old beliefs have been thrown out the window. Traditional values and ideas still exist and can be found in every facet of literature. Each time I hear or read someone say how cliche a strong and gutsy female P.I. is, I smile to myself and think of how far we have come.

In her search for female extreme-adventure stories, Corrigan turned to a few unlikely places. The author points to Penelope from Homer's Ulysses as the first female extreme-adventurer and moves down the line to include Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Anna Quindlen's Fran Benedetto from Black and Blue, which is about a woman who flees from an abusive relationship, rebuilding her life with her son. These are all strong women who have endured much in their lifetimes--"without having to become male impersonators." [pg 10] These stories may not seem like extreme-adventure stories on the surface, Corrigan acknowledges, but in their own way, at the heart of each story, she argues that they are in fact just that. Female extreme-adventure stories tend to be more internal, Corrigan writes, ". . .men usually gamble with their lives; lots of women, too, face physical risks, but more typically the emphasis in their stories is on the threatened loss of their sanity and their sense of self. The struggles described in literature are often internal and psychological, rather than life-and-death contests in Technicolor." [pg 18]

Maureen Corrigan also touches on the story of her and her husband's struggle with infertility and the adoption of their daughter, an example of her own extreme-adventure story, including the isolation, hardship, sense of loss and realization of a dream. Hers is not as extreme as those she mentions in her book, and she is the first to admit it, but it is her own story, one that mirrors some of the more generalized struggles of the women she has read about over the years.

Corrigan writes that she could have taken any number of books more suited for the moment when she traveled to China to meet her daughter for the first time. She ended up reading a true crime novel about a murderer. What she needed most in that moment was a book that would take her away from the tension, nerves and excitement of what was happening in her own reality.

Perhaps there are some life experiences that are simply beyond books. By that I mean not that those experiences are quintessentially "unique" but that they're so intensely personal, so crucial, that reading other people's literary approximations of them is frustrating, even painful, rather than helpful. [pg 45]

I have found this to be true for myself too. This is one of the reasons I refuse to read John Grogan's Marley and Me. And yet there are times I seek out books that have a direct link to what is going on in my life at any given moment. It all comes down to where I am in that particular moment and what I need most from the book I choose to read.

This first chapter in Maureen Corrigan's book turned out to be slightly more academic than I anticipated, but it was enjoyable just the same. She offered me a perspective on books that I hadn't quite considered before, broadening my definition of what an adventure is.

I have the urge to reread Jane Eyre again and perhaps even give Villete another try. They'll have to wait, however. I have other books on my plate to get to at the moment. Right now, I hope to return to India where Sivakami's story continues to unfold in The Toss of a Lemon, a book I am sure Corrigan would consider a woman's extreme-adventure story in its own right.

Part One: Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading!

Book lovers always have to touch books. [pg 58]