Created in No One’s Image: Rubyfruit Jungle

What is it with me and introductions? Once again, the book I reserved at the library was a special 15^th anniversary edition of Rubyfruit Jungle, with a retrospective from Rita Mae Brown prefacing the novel. Brown, like Kosinski did in The Painted Bird, reacquaints the reader with the large social order at the time the book was written and the pains associated with its birth. Brown envisions writing a second introduction to mark the 30^th, wondering how much closer she will have traveled to her self-realization.

Brown is more transparent about using her life as the framework for her story. Molly Bolt (hear echoes of Molly Bloom) is an adopted daughter of a poor family in central Pennsylvania (Brown was born in Hanover) who relocate to southern Florida (she similarly moved to Fort Lauderdale). Molly is intellectually quicker than her foster family. She rebels perpetually against the imposition of girlish and womanly activities and traits. She excels at school and aspires to become President, a lawyer or a film maker.

It is because she is so independent, so self-determining, that Rubyfruit Jungle, I believe, is better categorized as a bildungsroman, a coming of age novel. Yes, Molly has outrageous adventures and is able to wield significant powers because of some of them. But her encounters are not accidental or random. She is directing her life long before she makes her first movie.

Brown attempts to make Molly a “picara” via numerous lesbian sex scenes. She has Molly hitchhike to New York and live in abandoned cars and squalid apartments, scrounging for food. But in every instance, Molly is the prime mover, not subject to random threats or spontaneous escapades. She anguishes over her bed mates and is more than picky at the first gay bar she visits. Published in 1973, such a plot created some stir, but expose alone does not constitute a true picaresque. Molly comes across as too iconic, too heroic to be a picara.