DID MY MOM READ THIS?!?!
“Stay away from this pseudo-feminist, offensive, crudely written autobiography masquerading as a novel.”
“It was written in 1973 when women’s emancipation was not that accomplished. <...> I found this very dated and not relevant to women today. I appreciate the book for the impact it made on women's sexual liberation and freedom, but not relevant in today's sexual practices or norms. More interesting as a historical artifact then as a novel.”
(Goodreads, “Fear of flying” comment section)
1. THE BOOK
Before finishing a book, I usually avoid Goodreads because the opinions there can easily influence mine; after finishing, I still steer clear, because more often than not, the comments make me feel insecure. How could I have missed that perspective? Was I really reading so absentmindedly?
This time, though, the comments left me feeling removed. Was my feminism, the injustices I could relate to, so outdated?
The book mentioned above is Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, published in 1973. It is a groundbreaking work, a cornerstone of second-wave feminism, truly, with 20 million copies sold worldwide, a bible for female sexual liberation. Sadly, I – a self proclaimed feminist – encountered it by a complete accident - the bookstore owner in Berlin recommended it to me, because just like I, she was a foreigner in Germany.
The bookstore owner and I had previously discussed Karen Blixen and the controversies surrounding her—does talent excuse the problematic comments an author made, even if those comments were considered acceptable in their time? I couldn't read Blixen, though he admired her writing deeply. I’m not sure if he remembered that conversation, but the one about Erica Jong was just the same: Jong wrote in a different era, when women couldn’t be as open as they are now; her work can come across as racist, classist, and egotistical, but that only adds to its value as a historical artifact.; at the time, the only way for women to write their stories was to disguise them as novels rather than autobiographies — you simply couldn’t be a woman and be this crude.
“I think you will enjoy this,” he said.
1.2 THE PROBLEM
I’m not sure whether he intended for me to enjoy Fear of Flying as a historical piece or as something I could genuinely relate to — but I did, I enjoyed it immensely.
At first, it made me angry. Jong opens the book in a voice strikingly similar to mine: sarcastic, dissatisfied with the world, and bitter about my own position — largely because I often feel out of depth.
It also angered me, because Updike's quote is on the cover: “The most uninhibited, delicious, erotic novel a woman ever wrote… A winner.” Ironically, for all its reputation as “the most erotic novel a woman has ever written,” I didn’t find it erotic at all:
“Really, I thought, sometimes I would like to have a child. A very wise and witty little girl who’d grow up to be the woman I could never be. A very independent little girl with no scars on the brain or the psyche. With no toadying servility and no ingratiating seductiveness. A little girl who said what she meant and meant what she said. A little girl who was neither bitchy nor mealy mouthed because she didn’t hate her mother or herself.
“Isadora!”
What I really wanted was to give birth to myself—the little girl I might have been in a different family, a different world. I hugged my knees. I felt strangely safe there, under my mother’s fur coat”
( Erica Jong, “Fear of flying” p.52)
It was rather highly personal and painful — to one's relationship to oneself and to one's relationship to the expectations, poised by themselves or the ones that are the closest.
In some cases the book was outdated and it also angered me. But time has that effect on the norms and customs.. She herself debates along the novel what should be the norm and more than not she, in accordance with today's standard, fails:
“I want to submit to some big brute. <...> I feel guilty for writing poems when I should be cooking. I feel guilty for everything” (Jong, 124 p.)
“If you were a female and talented, life was a trap no matter which way you turned. Either you drowned in domesticity or you longed for domesticity in all your art”.
(Jong, 148 p.)
This is the prevailing image of the book — at the core Fear of Flying grapples with the dichotomy of security and adventure—and whether one should have to choose between them at all. For Jong, she should and that's the only options a woman has. Annoyingly she seems rather passive to everything that is happening around her - she challenges the norm, but adheres to the dichotomy of the choice.
Clearly this book wasn’t written for me, with all the knowledge I accumulated I know that familial are not the only relations women can create and that women do not necessary have to have children to be fulfilled, I know that career is also not the only option a woman can have — it was written for my mother’s generation — a time when women had to think about children and make compromises. So why did it strike such a nerve for me?
2.1 THE SOVIET UNION
One possible answer is hidden in the joke about Eastern European women by Victoria Olsi. It goes like this:
“My girlfriend is a bit younger than me and the other day one of my friends asked me if I feel the age gap. And I think I don’t, because I was born in the 80’s and she was born in Eastern Europe”
Meaning mentally Eastern European women can relate better to the older generation in the west, because everything came later to Eastern Europe. While it’s just a joke, it carries a grain of truth — even feminism came to us late, or rather manifested differently.
This isn’t to say that feminism didn’t exist in the Soviet block — it did. In fact Bolshevik communist ideology at its core included demands for women’s emancipation and later framed it as a part of the broader struggle for proletarian liberation. Factually, under socialism, Eastern European women were often better represented in the workforce than their counterparts in Western Europe.
Soviet "emancipation" was largely top-down, dictated by the Party to align with its own political objectives. In practice, feminism in the Soviet Union became a tool of state propaganda, while the lived reality for women was one of “frozen emancipation.” Women had access to the job market, but there were few institutional safeguards against discrimination. Oftentimes, the discrimination was performed by the state itself, especially through the reproductive rights of women.
Silvia Federici in “Caliban and a witch” writes that in capitalist society:
“the body has been for women <...> the primary ground of their exploitation and resistance, as the female body has been appropriated by the state and men and forced to function as a means for the reproduction and accumulation of labor.”
(Silvia Federici, “Caliban and a Witch”, Autonomedia, 2004, 16 p.)
Federici proposes that after the plague (around 13th century) drastically reduced the population, landowners needed laborers, so reproduction was politicized. This was done in accordance with changing Church canons. After the plague, practices, such as abortions, were deemed sinful and immoral, even if before they were encouraged on the bases of social equity.
The Soviet Union's reproductive policies mirrored these dynamics. For example, abortion was legalized in 1920 under the Bolsheviks as part of their efforts to mobilize women. But this right was often discouraged, as it conflicted with the moral image of the ideal Soviet woman. The 1944 Family Law stressed producing more than one child as a civic duty, especially during wartime.
Soviet ideology imposed a "double burden" on women, expecting them to fulfill both productive and reproductive roles:
“This specificity is with the natural instinct of procreation and special physiological functions.”
(Yulia Gradskova, Soviet people with female bodies: performing beauty and maternity in Soviet Russia in the mid 1930-1960s. Diss. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 2007, 66p.)
To be a good soviet citizen, a female had to be a working mother because her very nature demanded it. This expectation, truly, encapsulated the paradox of Soviet emancipation — while women were granted opportunities to work and contribute to the economy, the state also insisted on their traditional role as mothers, creating an enduring tension between political emancipation and the ideological expectations of gender.
By the second half of the 20th century, the Soviet project had lost much of its ideological fervor, and the imposition of these roles became increasingly hollow. While women were encouraged to bear children, the Soviet Union accidentally developed what has been termed an "abortion culture.", because the laws allowed it. Economic hardship, inadequate access to contraception, and a lack of genuine ideological commitment led many women to seek abortions as a pragmatic solution, and not to take into consideration ideological concepts.
This “abortion culture” shaped the lived experiences of many Soviet women, including my mothers. Talking to her, I discovered that in her memories abortion was simply a practical option—something you sought if needed, though rarely discussed openly. When mentioning abortions today, the issue becomes much more political and not pragmatic.
2.2 THE NATIONHOOD AND THE MOTHER
The difference is how women’s reproduction was constructed since then. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the role of women in society shifted once again. To be considered a "good" contributor, women were expected to embrace motherhood—not for economic productivity, as in Soviet times, but for the survival and future of the nation itself. Reproductive rights, already a politically charged issue, became even more deeply entangled with nationalist ideology.
In the 1990s, feminism in Eastern Europe faced categorical rejection. This rejection stemmed from two primary sources:
Feminism was associated with the Soviet regime, perceived as an outdated communist principle, ill-suited to the region’s immediate needs, where the focus was on overall emancipation rather than gender-specific liberation—a distinctly Soviet perspective.
Feminism was seen as a Western ideology not fit for Eastern European context.
Rather, in the post-Soviet era, feminism (or anti-feminism) reflected a continuity of pre-war ideological patterns. Patriarchal values became central to nation-building projects, often intertwined with religious identity, particularly Catholicism. The Church, as a symbol of national tradition and moral authority, played a significant role in shaping these narratives. At the heart of this nationalist reconstruction was the "nationally-conscious woman," whose purpose was to ensure the continuity of the nation.
But as Alina Žvilklienė explains:
“It is ironic that the goals of the Soviet family ideology and policy of the 1970s—to increase the birth rate, ensure the restoration of the workforce, encourage the 'return' of women to the family, increase job vacancies, and reduce state spending on pre-school education—were perceived in the restored Baltic States as necessary for national revival. However, the emphasis shifted from economic to ideological reasons: the reconstruction and enlargement of the nation and the education of a national identity and personality.”
(Alina Žvinklienė "Lyčių atotrūkis ir patriarchato raiška Baltijos valstybėse. Lietuvos ypatumai." Sociologija. Mintis ir veiksmas 01, 2009, 114p.)
Ironically, the nation couldn’t survive without half its workforce. The Soviet model of working mothers endured, though reinterpreted. Thus, while Soviet-era policies were primarily economically driven, in the post-Soviet period, they became intertwined with religion and nationalism. This framing lent the role, a sense of moral obligation, that the Soviet model, simply, lacked. Women were no longer merely economic contributors; they became cultural and ideological bearers of the nation, tasked with reproducing both its population and its identity.
3. 30 YEARS AFTER
But 30 years have passed. Generational attitudes have shifted—or have they?
As Vytautas Kavolis observed, cultural ideas embedded in the collective imagination tend to persist, often re-emerging in new forms:
“Once they have been placed in people's imaginations, they somehow remain there, at least as a possibility, a cultural archive from which what has been buried is constantly emerging or being reborn in some new form.”
(Vytautas Kavolis, 1992, p. 55)
Few weeks ago, while staying at my mother’s house, we watched a talk show discussing a controversial topic: women who don’t want children. Three women on the panel shared how they felt fulfilled by their careers and independent lives. Opposing them, two men argued that this choice was selfish, claiming these women were neglecting their duty to the nation.
They cited statistics: a fertility rate of 2.1% is required for generational replacement, yet ours has fallen below 1.5%. "What kind of nation did our ancestors fight for," they asked, "if women today aren’t willing to sustain it with their wombs?". They lamented that women prioritize travel and independence over creating stable homes. The implication: women were abandoning their national responsibilities. This talk show felt especially wrong given the recent national congress on equal opportunities. Its conclusion? Women remain the primary caregivers for children and the elderly.
The only positive side for women — they are just as big a part of the country's workforce as men, but this doesn’t equate to true emancipation. The myth of the working mother persists— women were not criticized for having a career, but because they did not want to conceive. Women in positions of power are expected to "perform" femininity. They must demonstrate that they aren’t competing with men but are instead filling a gendered version of leadership. Women can be presidents and prime ministers (and recently, our government was led entirely by women). Yet their greatest crimes are their maiden names — a reminder that they are not married and do not have children— or do not fulfill their "natural duty.”
Regarding this, I read Erica Jong with empathy. If I decide to pursue a childless life — will I miss out on having children? Will the nature, that is said to be ingrained in me, will be not fulfilled? I know I can compete with men career wise — long list of working women prove it to me — but will I be just as happy as men if I choose to be single?
