Gender Trauma in Erica Jong's Fear of Flying

Abstract

This research examines how a woman with a different cast of mind comes in a conflicting relation with society. In Erica Jong’sFear of Flying, a woman with dreadful and different taste undertakes a journey to Europe. The American society restricts her inner longing for freedom. So she takes a tour to Europe with her husband Bennett. She is, at first, thrilled with the free cultural zones of European cities. Dodging the eyes of Bennett, she sleeps with a man who is sexually virile and vigorous. She goes to the extent of being faithless to her loyal husband for getting different sexual taste from a strange man. Her husband abandons her as he knows her disloyalty. With the guilt of disloyalty, at her heart, she settles in London with her sex partner, Adrian. A few months after her living together with Adrian, she is awake to a new reality. Adrian leaves her because he is already a married man with two children and wife. Beset with disloyalty, guilt, dilemma, alienation and ignominy, Isadora cannot handle her life. She is traumatized beyond recovery.