Although, as the title indicates, this study focuses on Amos Oz's first collection of short stories, Where the Jackals Howl (Artsot hatan [Artzot ha’ tan], 1965), it points up characteristics that underlie Amos Oz's later work as well. These characteristics revolve around Oz's fictional presentation of women, as opposed to his literary treatment of men. A gender-conscious analysis of Amos Oz's technique of characterization will not only illuminate a much neglected aspect in the work of one of Israel's leading contemporary authors, but will also highlight the way in which Israeli literature, and literature in general for that matter, is inspired by cultural preconceptions rather than by models of individual people.

One of the most striking differences between female and male characters in the stories of Where the Jackals Howl is that females act mostly as sexual beings, whereas males are motivated by both sexual drives and moral considerations. Even the most tempestuous and animalistic male characters (like Matityahu Damkov, the protagonist of the title story) do not lose their human dimension. Consider, for example, the dynamics of “Where the Jackals Howl,” which is a story centered around the theme of potential incest. The eccentric Matityahu Damkov is physically attracted to the young and pretty Galila, whom he believes to be his daughter. Despite his strong sexual impulse, Damkov refrains from taking advantage of Galila, who conveniently falls asleep in his room shortly before his planned confession. The story implies that Damkov's paternal responsibility counteracts his lust for the girl. On the other hand, when Galila hears Damkov's secret, she protests that Damkov cannot be her father since he is dark whereas she is blond. Galila rejects the restrictive implications of Damkov's confession and proceeds to seduce the man who may very well be her father: “I am not yours, I'm sure I'm not yours, I'm sure; I'm blond, I may; we may, now, I can be yours. Blond! Come!”¹ The paratactic structure of Galila's speech discloses her passion as well as her puerile logic. Her rejection of Damkov's suggestion is emotional, and it clearly lacks convincing factual evidence. The difference in their coloring serves to undermine rather than strengthen her argument, since it is obvious that Galila's fair hair constitutes no real proof against Damkov's possible paternity.

Although the author makes it clear that Galila rather than Damkov is the primary mover in this drama of seduction, he does not explain her invincible sexual urge to copulate with the middle-aged Damkov. The reader is left to deduce that Galila is a precocious girl, with strong sexual drives. By contrast, Damkov emerges as a sympathetic although somewhat eccentric character, thanks to the detailed and verisimilar expositional material which explains his motives and actions. Abandoned by Tanya, Galila's mother, who used to be his lover, Damkov turns into a recluse. It is intimated that he feels inferior to Tanya's husband, Sashka, not only because Tanya preferred the latter to himself, but because of Sashka's greater respectability and popularity in the kibbutz. Damkov's ugliness and deformity, in addition to his single-minded dedication to his job, give him the reputation of being an eccentric or, in Galila's words, a “madman.” Damkov's social seclusion and loneliness make his need for Galila's company clear while his jealousy of Sashka explains his decision to disclose what he had kept secret for so long. The author refrains from verifying Damkov's confession, but he insures the reader's sympathy even though it is possible to conclude that Damkov's story is pure fabrication.

The emotional complexity alluded to in Damkov's characterization is largely absent in Galila's treatment. In his effort to explain Galila's physical attraction to Damkov, the author points out that the man's “ape-like” body, which arouses in men “a nervous restlessness, almost disgust,” may affect women in a radically different way (p. 11). This hypothetical speculation is vindicated by Galila's reaction to Damkov's “hairy, black, ape-like body,” which is said to “stir things inside her … seething and flowing from one invisible place [in her body] to another” until she “is overcome by fear” (p. 17). Galila emerges from the story as a sexual animal, a body, rather than a human character. The story's focus on her body is dramatized in her first presentation as a naked nymphet in the kibbutz communal showers room: “[Galila] pampered her body with a stream of cold water. Her hands clasped the back of her neck and her elbows stretched backwards … If there were a mirror in this place, Galila would stop to examine her wet body” (p. 10). Posing with her hands behind her neck and her elbows stretched backwards, the archetypal nymph, who abandons herself to the caress of the cold water, turns into a nude model out of a pornographic magazine. A female Narcissus, she is in love with her own beauty, and wishes to indulge herself in a ritual of self-adoration. Galila is characterized by her body; the sensations it experiences and those it arouses in others. But the one sided portrayal of Galila as a sex object in love with itself betrays a typical male point of view. Galila is not characterized as a subjective being, capable of thinking and experiencing like any human being. Rather, she embodies the projections of a male mind, what the male wants woman to be and what he suspects her to be.

Nurith Gertz maintains that Galila's characterization undergoes a radical change in the revised version of “Where the Jackals Howl” (1976). “In order to create a character of a concrete girl who is … to represent herself [rather than symbolize an abstract idea] it suffices,” according to Gertz, “to change her hair from dark to blond, … to introduce her speech in the first person … [and] to add details to the description …”² It seems to me, however, that Galila remains largely stereotypic in the 1976 revised version of the story despite the subjective-personal point of view and the additional descriptive details. Her motives for staying in Damkov's room and seducing him remain inscrutable. It can be argued that the one-sided treatment of Galila stems from her secondary literary status rather than gender-related constraints, since after all the central character in the story is Damkov and as such it is he who deserves greater attention. It would therefore be instructive to examine a story with a similar plot line in which woman, rather than man, is the protagonist. Such a story is “Esh zara” (“Strange Fire”).³

The major plot line of “Esh zara” revolves around the seduction of Yair Yarden, a young man in his twenties, by Lily Danenberg, his future mother-in-law. Unlike Matityahu Damkov, who is overcome by an unexpected sexual desire for Galila, Lily plans her entrapment of Yair to the last detail. She uses her daughter's absence from town on the night on which she is expected to prepare the list of guests with Yair's father, Yosef Yarden, as the right time for her seductive move. Sure of Yosef Yarden's absence from his house, she calls on Yair, and lures him away under some pretext. The young adult follows the older woman like a disgruntled, whimpering child. The childish naïvete that characterizes Yair distinguishes all the male characters in the story (e.g., Yosef Yarden and Dr. Kleinberger play chess and discuss politics while Lily insidiously entraps Yair). Following a few tantalizing moves, which are lamely protested by Yair, Lily Danenberg decides to change her strategy and opens a frontal attack:

“No, I am not confused, Yair, I am clear and freezing of cold. Don't leave me, Yair, touch me, touch me, not like this, not gently, not politely, Yair, not politely, touch hard, hard. I do not break, Yair, I am not Dina, I am very sturdy. …”

(p. 172)

Woman's yearning for the strong, hard masculine limbs manifests itself in the teenage Galila and in the middle-aged Danenberg alike. In both women sexual drives seem to prevail over morality. The different literary status of both women does not seem to affect what the author perceives as the foremost idiosyncracy of woman: sexuality. Although Lily Danenberg is the heroine of “Strange Fire,” we are not given many details about her background and history, details that might clarify her intention to seduce her future son-in-law and possibly destroy the marriage of her only daughter. If lust is her primary motive, why could not a calculating and experienced woman like her resort to a safer outlet? The story does not explain why Lily seduces her future son-in-law rather than another man. The only possible explanation of her conduct is intimated in her sadistic treatment of an alley cat. As the animal purrs in total abandonment under Lily's caress, the “fists of the divorcee were suddenly raised, formed a bow in the air, and struck ferociously at the cat's belly.” (p. 156). This synecdochic description, focusing on the protagonist's hands, highlights the instinctual and physical factor in Lily's behavior. It implies that her actions are motivated by her body. Although the incident with the tomcat alludes to Yair, the human victim, it also epitomizes Lily's bestiality.

“Strange Fire” does not present an individuated protagonist but another variation on a female stereotype—the hetaira. Unlike Damkov, who is motivated by jealousy, helplessness, and loneliness, Lily is only driven by her sexuality. Unlike the man who feels hampered by moral compunctions, woman seems to have no compunctions at all; her unbridled passion is combined with a deep-seated selfishness, deceptiveness, and sadism. The myth that condemns woman as evil because of her sexuality is old.⁴ It is reflected in the stories of Eve and Pandora and persists in a variety of classical and modern literary works. Female sexuality, faithlessness, and deceitful destructiveness constitute the rudimentary thematic cluster of this modern story as well. Matityahu Damkov is pathetic, Lily Danenberg is a bitch.

The next comparative study concerns two stories that have very little in common except for their similar denouements: both end with the untimely death of their young protagonists. In the case of “Derekh haruah” (“The Way of the Wind”), the protagonist is a man, Gideon Shenhav; the protagonist of “Navadim ve-ṣefa” (“Nomad and Viper”) is a woman, Geula.

The vulnerable and sensitive Gideon Shenhav is caught in the electric wires of his kibbutz during a parachuting parade and afraid to cut off the straps of his parachute and jump down, he remains flailing helplessly in the air, the butt of onlookers' jeers. Gideon feels shame, guilt, cowardice, and panic, an array of emotions rarely associated with the character of the native soldier in the fiction of the late 1940s and 1950s. By juxtaposing Gideon with his energetic, ambitious, and tough father, Shimshon Sheinbaum, the author alludes to the generation gap as a possible cause for Gideon's suicide. He implies that the hero's desperate act is not merely a manifestation of panic, but a protest against his father and a whole community dedicated to the cultivation of military prowess. The author is careful to indicate that Gideon is still clearheaded when he throws himself on the electrical wires as his younger brother, Zaki, comes to his help: “With wide open eyes, Gideon stared at the wolf-teeth protruding from Zaki's mouth. Terror seized him, as if he was looking into a distorted mirror and saw his own image being effaced” (p. 57). Gideon is terrified to recognize his own image in Zaki. His suicide is a final attempt to escape from this potential self-image, from an identity that was foisted on him, but that he could never fully accept. Suspended above his native kibbutz, Gideon learns the full meaning of the distance between himself and his community. The awareness the protagonist gains shortly before his death endows his suicide with a tragic dimension.

The description of the jeering children (the pride and future of the kibbutz), the sardonic remarks of the adults, and the angry shame displayed by Shimshon Sheinbaum substantiates Gideon's perception. The community is motivated by a narrow-minded egotism; by self-glorification rather than solidarity and social idealism. The vindication of the figural point of view implies criticism of the kibbutz in particular and of Israel in general. The military parade that ended in innocent death is exposed as a futile power exercise.

In contrast to “The Way of the Wind,” which ends in tragedy, the death of Geula at the end of “Nomads and Viper” is at best senseless. The female protagonist of the story dies of a viper's bite as she lies among the shrubs, convulsed with frustrated lust. Geula's death does not arouse more compassion or empathy than her life does. For Geula is an ordinary single old maid, homely, petty, vindictive, deceptive, and horny:

Geula, a thin and short girl, is twenty-nine years old. Even though she hasn't found a husband yet, one cannot deny her commendable attributes, such as her dedication to social and cultural affairs. Her face is thin and pale. No one among our girls can rival her brewing coffee, real coffee. Two bitter lines run down both corners of her mouth … On the hot and humid days, sweat ravages her face and emphasizes the red acne strewn all over it.

(p. 31)

The narrator's sardonic appreciation of Geula's coffee betrays his true opinion of her value. The cruel details about her appearance explain why “she hasn't found a husband yet” and why she feels pressured to compensate for this failure by making herself socially useful. The author does not attempt to understand Geula's predicament as a single woman in a tightly knit society like the kibbutz, which is based on and dedicated to the family unit.⁵ He does not use her point of view, as he did in the case of Gideon Shenhav, in order to criticize the smug hypocrisy of a collective that claims to be dedicated to the ideal of equality while discriminating against spinsters. By withholding information on Geula's background and inner life Oz presents his protagonist as the stereotypic old maid, the common butt of hostility and condescension in much of western literature.⁶

The central dramatic plot of “Nomads and Viper” illustrates a progression from sexual frustration to resolution in death. The complication occurs when Geula is rejected by a Bedouin shepherd who poaches on the kibbutz orchards. Her failure enrages her, and she decides to take revenge on the Arab by informing the kibbutz leadership that he raped her. But her scheme is intercepted by the viper's lethal bite.

Unlike Gideon in “The Way of the Wind,” Geula gains no self-knowledge prior to her death. On the contrary, she deludes herself that her rape fantasy indeed took place and magnanimously agrees to forgive the Bedouin for his imaginary crime. She deludes herself about her approaching death as well:

A shiver of pleasure runs through her skin. Now she is listening to the sweet wave which penetrates her body and intoxicates her blood circulation. With utter abandonment Geula responds to the sweet wave. … The pleasure inundates the girl and imbues her with soothing coolness. She is still caressing with her fingers a dry twig. Her fingers are very soft, soft and full of pleasure.

(pp. 40-41)

Death is experienced by Geula as orgasmic ecstasy. The ironic effect generated by the incongruity between perception and reality is directed against the self-deluding protagonist, whose lasciviousness brings about her own end. The symbolic cluster woman-garden-snake implies that the kibbutz's real enemy is not the Arab pilferer but woman, the archetypal temptress. Whereas Gideon's death implies social criticism, Geula's death signifies that thanks to a natural order human society manages to rid itself of its own vipers. Thus, the mythic association of female sexuality, sin, and death recurs even in this most unlikely literary context, on reflecting modern life in an egalitarian society. This thematic cluster reflects a male perception of woman rather than the way in which woman experiences life. The female characters of Where the Jackals Howl are not presented as autonomous beings, like their male counterparts, but as relative ones. Their lives are described and assessed mostly in terms of their relations with their husbands or lovers.

The story of Batya Pinsky, the protagonist of “Even halulah” (“A Hollow Stone”) is another example. We are told that two years after the death of her husband, Abrasha, she strikes up an affair with Felix, and several years later she is carrying on an affair with Zeiger. Even as an old widow, she still hopes to receive favors from the kibbutz secretary by manipulating the charms of her wasted face and body. The author implies that the aging widow attempts to use her late husband's reputation to perpetuate her own name. Batya Pinsky is worried about Abrasha's posthumous book for purely egotistical reasons. Oz is not interested in the possible motives of an aging widow, forced to live out her life in the shadow of her glorified late husband. He does not present to the reader the inner drama of a postmenopausal woman who has lost not only her conjugal role but her maternal role as well (her only daughter Diza got married and left the kibbutz). The character of Batya Pinsky could potentially become the protagonist of a rich and insightful story about what aging mothers often experience.⁷ Instead, Oz prefers to introduce yet another variation on the theme of female selfishness and treachery.

In “Minzar ha-shatkanim” (“The Trappist Monastery”) female treachery and selfishness as well as unbridled sexuality end up strengthening male solidarity. Bruria of “Minzar ha-shatkanim” is a soldier girl. When her lover (also referred to as “master”), Itche, sets out with his batallion on a reprisal operation against an Arab village, she, staying behind like the rest of the soldier girls, finds time to have intercourse with Nahum Hirsch, the orderly. When Itche returns from the successful military mission, he orders Nahum to find Bruria. Nahum finds her behind the storehouse, making love with Rosenthal, the officer. But Nahum tells Itche that Bruria and Rosenthal left the camp. After a long drive in pursuit of Bruria the male rivals become friends. In the revised version of the story, the characters of both Itche and Nahum are more fleshed out and more convincing. Nahum is transformed from a pathetic figure into a self-conscious character capable of experiencing conflicting emotions. Itche, who appears to be somewhat of a bully in the original version, becomes a multidimensional character, who grows through defeat and pain into a mature and perceptive man. Bruria, however, remains shackled in her stereotypic fetters: female licentiousness, fickleness, and deceptiveness. Once again, the author misses a chance to present a particularly poignant situation from a woman's point of view. What does it mean for woman to serve in a military environment, which confines her mostly to clerical services?⁸ The author notes that before the all-male batallion sets out on a retaliatory raid the soldier girls, “clerks, typists and nurses,” distribute candy among the fighters, but Oz does not investigate the impulse behind this act. Such an investigation might lead to a better understanding of the link between the guilt experienced by Israeli soldier girls and the patterns of their sexual behavior. It may perhaps give the reader a clue to Bruria's sexual obsessiveness. But Oz is clearly not interested in Bruria's motives as much as in her effect on the development of the male characters in the story.

Oz's avoidance of fertile thematic fields that deal with woman's predicament is particularly obtrusive in “Kol ha-neharot” (“All the Rivers”), which revolves around Tova, a poetess in her late thirties. The story, however, does not focus on Tova's character, life, or poetry, but on the sensations she arouses in Eliezer, the narrator. Her constant smoking, spasmodic coughing, heavy body, and mutilated hand elicit in Eliezer a perverse desire mingled with pity and disgust. Tova, for her part, falls instantly in love with the attractive muscular kibbutznik and begs him to marry her:

Suppose you agree to marry me, imagine you agree. You know what we will do after you agree? … We will walk along the beach till we get to a place empty of people. There we will take off our clothes and bathe in the water without clothes. You want to?—And then I will write a poem about you. You want to? And then it will be evening and we will go to the movies. You want to? And then we will return to the sea. You want to?

(p. 111)

Tova's infantile marriage proposal uses images and motifs from her epigonic poem, “All the Rivers.” In the poem, the “lonely and sick” sea is the final destination of all the rivers. The imagery of the sea suggests a link between the poet's romantic and erotic frustrations and her art. Tova's poetry is not a creative expression, but a substitute for what she really wants to have—a man. The poem is further parodied when recited by the poet herself, punctuated by her uncontrollable spasms of coughing and spitting:

“All the rivers-kche-go-kche-to the sea-kche, kche, kche all that-kche-is here-kche—goes there, and there only-kche-only the sick sea. …”

(p. 112)

Whereas Tova's poetic activity is given cursory attention, her desperate clinging to Eliezer and above all her repulsive coughing fits are reported in great detail. When finally rejected by Eliezer, Tova breaks down and cries. Then, she doubles over and vomits profusely on the beach, soiling Eliezer's clothes. This abdominal reaction to a sexual rejection by a male typifies Geula's response in “Nomads and Viper.” Despite the considerable potential differences between a coffee maker on a kibbutz and a Tel Aviv artist, both protagonists are characterized by the negative sex role they share, by their singleness and its coefficients, sexual frustration and loneliness. Oz seems to have selected a poetess as his protagonist not out of interest in the subjective experience of a professional independent woman, her mind, her feelings, her work. Rather, it would seem that even this rather rare female image serves as literary mannequin for the same old costume—female sexuality and self-destructiveness.

Whether they express their sexuality (Bruria, Lily), or suppress it (Tova, Batya, Geula), the female characters of Where the Jackals Howl are doomed. No matter what their social status or professional occupation, all the female characters in the collection share a sexual compulsion and a destructive drive, unmitigated by social or moral concerns. The male characters of Where the Jackals Howl, on the other hand, are motivated by a combination of moral, carnal, idealistic, and selfish factors. Dov Sirkin of “Before His Time,” is vicitimized by his own love for and guilt over his son; Gideon Shenhav, the protagonist of “The Way of the Wind,” is driven by fear, disillusionment, and a will to protest; Abrasha of “A Hollow Stone” sets out to join the Spanish civil war out of pure idealism; Yair of “Strange Fire” stumbles through sheer naïvete; Damkov of “Where the Jackals Howl” acts out of lust, loneliness, and paternal longings. While Oz's male protagonists manifest an array of conflicting desires and fears, his secondary male characters display fewer complexities, but they are not reduced to mere diabolical caricatures either. On the contrary, the peripheral male characters are often drawn as naïve, vulnerable and childish. Oz's male character reflects human properties; his strength and weakness do not transcend human capabilities. The female character, by contrast, is at bottom a glut of instincts, a beast with only a superficial and misleading human veneer.

Karen Horney construes the androcentric tendency to portray the female as evil as an expression of dread: “Everywhere the man strives to rid himself of his dread of women by objectifying it. ‘It is not,’ he says, ‘that I dread her, it is that she herself is malignant, capable of any crime, a beast of prey, a vampire, a witch, insatiable in her desires. She is the very personification of what is sinister’.”⁹

Amos Oz's characterization of women is based on a pervasive androcentric norm in Western literature, one that reflects gynophobic prejudices rather than authentic women. These norms construe the sexual differences between man and woman as differences between the Self and the Other. Man is the Self, woman—the Other, and as all Others (in a Christocentric context the Jew is the Other), woman is suspect. She appears to be human, but she really is not. She is less capable of controlling her beastly instincts, foremost among which is her sexuality.

Oz's susceptibility to these androcentric norms does not decrease in his later, more sophisticated works. The heroine of Elsewhere Perhaps (Maqom aher, 1966), Noga, is an adolescent girl who seduces a man twice her age and gives birth to a son shortly after her father dies of grief. Noga seems to follow the nefarious conduct of her mother, Eva, who abandons her family and elopes with an insidious charlatan to Germany. The heroine of My Michael (Michael sheli, 1967) tortures both her husband and son, losing herself in erotic phantasies about Palestinian twins she used to know as a child. Ruth Kipnis, the protagonist of the title story of The Hill of Evil Counsel (Har he’etsa hara’a, [Har he’etza ha’raah] 1976) elopes with a British officer, an infamous womanizer, leaving behind a loving husband and a vulnerable son. In all these cases, the ultimate psychological insight into the heroines' character suggests that femininity is identical with a primordial force which can best be described as bestial. None of Oz's heroines, or secondary characters for that matter, share the conflicts, doubts and pains experienced by their male counterparts. Parental responsibility, moral compunctions and love are eclipsed by selfishness, sexuality and narcissism, which are often indistinguishably intertwined as the underlying personality structure of the female character.

As one of the prominent contemporary Israeli writers, Oz helps perpetuate female stereotyping both through his literary influence on younger writers and his vast popularity among Israeli readers. The forcefulness of his prose, which presents female stereotypes in the shape of “real women,” gives an articulate and convincing expression to fallacious myths, which in turn strike a deeper root in Israeli society and culture. I realize that fiction is made of myth and imagination rather than reality as perceived and experienced in everyday life. But that should not excuse even the unintentional inculcation and perpetuation of potentially destructive myths. Jewish readers have understandably reacted with dismay against anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews even in the most accomplished works of fiction. There is no reason why misogynistic representations of women should be accepted indulgently, as “mere fiction,” much less applauded by female readers.

Notes

1. Artsot hatan [The Lands of the Jackal] (Tel Aviv, 1965), p. 23: (Revised edition Tel Aviv, 1976). Where the Jackals Howl and Other Stories, tr. Nicholas de Lange and Philip Simpson (New York, 1981). The following references to the original edition will be included in the text. All references to Oz's work are based on my own translation, unless otherwise indicated.

2. Nurith Gertz, Amos Oz (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv, 1980), p. 47. References to this and other critical sources in Hebrew are based on my own translation.

3. “Esh zara” carries strong biblical connotations referring to acts of ritual blasphemy in ancient Israel (Lev. 10:1; Num. 3:4).

4. See for example, H. R. Hays, The Dangerous Sex: The Myth of Feminine Evil (New York, 1964), p. 86.

5. On the significance of marriage in Israeli society, see Leslie Hazelton, Israeli Women The Reality Behind the Myths (New York, 1977), pp. 162-84. On the status of women in the kibbutz, see Rae Lesser-Blumberg, “The Erosion of Sexual Equality in the kibbutz—A Structural Interpretation”, Beyond Intellectual Sexism, ed. Joan Robert (New York, 1976), pp. 320-39.

6. On the stereotype of the single woman in other literatures, see Dorothy Yost Deegan, The Stereotype of the Single Woman in American Novels: A Social Study with Implications for the Education of Women (New York, 1951).

7. On the effects of the loss of the maternal role on women, see Pauline Bart, “Depression in Middle-Aged Women”, Woman in Sexist Society—Studies in Power and Powerlessness, ed. Vivian Gornick and Barbara K. Moran (New York, 1971), pp. 163-86 and “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Mother”, Women: A Feminist Perspective, ed. Jo Freeman (Palo Alto, 1975), pp. 156-70.

8. For more details on women in the Israeli army see, Pnina Lahav, “The Status of Women in Israel—Myth and Reality”, American Journal of Comparative Law, Vol. 22 (Winter, 1974). See also Israeli Women, pp. 137-61.

9. Quoted in H. R. Hays, The Dangerous Sex, p. 42.

This article is in part based on my paper, “Images of Women in the Works of Amos Oz”, presented at the national convention of the Association of Jewish Studies, Boston, December, 1982.