Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

There are many differences between him and Wendy, but the greatest is that of generation. He had been born twenty years sooner and had certain interests, habits and attitudes; he found the interests, habits and attitudes of Wendy and her friends tiresome. Last week, at a particularly disorganized and frantic graduate student party, when he refused to try to dance in the current disorganized and frantic style, even Wendy turned on him, crying plaintively, “Why can’t you swing a little?” “Because I don’t want to swing,” Brian replied. “I’m not a child. I don’t want to swing, or slide, or go on the teeter-totter.”

He sighs and unfolds this morning’s student paper. Beyond the usual depressing international news, which he has already heard on the radio last night, nothing catches his notice except for another letter complaining about Donald Dibble’s course. It is the fourth or fifth such letter to appear in the Star, and not very original or well written; but Brian reads it carefully, for he has a personal interest in the controversy.

Since Linda Sliski’s party there have been several developments in the war between Dibble and the local feminists, in which Brian has played an important advisory role. His original suggestion that more women should be brought into Dibble’s class was adopted enthusiastically. Over that first weekend Jenny was able to enlist five or six sympathizers, including Linda and Wendy. They crowded into the room on Monday and sat in a clump at the back. If Dibble had had the slightest political sense he would have avoided saying anything to provoke them; he would simply have waited them out. But he made an antifeminist remark, or what could pass for one, and the girls at the back began to whisper and groan half audibly. On Monday night Jenny and Sara went to a WHEN meeting and asked for recruits; and at Wednesday’s lecture there were a dozen superfluous women who did not wait for offensive statements but started groaning and booing when Dibble spoke favorably of the Republican party, causing him to slam down his text and notes and, in a trembling voice, request all auditors to leave. When they did not move he stuffed his books and papers into a briefcase and walked out of the room.

But Dibble was by no means defeated. When Jenny and Sara arrived at next Monday’s lecture, followed this time by nearly twenty extra women, they found a monitor at the door with an official class list and orders to admit only students legally enrolled in the course. Baffled, the leaders of the protest returned to Brian for counsel. They were confused and angry; a few wanted to take some drastic action against Dibble, to arouse public opinion on a wide scale.

In fact public opinion was already being aroused; the dispute had become a matter first of departmental and then of university gossip, and was now even known to people outside Corinth. Leonard had called Brian from New York for details. “We’ve had the same thing,” he reported. “The local Hens objected because Jane Austen, the Brontes, et cetera, were taught by men, who couldn’t possibly understand, bla bla bla. But as I said to Irv here, you have to get tough and hold the line, or you’ll be in for it. Next you’ll have the Gay Power boys picketing Comp Lit because Proust and Gide aren’t taught by faggots.”

But Brian felt some sympathy for Jenny’s cause. After all, Dibble probably had made some foolishly unprofessional remarks. He was a boor and a reactionary and Brian’s long-standing enemy, while Jenny was a beautiful young girl who admired him and would be grateful if he helped her to defeat their common adversary; Brian had already imagined some of the forms this gratitude might take.

He did not get tough with Jenny, therefore, but tried to calm her down and persuade her that the protesters should make their next move through official channels, presenting their case in a letter to the acting chairman of the political science department, with carbon copies to Dibble and the dean. Vague complaints would not be enough, though; what they needed was evidence: direct quotations from Dibble’s lectures insulting women.

As a result of this conversation Sara and Jenny, who were the only leaders of the protest now enrolled in the course, began attending it with tape recorders hidden in their bags. They sat in the front row, but at opposite ends; this was necessary because of Dibble’s habit of walking nervously back and forth the length of the podium as he spoke. Jenny concealed the microphone in her blouse; Sara, less generously endowed, in the bib pocket of her overalls. But results were disappointing. Dibble had finished discussing the Nineteenth Amendment, and almost all he did for two weeks was to refer once to Prohibitionists as “hysterical old-maid schoolteacher types” and to pronounce the name “Eleanor Roosevelt” in a sneering tone.

Examination of the past lecture notes of sympathizers was more productive, however; and best (or worst) of all was a recording secretly made by Linda Sliski when calling on Dibble in his office under pretense of getting information for her Ph.D. thesis. “If you want my frank opinion, it’s a waste of time to teach girls political science,” Brian heard his colleague announce on Linda’s tape recorder—as he had heard him often in meetings. “Do you know what percentage of our female graduates go on to make any use whatever of their expensive education?” Dibble’s voice, converted by the machine to an unpleasant low quacking, continued quoting figures until it was interrupted by Linda’s equally unpleasant high bleat accusing him of specious logic and reactionary bias, and informing him that she, at least, had every intention of putting her education to use, and that she had no intention, Professor Dibble, of becoming a mere housewife and bringing more children into a world like this one, and that he might not have a very good opinion of her capabilities, but she would like him to know that she had an A average and had just been appointed to a position at Ohio State University. This information, or perhaps the realization that Linda was on the verge of tears, caused Dibble to laugh in a way Brian knew well, and to remark, “You got an assistant professorship at Ohio State? Well, you’d better hang on to it. There’s a fashion now in some schools for hiring women, but it won’t last.”

Hearing this conversation replayed, Brian had a strange giddy sensation—an intoxicating sense of power. Almost without effort, he had set the two people in Corinth he most disliked upon each other. He had chosen their battleground and their weapons; now he could sit behind the scenes and hear them attack each other, saying things he would have liked to say himself.

This feeling of power was increased three days ago when Brian was called in for consultation on the dispute by Bill Guildenstern, the acting chairman of the department. Like many acting chairmen, Bill was an ambitious, cautious, personable young man; an executive type, devoted to the smooth functioning and greater glory of the department, but without strong opinions of his own. His policy has been to consult the senior members of the staff individually on any problem which arises (he is too shrewd a politician to consult them en masse), and then present his decision as a consensus. Brian, as a former chairman, is often consulted.

“I’d like to get your opinion of this,” Bill said, holding out to Brian a letter he had seen before, now signed by eleven members of Dibble’s course and eighteen non-members, all female.

“Certainly,” Brian agreed. He pretended to read the letter, making appropriate noises. “Mm, hm. Well, it seems to be fairly temperate and straightforward, as these things go,” he remarked, not unnaturally, for he had seen the original draft and told Jenny to tone it down. “But I expect Don is somewhat heated about it.”