Our Common Text 2004-2005

Jeannette C. Mitchell, Ph.D

Associate Professor of Economics

Rochester Institute of Technology

Speech given before an audience of students and faculty at RIT, Jan. 5, 2004.

Thank you for that nice introduction, Professor Reinfeld. I would also like to take a moment to thank Miriam Learner and Lauri Chivalia for being our interpreters for tonight’s event.

House of Sand and Fog. What an interesting title. In a modern setting it brings to mind cultural clashes...east meets west. I think focusing on such cultural conflict in the Novel, as some reviewers have done, does not do the work justice. I doubt the book would lose its poignancy if the colonel was from an immigrant from Russia instead of Iran.

I often tell my students that the title of a work can lead to insights as to the author’s intent. I do not pretend to be an expert in literature, but would have you keep in mind the title as you read or reread the work. The references to the sandy feeling in one’s mouth during situations of powerlessness or the fogginess of alcohol abuse and depression are common themes in the work, and I would hazard not accidental themes.

Now, what can an Economist bring to the discussion of this Novel? This book is so incredibly rich I feel certain I will not do it justice in a talk lasting only a few minutes. The author’s use of analogy, the individual characters, their complex interactions are so well developed and full of depth that any short summary of themes will seem shallow by comparison, but I have been asked to look at the feminist issues in the novel and so will attempt to do them some justice here. I take away from the novel 3 main themes relevant to the mind of an economist and feminist. These are the impacts of mental illness, depression in particular; power relations and depiction in the Novel of the American Dream.

Let us begin with mental illness and our major protagonist, Kathy. I would guess that most people in this room, perhaps women in particular, at their first exposure to Kathy, found her to be a most reprehensible representation of common misnomers about women, these being; she lacked the character to take responsibility for her situation. She lacked the capacity to handle the stresses of even the simplest of tasks. All of the horrors that unfold in that novel could have been avoided had she simply opened her mail. We might conclude as some of the reviewers of the film did that “Everything that happens in the movie could have been avoided if Kathy had just opened her freaking mail” or “Everything that happens in this bloated lifetime movie could have been avoided if its heroine hadn’t spent months wallowing in such self pity that she couldn’t open her mail.”

Kathy latched onto a man to give her identity and defined herself only in relation to this man. She continually sought male approval. Indeed, I do not think it is a stretch to conclude that her entire attempt to reclaim the house was an attempt to gain her father’s approval. She turns to Nick and then to Lester and even to her brother. Kathy appears pathetic, and as I stated, reprehensible. She appears to be an embarrassment to women everywhere. But this is a simplistic view. There is little doubt that Kathy was suffering from clinical depression.

Persons that have not suffered depression first hand or through one of their family members or are not members of the medical profession may see such an individual in the light I just painted Kathy. But depression is a physical problem, not a problem of character. I wish to reiterate that. In order to understand and be sympathetic with our primary female protagonist, it is important to understand that depression is a true illness and not some pretend diagnosis made up to make flakey females look normal. It is, additionally, a problem that affects all of us through the economic repercussions.

First, allow me to bore you with a few statistics on depression. According to the world health organization, 1 in 4 people develop one or more mental or behavioral disorders sometime in their life...Depression is [one of the more] common mental disorders characterized by sadness, loss of interest in activities and by decreased energy...suicide remains one of the common and sometimes unavoidable outcomes of depression...Over 120 million people [world wide] currently suffer from depression.

In the United States it is estimated that 12 million women a year will suffer depression...and I am not referring here to feelings of melancholy or sadness because the weather is bad or you have an exam in economics coming up for which you are unprepared. I am referring to the physical and chemical changes that occur in the body because of extreme stress that can result in depression.

Women are twice as likely to suffer depression then men. One third of depressed persons also exhibit addictive behaviors...alcohol, drugs or other forms of addiction. This sounds like our main female protagonist, Kathy, does it not. By 2020 the WHO predicts depression will be the largest and most expensive illness to people in the developing world, and that by that same year, severe depression will be the second largest cause of death and disability in the Developed world. In the United States, we spend nearly 14 percent of our total national income on health care, it is estimated that depression alone accounts for a loss of ten percent of a nations productive years costing the United States over $53 billion dollars a year in lost productivity. And these are conservative estimates of the impact of depression as many cases go unreported and untreated.

Allow me to make a minor digression from our main topic to one of my current research interests, bullying in the workplace. I promise you it will be brief, and to make a relevant point at the end of the discussion.

Bullying has been defined as “...when someone at work is systematically subjected to aggressive behavior from one or more colleagues or superiors over a long period of time, in a situation where the target finds it difficult to defend him or herself or to escape the situation.” You will notice that the definition includes a feeling of powerlessness, one of the main themes of the novel (more on this later).

Although men have been known to be victims of bullying, women are the usual target. In addition, research indicates that the perpetrator is, in an overwhelming majority of cases, a white male.

In my research I have been able to interview several victims of bullying. Their stories are engaging and at the same time frightening. The point I will be trying to make is that depression is not a character flaw, but a real, physiologically based illness and that Kathy’s actions were a result of this. Such an explanation of her behavior will allow us to eschew social stereotypes of women and to understand better the novel and her actions that seem, admittedly, quite absurd to many readers.

I wish to relate the story of one of the victims of bullying that I have interviewed in my research. Let us call her Jane Doe. Jane is a professional woman who completed Bachelors and went on to graduate work. After completing her graduate studies she had accepted a position with a company. The position promised some upward mobility and advancement and seemed to offer a suitable work environment. Her supervisor, however, was a bully in the extreme. He used every opportunity to demean Jane, to question her competence. He defamed her to her co-workers and used demotion, work loads and work schedules to intimidate and control not only Jane, but her coworkers as well.

Jane lived with this for a number of years. You may ask why she just didn’t leave. It is much easier to say, hey..leave...then it is to actually do so...especially for professionals. You have to remember, she had years of being told in one way or another that she had no options, that she was lucky to have any position at all. When you are continuously told such things, sooner or later you begin to believe them. Jane felt trapped. That she was not qualified for other positions, that she was lucky to get the position she had. There are letters of recommendation to consider. Plus the economy was not conducive to her leaving at the time.

Feelings of inadequacy fed the feeling of being trapped. Like in most cases, the bully became particularly abusive over one issue and Jane popped. She was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Panic Attacks and Depression. Remember, this is a professional woman with an advanced degree. This is a woman that survived college and survived a challenging graduate program, not someone you would consider to be a mental and emotional basket-case. But this is what she became. Jane became unable to focus, to concentrate. She started missing work and doing shoddy work. She was becoming, in short, what her boss had accused her of being all along. According to her physician, the extreme stress to which she was exposed triggered a physiological change...a chemical imbalance in her brain that made her behave the way she was.

Jane took a leave from work and in the 3 months she was off her depression worsened. She would not call her family, not wanting to talk to anyone. She closed herself off in her residence, kept the shades pulled. She did not bathe for 3 months. She stopped brushing her teeth. She reports that her hair became so knotted and filthy that she had to use cooking oil to get the knots out. She paid only her rent and let her credit cards go, her credit was shot. A woman that could previously handle the stresses of graduate school and a demanding job, at the height of her depression, couldn’t handle the stress of writing out a check for her phone bill. Her appetite suffered and she lost weight. She reported to me that at one time she had over 13 bags of garbage that needed to go out and that her residence was beginning to smell.

Jane did not have a character flaw. She had depression brought on by stress. In her desperation, she sought acceptance and admiration though internet chat rooms. She eventually received enough of her self esteem from these fantasy worlds to seek treatment. She saw her doctor and started therapy. I am happy to report she is doing much better. In preparation for tonight’s talk, I spoke with Jane just last night. She informs me that she is off her medication and out of therapy, but still has a severe startle response (jumping at the least provocation) and still has a tendency to bust out crying at the simplest of stresses. She does pay her phone bill, though, and she is working hard for a promotion she expects within the year. She still cries or becomes easily angry at what most people would consider small aggravations, but she is on the road to recovery. I would like to say that Jane’s predicament is unusual, an aberrancy, but in so many women’s lives it is real.

The point, of course, is that Kathy was not neglectful of her responsibilities in not opening her mail or not listening to her lawyer. She was depressed. Her return to alcohol is also explained by her depression. The World Health Organization has pointed out that depressed persons also have personalities more prone to addiction. Jane and Kathy both have physical disabilities that afflict many persons, women in particular.

When dealing with women’s issues, depression is just one of these, it is common for people, even women, to blame the victim. To say, “why didn’t she do this, why did she do that” Even in cases of the most extreme case of violence and oppression, rape, we say, why was she wearing that dress? Why did she go to his room? No one asks to be abused; no one asks to be used in the most violent of ways. Misjudgment on the part of a woman does not lend justification for rape or violence.

As women are more often the victims of depression, the victims of oppression, the victims of violence, to blame them is to ignore the true sources of these horrors. And ignoring the horrors allows them to perpetuate. To blame the victim is to miss the real injustice suffered. I urge readers not to fall into the trap of blaming Kathy. Had she not had a physical illness, things would not have escalated out of control as they did. To blame her for her illness misses, I think, an important part of the story of women in general, Kathy in particular.

A second “theme” to shout at me from the Novel was that of power relations. We will consider power relations in two ways; a narrower view of the power relations between men and women and in a broader view of power relations in capitalism.

On the topic of power relations between men and women. One could perhaps argue that entire book was based on this, but I think that would be a misunderstanding and definitely paint the book as less rich. But power relations were definitely there. They are there, perhaps most obviously, in the relationship between Kathy and Behrani. But the power relations are also visible in the relationship of Behrani to his wife and between Kathy and Lester. In the end it is the men that take control of the situation and the women that must sit back and await the conclusion of the drama. But I think looking at just the gender relations in the Novel masks some of the other types of power relations being demonstrated in its pages.

We can ask what gives us a sense of power, not necessarily over others, but over ourselves and our own destinies. In capitalism, power to control ones’ destiny comes through financial security and this from ownership. The house represented for each of our major protagonists, Kathy and the Colonel, financial security, acceptance, success and belonging. A sense neither received from the menial work they did for a living.

It is of interest to note that both major male characters, the Colonel Behrani and Lester held positions usually associated with a great deal of power. Behrani being an ex-high ranking member of the Iranian military that had reached a status that allowed him to be in the company of the Shah on more than one occasion (something on which he prides himself), and Lester, a Deputy Sheriff. But even in these positions of what many of us would consider positions of power, they were powerless.

The Colonel hoped to regain some power through the financial gains his family would enjoy by selling the property. “These have been my thoughts, and they have been most pleasing thoughts for I feel once again like a man with his hands on the reins of his own breast.” Lester hoped to gain power through what the same property offered him...a financially feasible escape from a loveless marriage.

Kathy’s feelings of powerlessness are perhaps too obvious to reiterate and culminated in her trying to take back control of the situation by committing suicide.

Nadi, the other female character in the book was also powerless. Powerless against a culture that demanded they put forward a life style they could not afford in order to get a decent marriage offer for their daughter, powerless in the move to the bungalow, powerless in influencing her husband to return the bungalow and “do the right thing”, and ultimately powerless to protect her life from a grieving husband.

The lack of power and the inability to control one’s own destiny leads me to yet another theme of interest to the economist and that is the portrayal of the American Dream. What is the American Dream and of what does it consist?

The book makes several, several references to the American Dream and in all of the cases the representation is not favorable. I am reminded of the conversation Kathy had with her Irish friend when she told him she was moving to California.”the land of milk and honey”. Her Irish friend responded: “Dats what they say of this country back home, Kath: America the land of milk and honey. But they never tell you the milk’s gone sour and the honey’s stolen.”

The search for the American Dream makes strange bedfellows in the Novel. I remind you of the short passage in which our male protagonist shares a cup of tea with an Iraqi...a previous enemy of Iran and of the Colonels. But they share something, a common enemy, the American dream.

The term “American Dream” as far as I can ascertain, was first used by James Truslow in his work “Epic of America”. He defines the dream to consist of, in part:

...of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. ..It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position." (p.214-215)

Allow me to repeat part of that: The American Dream is a...

social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

This is, arguably, the core of feminism. To be treated both as woman and as capable. Not for all of us to become some genderless, featureless mass of humanity, but a society in which I can be both woman and accomplished. Where as a woman what I can attain is determined by the amount of work I put in and not to be prejudged or my future predetermined simply based on biased gender views.

Jane Doe, remember her? The same bully of a boss admitted to her once that the only reason she was interviewed and hired was because he was forced to do so by the employer’s affirmative action policies. He admitted that she was equally and probably even more qualified than the male applicants, but that he would have hired a male anyway because he likes to work with people that are like him, namely, white and male.

I remember sitting next to a vice president of a major corporation once...in first class of course. I had gotten a first class ticket because of some airline mistake that allowed me to upgrade. So here I am seated next to him and I am uncertain on how we got onto the topic of women executives but we did. He related a story to me of a meeting with the senior vice presidents and the CEO of the corporation in which they were deciding on a few important promotions. Both a man and a woman were up for the promotion. He reported to me that the CEO stated, “It would be a cold day in hell before I gave a skirt a position where she would have power over a man”. This conversation took place only 4 years ago!

More modern notions of the American Dream encompass the ownership of a home with a little yard, a little financial security and the hope that our children will have a more economically advantageous position than we find ourselves. With home ownership and financial security comes a sense of belonging to a community, of power to control your destiny and the destiny of your family.

You will notice that the book is not titled THE house of sand and fog, for that would draw our attention to this one house to this one circumstance, to this one American dream. House of Sand and Fog, in my interpretation, is about the American Dream. Not about how to attain it, as our characters struggle to do so, but even more fundamentally, that it is not attainable. That control of one’s financial security, to have the reigns on our own destiny, is beyond the reach of the vast majority of persons. That control of the type promised by the American Dream is just that, a Dream...a house of sand and fog; A house of no substance, a house of no fixed existence.

Maintained by Susan Mee