IMAGES OF WOMEN IN SAUL BELLOW'S NOVELS

The purpose of this study is to examine the women characters in the novels of Saul Bellow. While the central character in each of the Bellow's eight novels is a male, a significant number of females appear who function primarily to define the protagonist. This study will identify the important images of women which recur throughout Bellow's work in order to determine their effects on Bellow's characterization of his protagonists.; A reconsideration of Bellow's novels reveals three predominant images of women: the maternal women, the castrator, and the exotic woman. The maternal image incorporates the attributes of nurture, self-sacrifice, and protection. However closely the image of the nurturing mother conforms to the actual experience of a Bellow protagonist, chapter two reveals that such a woman generally resides at some level of his consciousness as the ideal. The Bellow protagonist regards the maternal woman with longing and affection. But in some ways he is also her victim--her protection and love weaken his ability to successfully cope with unpleasant reality and render him vulnerable to manipulation by other women. Moreover, Bellow's association of the beloved mother with the threat of mortality complicates the protagonist's view of her and accounts for his ambiguous attitude toward women generally.; In the image of the castrator, Bellow's message is clear: strong women are a threat. Consistently, Bellow presents intelligence, beauty, ambition, and independence in women as powerful weapons of destruction. Bellow seems to establish the central character's fundamental innocence by his contrast to the victimizing castrator. But chapter three demonstrates that the protagonist's relationship to the castrating woman often reveals his own insecurity, moral ambiguity, and narcissism.; Bellow's image of the exotic woman appears to be an attempt to synthesize the contrasting images of nurturing mother and deadly castrator. Offering the protagonist a kind of psycho-sexual sanctuary, the foreign love object performs those acts of love which the mother cannot and the castrator will not do. Although the Bellow protagonist hedonistically indulges himself with the exotic woman, he is disgusted by her "lewd knowlege" and ultimately links her sexual power to the death he so greatly fears. As the object of both his desire and his fear, the exotic woman becomes a composite image of the "other," the "opposite," sex.; Throughout this study, some attempt is made to identify the origins of Bellow's images of women in order to determine the degree to which Bellow is modifying cultural stereotypes, creating original and artistically valid images, and succumbing to personal biases. To this end, some consideration is given to the Jewish and American cultural traditions by which Bellow in influenced as well as to his personal experiences with women. Ultimately, this study suggests that Bellow's failure to create positive, fully human images of women narrows the dimensions of his artistic vision and undermines his highly acclaimed "affirmations" of the human condition.