Men and women as portrayed in Bernard Malamud’s The Lady of the Lake and Flannery O’Connor’s Good Country people - Part 1

Despite significant differences in structure, tone and theme, both Bernard  Malamud’s The Lady of the Lake  and Flannery O’Connor’s Good Country People portray men and women who deliberately mislead each other and/or themselves, pretending to be someone else.  Although similar in nature -- denial of their self-identities and assumption of other identities -- the deceptions of the men and women in both stories are different in their purposes.  To rephrase the opening sentence of Leo Tolsoy’s Anna Karenina, honest people are all alike; every dishonest person is dishonest in his/her own way.

From the very beginning of The Lady of the Lake our attention is drawn to the fact that Henry Levin, “for no reason he was sure of, except that he was tired of the past -- tired of the limitations it had imposed upon him; [...], took to calling himself Henry R. Freeman” (105).  Although Levin deliberately chooses the name which expresses his desire to be free (free man) from limitations, the man is not free, but rather extremely and painfully dependent on society and especially on its opinion of him. Levin’s presentation of himself under an assumed name is not just a manifestation of his extravagancy as he ambitiously deludes himself, but is based upon the fear of being considered and taken for who he really is - a Jew.

That Levin is afraid to be taken for a Jew is obvious.  Obsessed with the idea that people always have something against Jews, he is “aware of his background and certain other disadvantages” (112, italics mine), as Isabella looks at him on their first meeting.  Because of the fixed idea that being a Jew is shameful and subject to contempt, Levin does not recognize the hope behind Isabella’s question, “Are you, perhaps, Jewish?” (113, italics mine).  To the contrary, without considering other possibilities of why she might ask this question, Levin concludes that she, perhaps, “once had some sort of unhappy experience with a Jew” (115).  Similarly, he keeps denying his “background” during these little tests that Isabella arranges with the hope of bringing him out into the open (she offers him salami along with cheese; inquires whether the mountains look like a Menorah, etc.).  Likewise he invents a subterfuge that circumcision is “de rigueur in stateside hospitals” (128).

While it is commonplace to argue that he denies his Jewish identity because of the fear of being rejected by Isabella, this denial is exacerbated in the narrative by Levin’s diffidence. What is at stake here is the very identity of Levin as a person. Throughout the narrative, Levin is presented as a man with a painful self-awareness that he does not correspond to some imagined ideal.  Not only does he not accept his Jewish identity, he also has trouble identifying himself generally.

That Levin painstakingly endeavors to conceal his identity from himself is revealed in several instances in the narrative.  First, he is uncertain about his looks.  He considers himself a good-looking guy. Yet when “one of his former girl friends had told him she sometimes thought of him as tall”, “this counterbalanced the occasions when he had thought of himself as short” (112).  That is to say, unconsciously Levin knows that he is short, yet he deceives himself into believing he is tall and is deeply concerned about passing as such in the eyes of women.  Another instance is when Levin meditates over whether he should call Isabella on the phone, fearing that “he would have a ridiculous time identifying himself” if the maid or somebody else answers the phone (115).