Subverting the Cinderella Story and Assumptions About the 1950s in "The Solid Gold Cadillac"

 

The Solid Gold Cadillac is a 1956 comedy film starring Judy Holliday (pictured in the center of the photo above) as the irrepressible small stockholder, Laura Partridge. The car in the title alludes to the gift bestowed on the heroine by the other stockholders in the company for upholding their interests. The brief view of the gold Cadillac is filmed in Technicolor, though the rest of the film is in black-and-white. 

Holliday's character is somewhat similar to the one she played in her most famous role, that of Billie Dawn in the 1950 comedy Born Yesterday. In fact, there's a subtle allusion to that film in this one when she claims that the picture of the leading man in The Solid Gold Cadillac played by Paul Douglas resembles William Holden, her love in interest in the 1950 film. (There is no real physical resemblance between the two).   

In both films, the plot of marrying the love interest is secondary. The primary narrative is about the heroine's discovery of corruption and her determination to push back. It's not the traditional fairy tale in which all the princess needs to do is be discovered by the prince in order to live happily ever.  And that is something that is particularly underscored in The Solid Gold Cadillac.

LIke some other 1950s films, this one has a narrator -- voiced by George Burns in this case. He lets us know who are the bad guys and the good guys and draws parallels to the Cinderella story in describing the heroine's experiences.  

But this is not a princess who leaves behind a glass slipper for the prince to use to find her. The shoes she loses are sturdy boots. Twice in the film, Partridge finds a single boot of her own in the office she's trying to clear out. The second time, she thinks she'll find the mate in a file drawer, though as you see from the picture below, it turns out to be a boot from a different pair. 

I was wondering why so much emphasis on this sight gag until I connected it with the Cinderella narrative. It's an obvious subversion of the symbol of the fairy tale in which the drudge got to don a beautiful dress and ride in a carriage conjured by magic to  get swept off her feet by the prince who would save her from any future work.

In contrast, our heroine gets her man, her career, and a solid car rather than just a title and a carriage that turns back into a pumpkin

She's not the only woman in the film who continues working after marriage. Her secretary does, too. And the happily ever after of all the worthy characters is not just due to their marriages but to their careers, as well. This is the modern deviation from the traditional marriage plots that dominated fairy tales, plays, and  novels for a few hundred years.  Sturdy boots > glass slippers.

Related: Feminine Feet

Discovering Buckminster Fuller on Long Island

While I may have heard of Buckminster (more commonly known as Bucky) Fuller in the distant past, what made me grow curious about him was a visit to a Long Island park named for his friend, the author, Christopher Morley. There are far larger and more impressive parks on Long Island, but the distinction this one has is that Morley's Knothole -- a small house in his yard he would escape to to write in peace and quiet -- has been relocated on the park grounds. 

Failing to find the bathroom in the park

While anyone may build a shed of sorts in which to escape the hubbub at home, they are not likely to have it equipped with a Dymaxion bathroom. But as Morley was a close friend of the man who dreamt up the design, he got on for his Knothole. Curiosity about that drove me to visit the park to see this marvel of easy-cleaning engineering that dates back to 1936. Alas, you cannot see anything inside the Knothole, which is kept closed and is falling into a sad state of disrepair.

What it should have looked like is this:

source https://slideplayer.com/slide/4283236/

The bathroom would have been made out of metal in a very compact and efficient design that was meant to be very easy to clean. Fuller did plan to one day render it in plastic for greater comfort, but the ones he did get made were metal.  The bathroom was supposed to be just one component of the highly efficient Dymaxion house that he was hoping would take off but never did. 

Even Morley's Knothole follows very traditional-looking architecture with nothing that would make you expect it houses a revolutionary design. In contrast, the full Dymaxion home was meant to be modern all around, and I do mean round. See the vintage video that showcases it here: 

Reading Fuller

With my curiosity piqued, I checked out several Bucky Fuller biographies from my library last year. But despite being a pretty fast and determined reader, I couldn't make it through them. But in August, my library got in a new bio, and this one I was able to read within the allotted two weeks for new books. It's Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller. 

If I were to give it a star rating, I'd probably give it 4/5. It's highly readable despite the geometric details entailed in describing Fuller's concepts and their applications that endure beyond his own lifetime (like the carbon formation that resembles a soccer ball that was named Buckminsterfullerene AKA Buckyballs in his honor).

However, I don't fully buy into the parallels that Nevala-Lee attempts to draw with modern day influential figures and Fuller. Not all people who may be described as visionary or innovative operate in the same way. Certainly, Fuller was never was a major commercial success and really did not have good business sense at all. 

This account of Fuller may upset some people. Other descriptions of him focused on his creativity and presented him as a kind of magnanimous leader. But the take on his personality here is much darker. There are several account of fallouts with people who felt they were shortchanged on credit for concepts or who were cut out of Fuller's organization because he refused to cede control.

Worse than that are the glimpses into his more private life that shatter the romantic story of his marriage. He remained married for over 60 years and was not even parted from his wife in death.They shared a funeral and a grave. Yet he cheated on her repeatedly -- sometimes with women young enough to be his daughter or just barely of legal age. It seems he bought into a kind of myth he created of himself and associated these women with muse-like figures, linking them to particular discoveries, as he wrote in a certain account himself. But the marriage itself reflects some of the Long Island connections that the book brought to light.

Fuller and  Long Island History

What struck me in particular is that Fuller was married at Rock Hall, a colonial house that has been a museum since the middle of the 20th century. But in the early part of that century, it was still being
used as a home by the Hewlett family. Fuller's wife, Anne, was a Hewlett, and her wedding took place in that house. The Fullers even lived in Lawrence for some time and attended a church in Far Rockaway.* As someone who grew up in that area and who has visited Rock Hall a few times, I found it striking that such a famous person had such a strong connection to the place is not featured at the museum at all. 

Fire Island lighthouse: photo by Ariella Brown

But there is yet another location on Long Island that is connected to the Fuller name. That is his great-aunt, Margaret Fuller. If you visit the Fire Island Lighthouse  -- or its site -- you can find an account of the shipwreck that proved fatal to her and her young son when she was returning to the United States from abroad 

Nevala-Lee does make much of the Margaret-Bucky connection, as they both had a strong sense of purpose and conviction that they were particularly endowed with abilities to use to guide the world. Bucky even took a nautical image to express that -- not of a lighthouse but of the small end on a ship's rudder that can determine its direction -- the trim tab. In fact that is what he had inscribed on his gravestone pictured below:

    

                                   https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bucky_TRIMTAB.jpg

*One thing the author does get wrong is the name of the hospital in Far Rockaway. He mentions that Anne went to St. Joseph's in Far Rockaway, but the name of the hospital is St. John's. It's still there.

Related:

A grand vision of Victorian architecture and engineering

  Going for the brass ring 

How many times did Edison fail in attempting to invent the light bulb?

The Marriage Plot: Expectations for Novel Ending Must Be Met

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Austenian literary paradigm demands that the heroine get her man.

Pride and Prejudice Tote Bag
by Totally_Jane_Austen

Bronte's bestseller 
"Reader, I married him," is among the most memorable lines in English literature. It's also one of the reasons why a lot more people reads Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre --  a story that has successfully been translated to the screen time and time again -- than her more mature novel, Villette. Ever see an adaptation of Villette? I haven't either.

Granted, Jane Eyre is a more likable heroine than Lucy Snowe. But the difference in endings and romantic resolutions are a key difference.  While Jane does get to decline a proposal, she also does get to marry her man on her own terms. In contrast, in Villette, the heroine only can picture her own reunion with her beloved professor that will not be realized.

I do recall one professor in graduate school considering that a triumph because she thought that actually having to live with M. Paul Emanuel would prove irritating. However, the tone is not one of "I dodged a bullet there," so much as "I'll have to make it on my own now. I will endure despite the loneliness."  That's not really what readers tend to expect in novels built on the framework of classic comedies.

Rooted in Shakespeare
If you've ever taken a Shakespeare class, you should already know that the definitive trait of comedy is not humor but a happy ending in which all the problems and threats are smoothed away, and society can function smoothly. As it says near the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream:  "Jack shall have Jill/ Nought shall go ill."

 Shakespeare always included a marriage or two on the horizon to point out that social harmony is indeed restored. In that way, it echoes the stereotypical fairy tale structure that ends with the prince and the princess marrying and assurance that they "lived happily ever after."

While there are novels that follow the plot  lines of classical tragedy, as we see in the works of Thomas Hardy, as well as novels that declare themselves free of heroes, as is the case of Vanity Fair,  the novels that fit the chick lit mold set by Jane Austen work out very much like Shakespeare's comedies. Stability is restored at the end, and the heroine is happily married.

The expectation was built up by the paradigm of novel forms that supplanted many others: the books written by Jane Austen. That was the model of women's writing pushed on Bronte. Though she rebelled in her own way by insisting on an vividly outspoken though plain-looking governess rather than a lady who never had to earn her living as her heroine, she did, ultimately conform to the marriage plot in Jane Eyre. 

Bronte's other two complete novels, The Professor and Shirley do have  marriages, though they are rarely included in  English literature courses. (Loads more than you probably wish to know about the complete Charlotte Bronte oeuvre in (En)gendering Romanticism: A Study of Charlotte Bronte's Novels ) By the time she got to Villette, she e felt confident enough to deviate from the formula, though the result is that a very fine novel gets far less name recognition and rates no box office appeal.

Little Women as Chick Lit
Now let's cross the Atlantic and jump ahead a bit in history to consider Louisa May Alcott's masterpiece, Little Women.  My alternative title for this blog was  "Why Louisa May Alcott's Heroine Could Not Remain a Literary Spinster."

As the latest adaption of the classic beloved by generations of girls sought to  highlight in its framing of the ending, the author did not intend to marry Jo off at all. (Read about that here: https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/history-little-women-louisa-may-alcott-writer-who-when-how-much-inspired-by-life/)  Despite reader pressure, she declared, “I won’t marry Jo to Laurie to please anyone.”

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons
/thumb/9/9c/Little_Women_-_frontispiece.png/

But her idea to leave her heroine as a "literary spinster" would not go over, and so she took perverse pleasure in marrying Jo off to “a funny match," the much older, somewhat stodgy Professor Friedrich Bhaer. (Though I haven't done real research into Alcott's reading, I find it hard to believe that the German Bhaer was not somewhat inspired by the professor figure in Bronte's works. )

Whatever you feel about the Laurie ship veering off course from Jo to Amy, which does come off as contrived, indeed, the potential resolution of leaving Jo as the solitary artist figure scribbling alone would have disappointed readers, likely made the book sell fewer copies, and certainly resulted in far fewer film adaptations.

Think of another heroine beloved by generations of young girls, Anne Shirley. While readers enjoy her continued adventures as a young single women, working as a teacher and earning her university degree, the expectation that she will end up with Gilbert Blythe is built in from the moment he says, "Carrots!' It can be delayed through several books, but it is, ultimately, inescapable for the books and the screen adaptions that have multiplied in recent years.

Exceptions do not disprove the general rule
That is not to say that no novels without marriage resolutions are adapted. Certainly some are, though not nearly with the same frequency as those that do feature the conventional happy ending.
Having the heroine remain single is not nearly as satisfying in terms of mass appeal.


The reader now may be bristling at the thought that we retain the same kind of conventional expectations even in modern times. Aren't we now enlightened enough to appreciate a story that does not end like a child's fairy tale? Yes, certainly, some of us are. But when success is measured in terms of pleasing the most possible people, you do need to stick to certain conventions.

Austen fans in a tizzy
This becomes clear in the reactions to the ending of the Sanditon series. If you look on IMDB, you'll see that while most episodes rate about an 8, some even close to 9. But the final episode only rates a 6.9 and includes some individual ratings as low as one from viewers who were bitterly disappointed in the ending. Here's a typical one star review:

If you are going to finish a Jane Austen story, please give it a Jane Austen ending! I have really enjoyed this series but the ending completely ruined it all. All I can think is they wanted to leave it open for series two? But why wreck a whole series in the hope to hook people to a second. The ending this story deserved would have made me watch a second, but this? Doubtful!

The argument is if you're going to bank on the Austen name to lure us in, you better deliver on the promised happy ending we've grown to expect from the completed six novels. Obviously, the producers of the series intended to not end the first season with the happily ever after for the heroine because there had been hopes of a second series, but that is not enough to assuage the outrage born of expectations unmet.

The pull of the marriage plot in a Jane Austen work  is simply too strong to be disregarded. Working against type here would leave your readership or audience is disconcerting as they feel cheated out of the social resolution  established in for the genre of comedy and the novel about women.


Related: 

Jane Austen: Love and Money
Love and Limerence in Jane Austen

Three Janes, Two Governesses, and the Abolitionist Movement
Some observations on Jane Austen's Emma
Jane Austen and Autism
Jane Austen's Heroines
Pride and Prejudice in Job Applications
Pride, Prejudice and Persuasion: Obstacles to Happiness in Jane Austen's Novels
The Big Bow-wow & Bit of Ivory
Jane Austen and Capability Brown
Pride and Prejudice in Job Applications

The marriage of opposites

Shakespeare begins Sonnet 116 with the declaration, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds/ Admit impediments." In real life, some marriages may not be based so much on the coming together of minds but on the attraction of opposites. That's the case for introverts who marry extroverts, as was the case of each of the three authors featured in Perspectives on Introversion.
The two could complement each other, and come, potentially, come up with a better balance than a couple consisting of two social butterflies who always seek out a crowd or two introverts who end up staying home all the time. On the other hand, the two might clash when it comes to deciding how often to go to parties, entertain others, and how many guests to invite. 
The extrovert may push for more social opportunities, which recharge his/her energies, while the introvert may feel stressed by having to constantly make small talk at such gatherings. Is it inevitable that they end up citing irreconcilable differences in divorce court?

Not necessarily.

In her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, Susan Cain, who admits to being an introvert happily married to an extrovert explains that being married to one's social opposite can work quite well. The key is to understand the other's point of view and arrive at a compromise that will be a win-win for both. She offers the example of such a couple in conflict over the gregarious husband's desire for weekly dinner parties. His introvert wife dreaded such social situations and wanted to be absent from them, a solution that did not appeal to him. The winning solution was one that cut back the parties to twice a month and that changed the format to a buffet style with flexible seating that allowed the shy wife to select a seat at an edge or within a smaller group that would allow her to opt out of small talk and opt into more meaningful, intimate conversations. Other conflicts over public versus private outlets could be resolved in similar ways.

For more on this, see https://therapychanges.com/blog/2016/12/introverts-extroverts-brain-chemistry-differences/

Rrelated posts: 

http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2012/04/working-alone.html

http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2012/04/great-introvert.html 

http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/06/jane-austens-heroines-from-extroverted.html

http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/08/happiness-is.html

http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2014/12/views-on-boundaries.html

http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/11/public-or-it-didnt-happen.html

Wife for sale in literature and real life

I'm currently in the middle of  Jane Austen's England by the husband and wife team of  Roya and Lesley Adkins. It's history made up a mix of documents, letters, and some references to Austen's writings, which is pretty easy to read for nonfiction, though I do sometimes tire of some of the details that seem to be thrown in simply because the documentation for them is on hand.

 While this book refers to a famous author to capture the attention of potential readers,  it ignores another one completely in recounting one way men sought to dissolve marriages without acts of Parliament -- by selling their wives. Though this practice was, in fact, illegal, it happened more than once.

Here's the account on pages. 17-18:

    One way of ending a wretched marriage was for a husband to sell his wife -- regarded as the poor man's divorce. Some sales were by consent of the wife, but at other times they were carried out against her will. Leaving a wife to a public place with a rope tied around her neck and then selling her, like an animal at market, was thought -- wrongly -- to be a legal and binding transaction, transferring the marriage to somebody else. Commentators considered wife-selling a barbaric practice, but it persisted to the late nineteenth century, and John Brand noted: "A remarkable superstition still prevails among the lowest of our Bulgar, that a man may lawfully sell his wife to another, provided he deliver her over with a halter about her neck.It is painful to observe, that instances of this occur frequently in our newspapers."

Two newspaper account of wife sales are cited. The second one also entails the sale of the couple's child in January 1815. It included a copy of the deed of sale:

"I, John Osborn, doth agree to part with my wife, Mary Osboren, and child, to William Sergeant, for the sum of one pound, in consideration of giving up all claim whatever, whereunto I have made my mark as acknowledgement."

What struck me most about these account is that absence of a reference to Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge.  In the novel, some of the guilt that pervades Hardy's work is the realization that the sale does not effectively dissolve the marriage. The shame of it is central to the plot.

In a Victorian Web post on the wife sale in the novel, Hardy's justification for the title character's wife going along with the sale is cited.

It may seem strange to sophisticated minds that a sane young matron could believe in the seriousness of such a transfer; and were there not numerous other instances of the same belief the thing might scarcely be credited. But she was by no means the first or last peasant woman who had religiously adhered to her purchaser, as too many rural records show.

A 1962  Macmillan edition included notes from  editors Andrew A. Orr and Vivian De Sola Pinto that attest to Hardy's having looked into wife sales in newspapers from the early 1800s:

Thomas Hardy had heard of such a case at Portland [not far from Dorchester, on the English Channel], and that it suggested this incident to him. In the "Observer" of March 24, 1833, the following extract from the "Blackburn Gazette" appeared: "Sale of a Wife--A grinder named Calton sold his wife publicly in the market place, Stockport, on Monday week. She was purchased by a shop-mate of the husband for a gallon of beer. The fair one, who had a halter round her neck, seemed quite agreeable."

Keith Wilson cites additional instance in the 1997 Penguin edition (revised in 2003). He observes  that Hardy copied into three such examples into his "Facts from Newspapers, Histories, Biographies, & other chronicles" notebook (now in the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester) One article describes a sale that takes place in the same time period as the sale in the novel:

one of these entries, dated 6 December 1827, is particularly relevant: 'Selling wife. At Buckland, nr. Frome, a labring [sic] man named Charles Pearce sold his wife to a shoemaker named Elton for £5, & delivered her in a halter in the public street. She seemed very willing. Bells rang.' See Christine Winfield, "Factual Sources of Two Episodes in The Mayor of Casterbridge(Nineteenth-Century Fiction 25 [1970], 224-31. (Page 328)

No halter  involved in the sale of The Mayor of Caterbridge.  In fact, the wife throws off her customary meekness in leaving he man who sold her to a complete stranger. She flings her ring off and throws it at him. She also expresses her expectation for a better future for herself and her daughter, having  had "nothing but temper" with her husband.

Related post:
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/06/jane-austens-heroines-from-extroverted.html

Happiness is

Do you find happiness surrounded by the throngs of people and noise in a club? 

Or do you find in silent contemplation of the beauty nature? 

Happiness is not one-size-fits-all but a function of one's own subjectivity --whatever or whomever one loves. For some people that may be parties and rock concerts, while for others it may be reading a book on a beach and listening to a string quartet. Though one's choice of activity  is more social on an objective scale, that does not mean the individual is experiencing a greater feeling of happiness.

That's because happiness can be found in quiet contentment just as much as it is in outward celebration. 

For the chemistry that underlies the difference in preferences for pleasurable outlets between introverts and extroverts, see Introverts and Extroverts: The Brain Chemistry Behind Their Differences

 Herein lies the problem of declaring who is the happiest of them all.  As researchers rush in where angels fear to tread, psychologist Will Fleeson of Wake Forest University headed an often quoted  2010 study that declared extroverted behavior is correlated with happiness.

The abstract puts it as follows:

In Study 1, participants reported their extraversion and positive affect every 3 hr for 2 weeks. Each participant was happier when acting extraverted than when acting introverted. Study 2's diary methodology replicated the relationship for weekly variations in positive affect. Study 3's experimental methodology replicated the relationship when extraversion was manipulated within a fixed situation. Thus, the relationship between extraversion and positive affect, previously demonstrated between persons, also characterizes the internal, ongoing psychological functioning of individuals and is likely to be explained by something capable of rapid intraindividual variation. Furthermore, traits and states are at least somewhat isomorphic, and acting extraverted may increase well-being. 

Sophia Dembling addressed the problem with the definitions of happiness here in her book The Introvert's Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World. As I suspected from the shortness of the chapters in the book, they are based on previously published blog posts. The one on the happiness study is at http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-introverts-corner/201009/is-our-definition-happiness-extrovert-centric:

For his research, Fleeson drew on a three-component model of happiness, using just one of the three components: Positive affect. That's the happy other people can see and hear, and it is strongly related to extroversion. The second leg of the stool is life satisfaction, which is more cognitive than emotional: Even if you're not feeling great at the moment, you know your life is pretty good all around. (Introverts have a little bit less of that kind of happiness than extroverts. We think too much, right?)
The third component of happiness is absence of negative affect--not having anxiety, fear, anger, frustration. "And the opposite of that is feeling at peace, at ease," Fleeson explained.
At peace, at ease. Those also sound introvert-ish to me.
So one could argue that introvert happiness here is being described as a sort of negative space. Feeling peaceful is not positive affect, it is the lack of negative affect.....

As she points out, though, the peaceful, calm type of happy is the one that introverts normally prefer to what she describes as "one long Mountain Dew commercial." Even though they do sometimes want to socialize as much as the next person, extended extroverted behavior drains them of energy, which would make them not exactly happy -- even if they are keeping up a socially accepted smile..

Oh, and whether introverts pay a price for behaving like extroverts is research for another day. Fleeson didn't explore the energy cost for introverts behaving extroverted, although he personally understands the need to crawl into a dark room after a stretch of interaction.
But he did say that when he had subjects sit at a table and assigned them to act either introverted or extroverted for ten minutes at a time, the subjects who got most exhausted by the task were extroverts who had to behave introverted.

 Maybe extroversion is a force so strong that suppressing it is exhausting. Or maybe introversion generates energy of its own, so intense it wears extroverts out. 

A note on the book, it does make some excellent observations about introverts, though as it is a short paperback, it is much less thorough than Susan Cain's book. I also found the short chapters too much like blog posts, which, as self-contained pieces sometimes overlap a bit with other chapters in the book -- though it's great for people who like to just read a couple of pages at a time.  

Dembling  refers in places to Laurie Helgoe's writing, which I reviewed, along with Cain's and another name in the field of inroversion in http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2012/05/perspectives-on-introversion-this-is.html Interesting that all these books are written by women. While the other three all identify their husbands as extroverts, Dembling is not altogether clear about that; it sounds like he is also an introvert, though more extroverted than she is.

Related:

Working alone
The Great Introvert
Jane Austen's Heroines Ranging from Extroverted Emma to Introverted Fanny
Views on Boundaries
Public or it didn't happen

Perspectives on Introversion (this is a long post)

Within the space of a number of weeks, I read

Order these here 

 three books on introverts. I started with most recent and most publicized within that category: Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't StopTalking(2012) 

Unlike the authors of the other two books, Susan Cain is not a psychologist. She actually started out as a Wall Street lawyer. Having recognized her own ability to negotiate based on introverted traits and became a consultant and writer. Her book reflects some careful research and interviews with some insight based on her own experience.  

The pieces of the book may have functioned as separate articles. She talks about quiet strength in heroic figures like Gandhi and Rosa Parks – who partnered with the more extroverted Martin Luther King, Jr.  She runs through the problem for introverts at school who are utterly silenced by the dynamics set into play by group divisions and work places that  that torture introverts with open plans. She also looks at the contrast between Asian (quiet, introverted) culture and American (louder, extroverted) culture and how those caught between two worlds cope.  

While Cain is generally very positive about introvert traits, the book does include sections on faking it as an extrovert, which she calls “self-monitoring.”  It becomes necessary for any introvert whose life’s passion includes the necessity of interacting with groups of people, whether it is a professor who must deliver lectures or an author who must promote her book.

The second book I read on the topic was The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World by Marti Olsen Laney (2002).  I found this one seriously annoying at times. The fact that the author insists on referring to introverts as “innies” made me want to take Dorothy Parker’s advice about a certain novel and throw it with great force. However, I refrained from doing so because it was a library book and I was resolved to follow through on reading, for persistence is one of the great introvert traits.

Laney’s book is just loaded with advice, much of which is not particular to introverts – like pack
sunscreen, drink water (add some lemon juice to pick yourself up) and dress in layers to assure comfort. She justifies the inclusion of such by saying that introverts tend to have sensitive skin and also may be more sensitive to temperature changes with a tendency to be cold. Well, I do slather on the sunscreen but not because of any introvert traits. Such practical but somewhat irrelevant advice is a minor annoyance, as far as this book goes.

 What is more problematic is the way she constructs an introvert. She stresses that introverts are set in a “throttle-down” mode which makes it take longer for them to process information and more stimulant-averse. That may be true, but really I have not found that being an introvert makes me any slower than other people. In fact, I move pretty quickly and efficiently. 

 The thing that most bothers me about Laney is that her book title is completely misleading.  The way introverts come off, poor, delicate, slow creatures who are easily overwhelmed, they really have no advantage. In fact, in order to survive they simply must learn how to act and talk like an extrovert. 

 The lowest point for me in the book is when she offers suggestions to make small talk that include gems like “Isn’t the food delicious?” and “Isn’t this a lovely home?” Yup, that’s just what introverts despise – empty conversation just to fill in the silence.  If you have to resort to such stratagems, you may want to consider Lincoln’s observation, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”  

In contrast to Laney's approach, Laurie Helgoe’s book, IntrovertPower: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength (Sourcebooks 2008)  is the ultimate introvert manifesto. It pretty much say, “We make up at least half the world’s population; we have the right to be ourselves and not conform to any other standard.” She spends quite a bit of time debunking the perception that introverts make up only 1/3 of the world and so are overwhelmed by the majority made up of extroverts. She points to flaws in statistics and identification to make the case for over 50% of people qualifying as introverts.  Cain does touch on the perception of numbers but does not make the larger number central to her approach.

 I admit I found this book a lot more fun to read than Laney’s. It also flowed rather more organically than Cain’s. She does touch on Japanese culture, as Cain did, but in a much more brief and personalized way. The focus of the book nearly always comes back to Helgoe’s assertion of being an unapologetic introvert.  That is someone who does not buy into the argument that she is missing out on the fun that extrovert have: “The Socially Accessible introvert looks like an extrovert on the outside and sees extroversion as a bar that he or she can never quite reach. These individuals are often very successful in social arenas, but fault themselves for not having fun.”  That leads to feelings of “alienation from self” which can result in depression (p 27).  

 

Her positive spin on introvert traits really resonated with me, like the definition on p. 7: 

being an introvert does not mean you’re antisocial, asocial, or socially inept. It does mean that you are oriented to ideas…. It means that you prefer spacious interactions with fewer people. And it means that, when you converse, you are more interested in sharing ideas than in talking about people and what they’re doing. In a conversation with someone sharing gossip, the introvert’s eyes glaze over and his brow furrows as he tries to comprehend how this conversation could interest anyone.   It is also important to recognize that it’s not just a matter of preference, but of survival:
“For introverts, being ‘talked to death’ is very much like being beaten on the head. … most of us feel drained of life energy. Talk can hurt us, and protecting ourselves from harm is not rude” (133).

 In contrast to Laney’s advice for making conversation in social situations, Helgoe insists that you can be an introvert when interacting at a party: “Be real. If you want real, be real. You don’t have to keep small talk small. You can be polite without selling out. You can acknowledge someone without grinning from ear to ear. Let your depth be evident in your manner, and the people you meet will actually meet you.” (p. 153)

Along the same lines, (on p. 127) she offers ways “to ‘go deep’ with people you find through introvert channels:”

Don’t…

Introduce topics that bore you – i.e, ‘Where do you work?’

Ask questions that can be answered with ‘fine’ – i.e., ‘How are you?’

Do…

Ask question you don’t know the answer to – i.e., ‘When did you first know you wanted to teach?’

Ask for personal definitions – i.e., ‘Help me understand. When you say the film was ‘dark’ what does that meant to you?’

Observe. Notice how it’s going. Allow silence. Don’t try too hard.

Helgoe includes the biographical detail that she came from a family of ten children but chose to have only two because of her introverted nature.  While very devoted to her husband and children, she does not feel guilty about taking time – even overnight retreats – for herself. Like Cain, she likes to coffee bars, and will park herself in one for hours. But her preference is to travel out to one not in her neighborhood. In the inverse of the assumption of the “Cheers” theme song, sometimes she wants to go where no one knows her name. She wants to be around people that she can choose to engage with – or not – with no obligation to catch up and converse if she wishes to remain alone in the crows.

The three books touch on the pleasures and perils of mixed marriages, as conflict is inevitable when an introvert is wedded to an extrovert.  Cain offers a nice example of a compromise that does not make either side give in (see the-marriage-of-opposites), while Laney says she and her husband take turns selecting vacation destinations (I noticed that Amazon includes The Introvert and Extrovert in Love: Making It Work When Opposites Attract by Marti Laney PsyD MFT and Michael Laney (2007), though it has only 9 reviews)

All three introvert writers are women married to extroverts. They also all happen to be mothers – with Cain and Helgoe both identifying their children as boys, while Laney is already a grandmother.  So they do have much in common, and the books do, inevitably offer some overlap. However, each has her own take on what is central to the introvert experience. 

Cain’s is quiet, Laney’s seems to be a slower pace, while Helgoe’s is escape from intrusion.  Now, if I were to come up with my own take on introversion, it would be autonomy – being allowed the space and the independence to do what one wants without having to check with another. 

For the chemistry that underlies the difference in preferences for pleasurable outlets between introverts and extroverts, see Introverts and Extroverts: The Brain Chemistry Behind Their Differences

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