Feiffer’s Game: Questioning Myths and Selling Fantasies

Put-downs and pathos at Bennington College (1969)

Jules Feiffer didn’t look much like the hunched, self-doubting characters he drew. But his attitude and what he was willing to reveal about himself did make him seem more like Bernard, his introspective cartoon creation, than outward appearances at first indicated.

Greg Guma photos, shot for Jan. 1969 story

The satirist, novelist and playwright was an understated Woody Allen, an impish intellectual who masked his problems in wry humor directed mainly at his own generation and lifestyle. When he visited with a small group of women in the Carriage Barn at Bennington College one Friday afternoon in January 1969, the students who expected him to take their side on the “generation gap” and put down middle-class hypocrisy were treated instead to a mustached David Susskind (then a serious TV panel host) who was more interested in hearing opinions than pushing them.

Feiffer wore a turtle-neck and puffed compulsively on a cigar as he moderated a rambling dialogue that ranged from the women’s movement and psychoanalysis to old movies, American fantasies and drugs. The room’s white backdrop created a neutral space somewhat like the world his cartoon figures inhabited, a stark environment that focuses attention on the speakers. One of the few men in the room, I was there as a reporter for the local daily on one of my early feature assignments. 

Jules Feiffer: “We usually dream what we are supposed to.” 

Pulling his straight-backed chair into the center of the space, away from a young woman who was trying to record the discussion, Feiffer began with a little irony. “The people I spoke with this morning said the talk was so high-minded that they didn’t get to talk about what they wanted - cartoons. Well, maybe we can spread about a minute and half on that.”

The group laughed. Feiffer also laughed, as he usually did when he thought he said something funny. After that the topic of cartoons, for which he had become nationally famous, wasn’t mentioned again for two hours.

He had just returned from an artist’s colony in Saratoga Springs, he explained , and had written a play about “the sex lives of people from 1940 to 1969.” The play, although never produced, became the Mike Nichols film Carnal Knowledge. The comment sparked a lively dialogue on women’s rights. 

Feiffer: “The only way to go through life
happily is to be lobotomized.”  

“I’ve been doing a lot of reading about women, analysis of women and what the creatures want,” he confided slyly to a room full of them, most waiting for a humorous insight. “And what I’ve found is that there is a slightly patronizing tone in any books that men write on the subject. The things that make sense are by women.” It wasn’t a joke, but made the point. 

From there the conversation moved on to writing, and the status of women in that field. Warming up slightly, Feiffer shared his perception that “because men have always been more free to move around and incorporate this into writing, people used to think of writing as a field not open to women.”

Several students said they still felt this prejudice. But instead of agreeing Feiffer echoed what they had been reading lately in career guides, the idea that writing was a career now accessible to anyone, regardless of gender. Pressed for details, however, he agreed that unequal treatment of women remained a huge problem.

“People have a very important reason usually when they hold onto myths,” he continued. It was a theme in some of his work. “If a guy can’t feel better than his wife, he feels better than nobody,” he said ruefully. “His job is probably degrading to him, so his choices of who to dominate are narrowed to his wife or children. That’s how the game has traditionally been played.”

The discussion next shifted to “woman power” as a movement. “Isn’t it amazing,” he mused, “that you have to organize to do what must be obvious?”

Each time a topic was introduced, usually by a random remark from someone in the audience, Feiffer would quickly deflect the focus from himself and promote discussion among the students, sometimes nodding recognition and calling on others as they signaled interest. Maybe he was collecting material for another play, I thought at the time, or maybe a cartoon series on college attitudes and hang ups. Or possibly he just preferred to remain a bit of an enigma to his fans, who hung on each response and waited patiently for the punchlines.

The few personal details that did emerge included the facts that Feiffer was 40 at the time, married, and living with nagging feelings of inadequacy that had kept him in psychoanalysis for at least 10 years so far. And that experience left him firmly convinced people cannot solve their problems alone.

His general reticence vanished only once, when the conversation turned to a definition of male fantasies. Feiffer began by sharing one of the advantages of working for Playboy — that you could occasionally express your true feelings about the publication directly to the editor.

“One night Hefner was telling me how his magazine has helped liberate women,” he casually name-dropped, “and I said maybe I could believe that if my image of the “Playboy Man” wasn’t someone who walked into a room, elegantly dressed, with a girl on each arm.”

Still, he characterized Hefner’s periodical a “fantasy magazine,” adding that it presented “what every guy is supposed to dream he wants out of life. And we usually dream what we are supposed to. There are lots of those people out there reading it and it’s not for the fiction, I swear to you.”

Continuing on the subject of fantasies as expressed in media, he suggested that Vogue likewise targeted the “female dream, a composed, sophisticated and dominant female, escorted by an effeminate male.”

Toward the end of the afternoon, Feiffer did acknowledge that dominant fantasies were changing, and that people were beginning to “have fantasies they aren’t supposed to have.” Two examples he offered were Lenny Bruce, the controversial comedian who had become a martyr for free speech and the young upon his death a few years earlier, and Phillip Roth, author of the sexually-explicit Portnoy’s Complaint. Both had given voice to formerly taboo fantasies, he argued.

Speaking of taboos, he pivoted, “the only thing that bothers me about the drug culture is the use of drugs for escape rather than as a force moving forward.” He clarified by suggesting that both drugs and alcohol could potentially be valuable as therapy, then clarified further by noting that this was not usually how they were used. 

Personally, Feiffer admitted, he preferred “the therapeutic value of booze.” So much so, in fact, that he believed his drinking helped him to clear his mind when he became confused or upset about his work or life. Talk about a fantasy. 

Fielding each question or comment with respect and keen attention, he often seemed much too serious and mainstream that day to be the same artist whose sharp perceptions — an original mixture of put-on, put-down and pathos — had made him a pop philosopher and one of the leading illustrators in the country.

After two hours, however, it became quite clear why Jules Feiffer was able to capture the insecurity of middle-aged men. He was one of the gang, another captive sending out desperate messages, and possibly a few personal confessions along the way. 

Only once did Feiffer’s dark streak fully break through. Asked about happiness in life, he puffed on his cigar, scratched his forehead with a single finger, and then replied: “The only way to go through life happily is to be lobotomized.” 

The audience laughed. Feiffer smiled. Success.

Clarina's Choice: Moving On for Women's Rights

Lest I leave the impression that Vermont has always been fertile territory for free thinkers, consider Clarina Nichols, who ultimately traded Vermont for Kansas to fulfill her dreams.

     In 1847, Nichols' articles deploring the lack of property rights for women sparked state legislation granting married women the right to inherit, own and bequeath property. Two years later her efforts led to more reforms; laws allowing women to insure the lives of their husbands, legalizing joint property ownership, and broadening inheritance rights for widows.
     But she was frustrated. Until women had the right to vote, Nichols felt they would be basically powerless. She wrote: “We are the best judges…and should hold in our own hands, in our own right, means for acquiring the one and comprehending the other…Women must look to the ballot for self-protection.”
     Even as a young girl Nichols understood the importance of a “scientific” education for women. If they received any schooling at all, the main lessons focused on home skills like needlepoint, comportment and etiquette. At her graduation in 1829, she delivered a speech titled “Comparative of a Scientific and an Ornamental Education for Women.”
     After briefly teaching she married Justin Carpenter, a Baptist minister, and the family moved to Herkimer in New York.  The next decade was spent raising three children and running a seminary for young women. But in 1840 she returned to Vermont – with the children but not Mr. Carpenter – and started writing for the Windham County Democrat. Three years later she divorced. Six days after the divorce was final she married George Nichols, editor and publisher of the Democrat.
     When her new husband became ill she took over the editing, and under her direction the paper’s circulation grew from 100 to 1,850. She made it more literary and used its pages to advocate for women’s rights and abolition, as well as against the use of alcohol.
     She told an 1851 Women’s Rights Convention held in Worcester, Massachusetts, “It is a fact that our wearing apparel belongs to our husbands and when they choose to pawn or sell our clothing for drink, they can do so.”
     Nichols’ suffrage work led to a long-standing friendship with Susan B. Anthony but conflict with Vermont’s legislative establishment. Her first appearance at the Statehouse – the first ever by a woman – outraged many people in the audience. The editor of the Rutland Herald threatened to come to the capital with a man’s suit and dress her in it.
     After Nichols testified in favor of women’s right to vote in school district elections, the Education Committee concluded that “women are the proper educators and trainers of the young.” But committee members remained unconvinced on suffrage. Instead of acting on the issue, they recommended that women “entrust the advocacy of their views and interests to a male relative or friend.”
     Nichols decided that it was time to try a state where she could be more effective. One of Vermont’s restless spirits was moving on.
     She picked Kansas, in part, because a temperate climate might improve her husband’s health. But George Nichols died just a year after the move in 1854. Still, her basic hunch was correct. In Kansas, she was able to win campaigns to insert many rights for women into the constitution, including voting rights in school elections. In 1866 she moved to Washington, DC with her daughter, where she ran the Home for Colored Orphans.
     The same year that Nichols left Vermont Lucy Stone, already a leading voice for abolition and suffrage, gave a fiery speech in Randolph. People should withhold their taxes until women had the right to vote, she urged. But it was her appearance that created the real stir during that visit. Focusing on her attire, reporters wondered why attractive young women in the audience were parading around in “unfeminine” bloomers. Stone and other activist women had become admirers of Amelia Bloomer’s trousered dresses, which permitted women to work more freely, especially when carrying things.
     Vermont’s leaders resisted giving women the vote right up to the end. When a suffrage bill was passed by the state legislature in 1919, Governor Percival Clement called it unconstitutional and refused to sign. In 1920, when the state was pressured to ratify the 19th amendment, the governor again declined to help, refusing to call a special legislative session.
     It became national law anyway. A year later, Edna L. Beard, a former school superintendent, became the first woman elected to the state legislature.