The Devil Wears Prada vs. The Bell Jar

Holiday-reading does unlikely things: the consecutive reading of two books of entirely different pedigrees and I find a wealth of matter for comparison. Yeah yeah, clearly Lauren Weisberger’s chick-lit ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ has far too meagre a portion of credibility to be discussed in the same sentence as Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Bell Jar’; but I can’t be the only one who’s noticed a similarity in basic form between the two. Ok. So they’re two semi-autobiographical novels with a first person narrative by women in their early twenties, both (initially at least) set in New York. Wait! There’s more too: both chart a year in the lives of the protagonists who are starting out working for women’s fashion magazines. Both experience severe trials (alright, so Plath’s suidical depression is worse than Weisberger’s ‘devil’ boss but hey, we all fight our own personal demons), and despite the forty year time difference between the penning of the novels, gender issues emerge through both narratives. However, though Plath’s novel is older than Weisberger’s, it has a much stronger awareness of the gender issues affecting it’s protagonist Esther: perhaps it is this that limits the magnitude of Weisberger’s Andrea’s problems to a few stilettos and a demanding boss.
Whilst Esther notes the hypocrisy in her society (late – fifties US) that, for example, tolerates promiscuity in men and condemns it in women, Andrea (woman of the noughties) is busy criticizing the driven, work ethic of her boss who is female (modelled on US Vogue’s Anna Wintour), that would pass for normal in a male equivalent, and her boyfriend is criticising her for working late and not being there for dinner. ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ is full of cliché about the fashion world, as well as women’s role, and it’s disappointing to see a portrayal of a woman in powerful position who works hard as the ‘The Devil’, or of an aspiring young woman as unbalanced, unhappy and not fulfilling the ‘there to care’ model, in a novel that considers itself to be thoroughly modern. I would be lying if I said Weisberger’s book isn’t a fun read (though that has as much to do with my fantasizing over designer clothes as anything else) but, as a fairly hard-working, aspiring female, these issues grate nevertheless.
Plath’s book manages to entertain even if, ( and I mean it, its genuinely witty, I ain’t kidding) the strain of gender stereotypes and hypocritical contemporary attitudes towards women cause a difficulty with reality on the part of the protagonist that results in multiple suicide attempts, sectioning and some seriously dated and traumatic psychiatric treatment. What shocked me, was that forty years later, in a supposedly ‘equal’ society I strongly identified with Plath’s view of reality as overwhelmingly contradictory and alienating. It is rare to turn on the television without seeing some woman having a fucking orgasm over a cleaning product, air freshener, a toilet roll, some new addition to packed lunches. Or equally adverts for ‘Nuts’ magazine with the slogan ‘Women, don’t expect any help on a Monday!’ with a picture of a woman helplessly trying to change a lightbulb or fix a car, whilst her boyfriend gets a hard on over some plastic-boobed object. But what really, really pisses me off, is a KFC advert. Its for the ‘Mum’s night off deal’. Think about this phrase. Think about the advert (if you’ve had the misfortune to see it). We could be living in the fifties for Christ’s sake for the amount of progress evident from TV – which kid’s will watch and think ah yes! I’m totally within my rights to expect my mother to cook every night, clean all the time, and make everything smell of fucking fruits of the fucking forest. If I didn’t know the dates, and era-specific references were excluded you’d think that Plath’s book was the more recent, because really you’d think that Andrea, would just be happier cookin’ the kids a nice dinner rather than bothering with all of this career she-bang. I mean, its hardly surprising that possibly THE most influential and powerful person in an industry worth billions of pounds (people, I speak of Anna Wintour) is gonna be a demanding boss. Portraying her as the ‘Devil’ is just bloody unhelpful in changing the whole male/female in power ratio thing.
But in any case, if you want to read fun pap about clothes and you feel your convictions that a woman’s place is not just in the home are strong enough, read ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. If you want to read a book that will provoke thought about modernity in a shocking though witty way, read ‘The Bell Jar’.