The role women play in the short stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

So let's take a moment to think about the role of women in Isaac Bashevis Singer's short stories because that's a troubling and perplexing issue. First, on one level, you have to give him credit in that the women in his fiction, especially the vast majority of the early stories that are set in the shtetls in Poland in the early part of the 20th century, are extremely powerful figures - often running the family farm or business operations with much great cunning, expertise, and acuity than their spouses, if they even have spouses. These are, generally, not retiring housewives or deferential helpmeets - they're the rock and the strength and the spirit of the families. And yet - all of their work and effort and energy serves essentially the purpose of letting their husbands off easy: often to pursue drinking and other dereliction, at best to pursue the life of a rabbincal scholar, a pathway entirely closed to the women of the village. So it's an ambiguous female power and authority. On a second, deeper level, almost universally in his fiction the powerful women are dangerous, evil, or possessed, or all three - they're very often unfaithful to their husbands, they may be alluring but they're also enchantresses, causing nothing but heartbreak and turmoil. The sense that Singer deeply distrusts and even hates women, or perhaps a better way to put it is that he distrusts and hates his own attraction to beautiful women, colors all of his stories and builds cumulatively as you read through any of the early collections. Granted, he writes about extremes, as many writers do - following Tolstoy's famous dictum, all happy families are alike, and so forth. But one after another, his stories involve women who are either possessed (and often but not always harmful to their spouses - a benevolent possession is the theme of Esther Kreindel the Second) or simply forces of destruction in the community. A few of his most famous stories, such as Gimpel the Fool, are to a degree warm-hearted and spiritual, but most of the stories are much darker than we expect, especially if you come to these shtetl stories anticipating the whimsy of a collection like The Wise Men of Chelm. To Singer's credit, he has a consistent if dour view of humanity and his stories articulate that vision in many guises - but, despite the surface humor in many of the stories, the vision is dark, especially regarding the women characters.