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.As she does, she sees evidence thatwriting for her has been an ongoing form of commitment the oneplace where she can see development and maturation as somethingother than soul-crushing conformity.As she concentrates on herwriting, she becomes increasingly capable of seeing that other forms ofmaturation have also taken place in her life:It was.heartening to see how much I had changed in the past four years.I was able to send my work out now.I was not afraid to drive.Terrifiedof flying as I was, I didn t allow that fear to control me.Perhaps someday I dlose it altogether.If some things could change, so could other things.Whatright had I to predict the future and predict it so nihilistically? As I got olderI would probably change in hundreds of ways I couldn t foresee.(Jong 288)While we have been trapped in a serial narrative of obsessively recountedambivalence, it seems that a genuine künstlerroman has been going onbehind the scenes, in the pages of a set of notebooks that we have not beenallowed to read.Because Fear of Flying does not so much chart Isadora sincremental progression as switch channels to a plot that is already inprogress, this approach can only read as abrupt and unconvincing, despite 106 POPULAR FEMINIST FICTION AS AMERICAN ALLEGORYIsadora s pointed insistence that there was no Eureka, that no electriclight bulb went on in [her] head (Jong 288, emphasis in original).In fact, this Eureka moment is necessary if the novel is to appear toremain faithful to its own refusal of narrative progression.Crucially,by lodging Isadora s development within a story hidden from its readers,Fear of Flying keeps her transformation from structuring the novel asa whole.Therefore, Isadora can still insist that, for her, life has no plot, since the plot of her life has been a secret, even from herself.And,precisely because it is so unexpected, this narrative of maturation retainspeculiarly eventful qualities: it interrupts her ingrained self-perceptions,belying predictions and reminding Isadora and her readers of thepossibility of further surprises and positive transformations.For Isadora,we are asked to believe, progress is itself an unexpected event.YetIsadora also insists that her writing must be viewed as a life-longcommitment, a calling, a guiding passion ; that is, it retains all thecomforting and sustaining aspects of a life that has a plot (Jong 300).Inthe last-minute substitution of the hidden plot of the writing notebooksfor the plotless narrative we have been reading, Fear of Flying attemptsto displace the fundamental contradictions between a lifelong callingand an untrammeled event, arguing against its own amassed evidencethat artistic endeavor will allow women to have access to the event anddevelopment simultaneously.For Molly, finding a solution is perhaps even more difficult.WhileFear of Flying psychologizes Isadora s predicament, thereby leavingopen the possibility that a mental transformation will be sufficient toremake her relationship to the world, Molly s narrative is structured asa pitched battle between her single-minded will and a surroundingsociety that will not allow her to succeed.By the conclusion of the novel,she has been rejected by her adoptive mother, kicked out of school,kicked out of the house, abandoned by her best friend, fired from a job,and seriously mistreated at the New York University film school, wherethe all-male faculty and all-male student body connive to make thedepartment as inhospitable as possible.Through it all, Molly demonstratesher resistance by refusing to knuckle under to the forces that constrainher, clinging to the goal of artistic achievement that she has set herself.Yet this form of resistance has serious limitations, as a fight she has withher sometime lover Holly makes clear.Holly, who is African American,finds Molly frighteningly naïve about the possibilities for success inthe film world, no matter how worthy or persistent Molly is
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