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This paper analyzes how the themes of magical realism and female divinity intersect in the novel The Puttermesser Papers (1997) by Cynthia Ozick. In the “Introduction”, the writer defines magical realism and discusses its connections to Women’s Studies. The next section, “The Bitter Butter Knife”, discusses the protagonist’s (Ruth Puttermesser) boring existence and pathetic attempts to connect to her Jewish ancestry. In “The Problematic Paradise”, the author focuses on Puttermesser’s attempts to take control of her life by creating the first female golem and the ups and downs of paradise. This author argues that the female protagonist of the novel utilizes magical realism as a tool of empowerment over personal oppression.
Keywords: Cynthia Ozick, magical realism, Women’s Literature, Women’s Studies, Jewish American Literature
Introduction
Women have been central to nature since the world began. Givers of life, traditionally we also are the caregivers of all life because of connection to all of nature. Indeed, women’s spirituality espoused a belief that humans, nature, and the divine are equal but yet respects difference (Reich, 1993, p. 429).
Magical realism, like women’s spirituality, transcends all boundaries, because they both deal with where the supernatural and reality intersect, collide, and/or coexist. Even though this phenomenon suggests dualism or binary opposition, that is not the case since all things can equally interact in the magically real plane, just as in nature and in women’s spirituality. As time goes on, the magical becomes ordinary and commonplace, so much so that it becomes virtually unnoticeable (Danow, 1995, pp. 65-101; Zamora & Faris, 1995, pp. 1-11). So, if one looks closely enough, the origins of magical realism have been a part of our everyday lives since the world began. Whether one calls it women’s spirituality or magical realism, it is still a similar natural reality because, according to the position of magical realists, everything is connected in the universe. To these various group of people, magical realism can be construed as reality.
The Bitter Butter Knife
In the Puttermesser Papers (1997) by Cynthia Ozick, 34 years old Ruth Puttermesser (known mainly as Puttermesser in the text), a woman who does not have much of a life, eventually creates a fantasy life that becomes real—the very embodiment of magical realism. Puttermesser lives up to her last name, which means butter knife in Yiddish. Much like the utensil, she gets the job done, but that is all. A butter knife may be an essential mainstay to our culinary repertoire (in fact it is one of our most used utensils); however, it lacks versatility. It can only cut semi-hard food or spread it around. It is dull and innocuous, yet very necessary to eating. And like the usefulness of the butter knife Puttermesser, a lawyer, is “not quite a civil servant and not quite not a civil servant—one of those amphibious creatures hanging between base contempt and bare decency”(Ozick, 1997, p. 9) in New York City. Industrious and intelligent, she moves from task to task in the civil service wherever she is needed. Hence, she is ignored, much like a butter knife. She is even isolated from other Jews at the workplace because of her pronunciation of certain vowels and consonants for “almost all of the regionalism was drained out, except for the pace of her syllables, which had a New York deliberateness, Puttermesser could have been from anywhere” (Ozick, 1997, p. 8). Like the butter knife, she can fit in anywhere with minimum fuss, making it easy for her to be overlooked.
Single and living alone, she spends all of her spare time reading about a variety of subjects that make up her fantasy world:
(…) How was it possible that a whole language [Hebrew], hence a whole literature, a civilization even, should rest on the pure presence of three letters of the alphabet? The Hebrew verb, a stunning mechanism: three letters, whichever fated three, could command all possibility simply by a change in their pronunciation, or the addition of a wing-letter fore and aft. Every conceivable utterance blossomed from this trinity. It seemed to her not so much a language for expression as a code for the world’s design, indissoluble, predetermined, translucent. The idea of the grammar of Hebrew turned Puttermesser’s brain into a palace, a sort of Vatican; inside its corridors she walked from one resplendent triptych to another. (Ozick, 1997, p. 5)
Despite books being her only friend, Puttermesser will not change her position in the municipal building because “The difficulty with Puttermesser is that she is loyal to certain environments” (Ozick, 1997, p. 12). She is loyal to places, because they are the only tangible and concrete links she has to the world while books represent her abstract one. The space/place between the tangible and the abstract is where magical realism resides.
Besides her home and workplace, Puttermesser communes with nature in a city park near work where “to postulate an afterlife was her single irony” (Ozick, 1997, p. 13). Sitting under a tree in what she calls her“Eden”, she reads stacks of books while munching on sweets (Ozick, 1997, p. 13). While many people would consider these simple pleasures means to while the time away, to Puttermesser, these pleasures are her whole life. Sad, but true, this scenario constitutes her ideal afterlife for “[I]n Eden insatiable Puttermesser will be nourished, if not glutted” (Ozick, 1997, p. 14).
Puttermesser may be Jewish, but her family was not religious. She studies Hebrew because she wants to belong to something. So, she creates another fantasy Eden in which she imagines visiting a great Uncle Zindel who was “a shammes of a torn-down shul [a sexton in a synagogue]”. Puttermesser imagines this uncle teaching her Hebrew; unfortunately, he died before she was born:
Of the world that was, there is only this single grain of memory: that once an old man, Puttermesser’s mother’s uncle, kept his pants up with a rope belt, was called Zindel, lived without a wife, ate frugally, knew the holy letters, died with a thorny English wilderness between his gums. To him Puttermesser clings. America is blank, and Uncle Zindel is all her ancestry. Unironic, unimaginative, her plain but stringent mind strains beyond the parents—what did they have? (Ozick, 1997, p. 17)
According to the above passage, it is not enough for Puttermesser to read Hebrew; she has to imagine herself totally immersed in it to give her a connection to her religious faith and Russian heritage.
Judaism and Womanhood
Judaism, like many religions, has many branches and varying beliefs; however, it does have some basic ones that all the variations follow. In Judaism, the written word is very important. The religion prides itself on scholarship to gain knowledge of God and the world around them (Eliade, Couliano, & Wiesner, 1991, pp. 167-183).
The role of women in this religion has interesting significance. Jewish women are considered separate but equal and have different duties then men. Indeed, God is considered to have both masculine and feminine qualities as opposed to Christianity, and both sexes were made in the image of God. Women have more “binah”(intuition, understanding, and intelligence) than men. However, in the Talmud women are denigrated as lazy and evil and are discouraged from seeking higher education or studying religion, because they may become too spiritually devoted and neglect their families. Despite these issues, Jewish women have rights such as buying, selling, and owning property, and in the last 20 years or so have more religious rights that previously were reserved just for men (Rich, 2005; Werblowsky & Wigoder, 1997, pp. 726-729).
Taking these ideas into consideration, note that the relative that Puttermesser relates to is a male. This fact has relevance, because he is the one that she knows links most to Judaism and her Russian ethnicity. A shammes is responsible for the everyday upkeep of the synagogue. Therefore, by maintaining the physical structure of the synagogue, a shammes maintains the abstract and symbolic attributes of Judaism. Judaism, despite women having more rights, is still like most religions that are based on a male deity, patriarchal. Despite the fact that Jewishness is matrilineal or traced through the mother’s bloodline, Jewish women are still denigrated and treated like second-class citizens.
Puttermesser teaches herself Hebrew, but she feels she has to validate her studies through a dead male relative she never knew because of Jewish beliefs. Although Jewish males are the “legitimate” Judaistic scholars, Puttermesser’s scholarship demonstrates that Jewish women have the same right to an education, or the same ability to acquire one. Symbolically, going through a man may be problematic, but the fact that Puttermesser studies the language of her religion and culture is revolutionary since it shows that women can be religious scholars as well.
The First Female Golem
Next, the novel jumps ahead to when Puttermesser is 46, and her life has gotten worse. Her married lover, Morris Rappoport, has just dumped her, because she would rather read Socrates than have sex, and she gets demoted because of office politics and bemoans that she will never have children. At this lowest point in her life, her butter knife becomes a decisively proactive sword (both knives obviously phallic); she creates her own golem. In Judaical mythology, a golem is a figure or creature typically made out of clay that comes to life. What typically brings a golem to life is a slip of paper with writing that is placed on its tongue (Werblowsky & Wigoder, 1997, p. 280). The first mention of a golem appears in The Bible, for Adam is considered to be the first one since he was made out of earth and water. Therefore, if one is Jewish or even Christian, a golem is not a legend—but a real creature, which makes the myth a magically real one. Over the centuries, the legend changed and grew, so that eventually the golem becomes soulless and eventually cannot be controlled. Hence, the only difference between humans and golems is that humans have a soul. Also, the legend changes according to the various branches of Judaism (Sherwin, 1985, pp. 3-14).
Many of these characteristics appear in the novel. Indeed, by creating a golem, Puttermesser has become the creator/Goddess. Instead of relying on a man’s sperm to impregnate her and waiting nine months, she, like the original Jehovah, creates life by mixing reddish clay and dirt from her plants and water after Rappoport leaves. However, she does not remember doing it:
A naked girl lay in Puttermesser’s bed. She looked dead—she was all white, bloodless (…) The body had a look of perpetuity about it, as if it had always been reclining there (…) Puttermesser peered down at the creature’s face. Ugly. The nose and mouth were clumsily formed (…) it was clear that the nostrils needed pinching to bring them closer together, so Puttermesser tentatively pinched. The improvement was impressive. (Ozick, 1997, pp. 37-38)
Despite her confusion, Puttermesser continues to shape the golem. Obviously, Puttermesser is the mother of her female golem. Even though Rappoport is not present when she is made, he is symbolically her father, because it is his departure that leads to her creation.
After the golem comes to life, Puttermesser tries to recollect creating her: It was true she had circled the creature on the bed. Was it seven times around? It was true she had blown some foreign matter out of the nose. Had she blown some uncanny energy into an entrance of the dormant body? It was true she had said aloud one of the Names of the Creator.(Ozick, 1997, p. 42)
Puttermesser does not remember creating her golem, because she was in such a mindless emotional state of despair that she blanked out. She instinctively made something that would help her fulfill her fantasy Eden, as well as fill that emptiness from not having children or making a lasting impact on humankind.
Significantly, Puttermesser’s actions do make history. Besides being the first woman to make a golem, she is the first to make a female one out of clay. According to Jewish lore, 11th century poet and philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol makes the first female golem made out of wood and hinges for sexual purposes. Of course, besides the negative feminine connotations, because of the material it is made out of, this creation seems more like a robot than a golem (Ozick, 1997, p. 16). By making her golem out of clay rather than other materials, Puttermesser legitimizes her creation by demonstrating that women can create life just as well as men can. According to Judaism, men do not have the monopoly on emulating or being close to God. Puttermesser’s butter knife is no longer a flaccidly innocuous phallic symbol; it becomes a positive feminine weapon in the fight for feminist power and autonomy.
Puttermesser’s creation is eventually named Xanthippe after Socrates’s wife. Xanthippe is mute yet knows all languages and writes all messages. Muteness in a golem depends on the story. Xanthippe writes, “I know everything you know. I am made of earth but also I am made out of your mind” (Ozick, 1997, p. 42). Like the first golem, she has the letters aleph, mem, and tav inscribed on her forehead. Therefore, Xanthippe knows everything Puttermesser does and Xanthippe obeys Puttermesser, because Puttermesser is her mother. Furthermore, Xanthippe represents the soulless Puttermesser, a being that is much like her creator yet has no scruples about doing something that Western society may find morally reprehensible.
What takes the golem from the mythological to the magically real realm is that real historical people supposedly created golems as well. Giving birth is miraculous, but physically creating life literally out of clay and water is certainly magical. Puttermesser researches that Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, circa 1520-1609, created the first golem. He created it after having a dream of heaven, giving the golem a magically realistically spiritual slant. This golem was used to fight the persecution of Jews in that city, a task the golem did very successfully by killing anti-Semites. Unfortunately, the golem eventually had to be destroyed by erasing the first of the three letters of its creation from its forehead. The golem grew too big to be controlled. It was placed in a barn, and one of the stories claimed that whoever touches the cobwebs around the golem would die (Ozick, 1997, pp. 44-46). Puttermesser discovers in her research that golem-makers were scientifically minded scholars and intellectuals, like herself (Ozick, 1997, p. 48). Having scientists create something magically real legitimizes the creation, especially in Puttermesser’s eyes. The act of creating a golem still falls within the realm of magical realism since the creator is godlike.
The Problematic Paradise
Besides her unusual entry into the world, Xanthippe’s obedience to Puttermesser helps her in miraculous ways. After Puttermesser is fired for complaining, she runs for mayor of New York and wins. Puttermesser spreads peace around much like a butter knife, making a paradise on earth. Because of the golem’s efforts, New York City has no crime, everyone has a job and happiness reigns:
The coming of the golem animated the salvation of the City, yes—but who, Puttermesser sometimes wonders, is the true golem? Is it Xanthippe or is it Puttermesser? Puttermesser made Xanthippe. Xanthippe did not exist before Puttermesser made her: That is clear enough. But Xanthippe made Puttermesser Mayor, and Mayor Puttermesser too did not exist before. And that is just as clear. Puttermesser sees that she is the golem’s golem. (Ozick, 1997, pp. 78-79)
Who made whom? It is not Puttermesser but her innocuous ways that give her success; it is Xanthippe’s actions on her behalf. Xanthippe takes Puttermesser’s inner desires and makes them shine in the real world.
Unfortunately for Puttermesser, her creation destroys what she creates. The reason a golem does not survive is because it gorges itself on life. Xanthippe constantly eats making her bigger and bigger everyday. Then her appetite turns from food to sex when she sleeps with her symbolic father, Morris Rappoport (Ozick, 1997, pp. 79-82). This act not only constitutes a form of incest, but since Xanthippe is an extension of Puttermesser, it is as if Puttermesser slept with Rappoport as well.
Puttermesser’s paradise is destroyed when Xanthippe’s insatiable sexual appetite wears out the male members of Puttermesser’s administration, to the point where they resign. Xanthippe “will no longer obey. She cannot be contained” (Ozick, 1997, p. 86). Because of Xanthippe’s neglect, New York City quickly sinks back into its old crime-ridden and high unemployment ways, and Puttermesser is destroyed and can never become mayor again.
Soon Puttermesser realizes that in order for her not to be destroyed utterly, she has to destroy Xanthippe. She gets Rappoport to help her get rid of her in a ritual that reverses her creation. Interestingly, Xanthippe speaks for the first time when she is being killed. They bury her in City Hall Park under some flowerbeds with a sign that reads “DO NOT TOUCH OR PICK” (Ozick, 1997, pp. 94-101). However, Xanthippe’s body still creates magic: “(…) Whoever touches or picks those stems of blood-colored blossoms soon sickens with flu virus, or sore throat, or stuffed nose accompanied by nausea—or, sometimes, a particularly vicious attack of bursitis” (Ozick, 1997, p. 101). Hence, like the first recorded golem, her influence can be harmful and will never go away.
As an extension of Puttermesser, the golem is able to do what Puttermesser’s nature will not allow her to do—to make concrete effective change. Puttermesser may be a butter knife, but Xanthippe is the sword. Also, like any sword, it can cut deeply and indiscriminately, even itself. Through her aggressive actions, Xanthippe lifts Puttermesser to the perfect earthly Eden of her dreams and then brutally cuts it away.
Getting Rappoport, Xanthippe’s pseudo-father and lover, to help in her decreation has significance as well. With his dumping of Puttermesser, he helped create the situations that brought Xanthippe into this world. Furthermore, by having sex with Xanthippe, he helped bring down paradise. Assisting in killing his “daughter”is the least he can do. Additionally, since he and Puttermesser’s sex life during their affair is limited, the over-exhausting relationship with Xanthippe balances it out. Xanthippe represents the gluttonous side of Puttermesser, the side she cannot be herself because of her nature.
In the magical indigenous cycle of life, however, paradise lost is found again. Toward the end of the novel, Puttermesser reads about the paradise that unknown to her she is about to join. She is stabbed to death and then raped (Ozick, 1997, p. 215). Ironically, a sharp knife kills her so she does not feel the rape. Typically, rape is a traumatic experience, because it takes away the victim’s power and dignity; however, in Puttermesser’s case, the penis in a twisted way symbolizes, in a Freudian way, the butter knife, because “[F]or her, the rape never happened at all” (Ozick, 1997, p. 220).
The Bitter Knife Afterlife
In Paradise, a finally happy Puttermesser creates her dream life with a husband and a child. The husband is a man she had a crush on when she was young. Unfortunately, her family gradually disappears. She discovers:
In Paradise, where sight and insight, inner and outer, sweet and salt, logic and illogic, are shuffled in the manner of a kaleidoscope, nothing is permanent. Nothing will stay. All is ephemeral. There is no long and no short; there is only immeasurable isness. Isness alone is forever; or name it essence, or soul. But the images within he soul shift, drift, wander. Paradise is a dream bearing the inscription on Solomon’s seal: This too shall pass… The secret meaning of Paradise is that it too is hell. (Ozick, 1997, p. 234)
By living up to her last name, butter knife, Puttermesser’s life of moderation, not being happy or sad, ironically was paradise, not her perfect Eden. She sings a song at the end of the novel:
At the point of a knife
I lost my life.
Butter, butter, butter,
butter knife.
If I were alive I wouldn’t fault
Anything under the heavenly vault.
Better, better, better,
better life.
Better never to have loved than loved at all. Better never to have risen than had a fall.
Oh bitter, bitter, bitter
butter
knife. (Ozick, 1997, p. 236)
Conclusions
By creating a female golem, Puttermesser takes control of her divinity. Trumping the somewhat male-dominated orientation of Judaism, she becomes a goddess who creates life out of the earth. Ironically, her useful not flashy butter knife-like style of living totally encapsulates what Paradise is really like. Living in moderation may be boring and unexciting, but it is the true path to living well. This realization causes the butter knife to become so bitter. Puttermesser so longed for a better life, and she tried to create it. However, what one creates must be destroyed, just like her golem and her version of Paradise.
In the magically real life and afterlife, Puttermesser thinks she has the control to change her life, but in effect she does not—such is life. The Wheel of Fortune or Circle of Life comes up and comes down. However, Puttermesser gains empowerment, even for a short while. That is more than many people ever achieve. The ultimate paradox is that she creates her own heaven and hell. Like her last name suggests, life and death never make a lasting impression. The cycle of life, death, and rebirth are only fated to continue.
References
Danow, D. K. (1995). The spirit of carnival: Magical realism and the grotesque. Lexington: University of Kentucky.
Eliade, M., Couliano, I. P., & Wiesner, H. S. (1991). Judaism. The HarperCollins concise guide to world religions: The A-To-Z encyclopedia of all the major religious traditions (pp. 167-183). New York: HarperCollins.
Ozick, C. (1997). The Puttermesser papers. New York: Vintage.
Reich, A. (1993). Women and spirituality. In J. Wetzel, M. L. Espenlaub, M. A. Hagen, A. B. McElhiney, & C. B. Williams(Eds.), Women’s studies: Thinking women (pp. 427-440). Dubuque: Kendall Hunt.
Rich, T. R. (2005, July 6). Judaism 101. Retrieved from http://www.jewfaq.org/htm
Sherwin, B. L. (1985). The golem legend: Origins and implications. Lanham: University Press of America.
Werblowsky, R. J. Z., & Wigoder, G. (Eds.). (1997). The Oxford dictionary of Jewish religion. New York: Oxford University Press.
Zamora, L. P., & Faris, W. B. (Eds.). (1995). Introduction. Magical realism: Theory, history, community (pp. 1-11). Durham: Duke University Press.
Keywords: Cynthia Ozick, magical realism, Women’s Literature, Women’s Studies, Jewish American Literature
Introduction
Women have been central to nature since the world began. Givers of life, traditionally we also are the caregivers of all life because of connection to all of nature. Indeed, women’s spirituality espoused a belief that humans, nature, and the divine are equal but yet respects difference (Reich, 1993, p. 429).
Magical realism, like women’s spirituality, transcends all boundaries, because they both deal with where the supernatural and reality intersect, collide, and/or coexist. Even though this phenomenon suggests dualism or binary opposition, that is not the case since all things can equally interact in the magically real plane, just as in nature and in women’s spirituality. As time goes on, the magical becomes ordinary and commonplace, so much so that it becomes virtually unnoticeable (Danow, 1995, pp. 65-101; Zamora & Faris, 1995, pp. 1-11). So, if one looks closely enough, the origins of magical realism have been a part of our everyday lives since the world began. Whether one calls it women’s spirituality or magical realism, it is still a similar natural reality because, according to the position of magical realists, everything is connected in the universe. To these various group of people, magical realism can be construed as reality.
The Bitter Butter Knife
In the Puttermesser Papers (1997) by Cynthia Ozick, 34 years old Ruth Puttermesser (known mainly as Puttermesser in the text), a woman who does not have much of a life, eventually creates a fantasy life that becomes real—the very embodiment of magical realism. Puttermesser lives up to her last name, which means butter knife in Yiddish. Much like the utensil, she gets the job done, but that is all. A butter knife may be an essential mainstay to our culinary repertoire (in fact it is one of our most used utensils); however, it lacks versatility. It can only cut semi-hard food or spread it around. It is dull and innocuous, yet very necessary to eating. And like the usefulness of the butter knife Puttermesser, a lawyer, is “not quite a civil servant and not quite not a civil servant—one of those amphibious creatures hanging between base contempt and bare decency”(Ozick, 1997, p. 9) in New York City. Industrious and intelligent, she moves from task to task in the civil service wherever she is needed. Hence, she is ignored, much like a butter knife. She is even isolated from other Jews at the workplace because of her pronunciation of certain vowels and consonants for “almost all of the regionalism was drained out, except for the pace of her syllables, which had a New York deliberateness, Puttermesser could have been from anywhere” (Ozick, 1997, p. 8). Like the butter knife, she can fit in anywhere with minimum fuss, making it easy for her to be overlooked.
Single and living alone, she spends all of her spare time reading about a variety of subjects that make up her fantasy world:
(…) How was it possible that a whole language [Hebrew], hence a whole literature, a civilization even, should rest on the pure presence of three letters of the alphabet? The Hebrew verb, a stunning mechanism: three letters, whichever fated three, could command all possibility simply by a change in their pronunciation, or the addition of a wing-letter fore and aft. Every conceivable utterance blossomed from this trinity. It seemed to her not so much a language for expression as a code for the world’s design, indissoluble, predetermined, translucent. The idea of the grammar of Hebrew turned Puttermesser’s brain into a palace, a sort of Vatican; inside its corridors she walked from one resplendent triptych to another. (Ozick, 1997, p. 5)
Despite books being her only friend, Puttermesser will not change her position in the municipal building because “The difficulty with Puttermesser is that she is loyal to certain environments” (Ozick, 1997, p. 12). She is loyal to places, because they are the only tangible and concrete links she has to the world while books represent her abstract one. The space/place between the tangible and the abstract is where magical realism resides.
Besides her home and workplace, Puttermesser communes with nature in a city park near work where “to postulate an afterlife was her single irony” (Ozick, 1997, p. 13). Sitting under a tree in what she calls her“Eden”, she reads stacks of books while munching on sweets (Ozick, 1997, p. 13). While many people would consider these simple pleasures means to while the time away, to Puttermesser, these pleasures are her whole life. Sad, but true, this scenario constitutes her ideal afterlife for “[I]n Eden insatiable Puttermesser will be nourished, if not glutted” (Ozick, 1997, p. 14).
Puttermesser may be Jewish, but her family was not religious. She studies Hebrew because she wants to belong to something. So, she creates another fantasy Eden in which she imagines visiting a great Uncle Zindel who was “a shammes of a torn-down shul [a sexton in a synagogue]”. Puttermesser imagines this uncle teaching her Hebrew; unfortunately, he died before she was born:
Of the world that was, there is only this single grain of memory: that once an old man, Puttermesser’s mother’s uncle, kept his pants up with a rope belt, was called Zindel, lived without a wife, ate frugally, knew the holy letters, died with a thorny English wilderness between his gums. To him Puttermesser clings. America is blank, and Uncle Zindel is all her ancestry. Unironic, unimaginative, her plain but stringent mind strains beyond the parents—what did they have? (Ozick, 1997, p. 17)
According to the above passage, it is not enough for Puttermesser to read Hebrew; she has to imagine herself totally immersed in it to give her a connection to her religious faith and Russian heritage.
Judaism and Womanhood
Judaism, like many religions, has many branches and varying beliefs; however, it does have some basic ones that all the variations follow. In Judaism, the written word is very important. The religion prides itself on scholarship to gain knowledge of God and the world around them (Eliade, Couliano, & Wiesner, 1991, pp. 167-183).
The role of women in this religion has interesting significance. Jewish women are considered separate but equal and have different duties then men. Indeed, God is considered to have both masculine and feminine qualities as opposed to Christianity, and both sexes were made in the image of God. Women have more “binah”(intuition, understanding, and intelligence) than men. However, in the Talmud women are denigrated as lazy and evil and are discouraged from seeking higher education or studying religion, because they may become too spiritually devoted and neglect their families. Despite these issues, Jewish women have rights such as buying, selling, and owning property, and in the last 20 years or so have more religious rights that previously were reserved just for men (Rich, 2005; Werblowsky & Wigoder, 1997, pp. 726-729).
Taking these ideas into consideration, note that the relative that Puttermesser relates to is a male. This fact has relevance, because he is the one that she knows links most to Judaism and her Russian ethnicity. A shammes is responsible for the everyday upkeep of the synagogue. Therefore, by maintaining the physical structure of the synagogue, a shammes maintains the abstract and symbolic attributes of Judaism. Judaism, despite women having more rights, is still like most religions that are based on a male deity, patriarchal. Despite the fact that Jewishness is matrilineal or traced through the mother’s bloodline, Jewish women are still denigrated and treated like second-class citizens.
Puttermesser teaches herself Hebrew, but she feels she has to validate her studies through a dead male relative she never knew because of Jewish beliefs. Although Jewish males are the “legitimate” Judaistic scholars, Puttermesser’s scholarship demonstrates that Jewish women have the same right to an education, or the same ability to acquire one. Symbolically, going through a man may be problematic, but the fact that Puttermesser studies the language of her religion and culture is revolutionary since it shows that women can be religious scholars as well.
The First Female Golem
Next, the novel jumps ahead to when Puttermesser is 46, and her life has gotten worse. Her married lover, Morris Rappoport, has just dumped her, because she would rather read Socrates than have sex, and she gets demoted because of office politics and bemoans that she will never have children. At this lowest point in her life, her butter knife becomes a decisively proactive sword (both knives obviously phallic); she creates her own golem. In Judaical mythology, a golem is a figure or creature typically made out of clay that comes to life. What typically brings a golem to life is a slip of paper with writing that is placed on its tongue (Werblowsky & Wigoder, 1997, p. 280). The first mention of a golem appears in The Bible, for Adam is considered to be the first one since he was made out of earth and water. Therefore, if one is Jewish or even Christian, a golem is not a legend—but a real creature, which makes the myth a magically real one. Over the centuries, the legend changed and grew, so that eventually the golem becomes soulless and eventually cannot be controlled. Hence, the only difference between humans and golems is that humans have a soul. Also, the legend changes according to the various branches of Judaism (Sherwin, 1985, pp. 3-14).
Many of these characteristics appear in the novel. Indeed, by creating a golem, Puttermesser has become the creator/Goddess. Instead of relying on a man’s sperm to impregnate her and waiting nine months, she, like the original Jehovah, creates life by mixing reddish clay and dirt from her plants and water after Rappoport leaves. However, she does not remember doing it:
A naked girl lay in Puttermesser’s bed. She looked dead—she was all white, bloodless (…) The body had a look of perpetuity about it, as if it had always been reclining there (…) Puttermesser peered down at the creature’s face. Ugly. The nose and mouth were clumsily formed (…) it was clear that the nostrils needed pinching to bring them closer together, so Puttermesser tentatively pinched. The improvement was impressive. (Ozick, 1997, pp. 37-38)
Despite her confusion, Puttermesser continues to shape the golem. Obviously, Puttermesser is the mother of her female golem. Even though Rappoport is not present when she is made, he is symbolically her father, because it is his departure that leads to her creation.
After the golem comes to life, Puttermesser tries to recollect creating her: It was true she had circled the creature on the bed. Was it seven times around? It was true she had blown some foreign matter out of the nose. Had she blown some uncanny energy into an entrance of the dormant body? It was true she had said aloud one of the Names of the Creator.(Ozick, 1997, p. 42)
Puttermesser does not remember creating her golem, because she was in such a mindless emotional state of despair that she blanked out. She instinctively made something that would help her fulfill her fantasy Eden, as well as fill that emptiness from not having children or making a lasting impact on humankind.
Significantly, Puttermesser’s actions do make history. Besides being the first woman to make a golem, she is the first to make a female one out of clay. According to Jewish lore, 11th century poet and philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol makes the first female golem made out of wood and hinges for sexual purposes. Of course, besides the negative feminine connotations, because of the material it is made out of, this creation seems more like a robot than a golem (Ozick, 1997, p. 16). By making her golem out of clay rather than other materials, Puttermesser legitimizes her creation by demonstrating that women can create life just as well as men can. According to Judaism, men do not have the monopoly on emulating or being close to God. Puttermesser’s butter knife is no longer a flaccidly innocuous phallic symbol; it becomes a positive feminine weapon in the fight for feminist power and autonomy.
Puttermesser’s creation is eventually named Xanthippe after Socrates’s wife. Xanthippe is mute yet knows all languages and writes all messages. Muteness in a golem depends on the story. Xanthippe writes, “I know everything you know. I am made of earth but also I am made out of your mind” (Ozick, 1997, p. 42). Like the first golem, she has the letters aleph, mem, and tav inscribed on her forehead. Therefore, Xanthippe knows everything Puttermesser does and Xanthippe obeys Puttermesser, because Puttermesser is her mother. Furthermore, Xanthippe represents the soulless Puttermesser, a being that is much like her creator yet has no scruples about doing something that Western society may find morally reprehensible.
What takes the golem from the mythological to the magically real realm is that real historical people supposedly created golems as well. Giving birth is miraculous, but physically creating life literally out of clay and water is certainly magical. Puttermesser researches that Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, circa 1520-1609, created the first golem. He created it after having a dream of heaven, giving the golem a magically realistically spiritual slant. This golem was used to fight the persecution of Jews in that city, a task the golem did very successfully by killing anti-Semites. Unfortunately, the golem eventually had to be destroyed by erasing the first of the three letters of its creation from its forehead. The golem grew too big to be controlled. It was placed in a barn, and one of the stories claimed that whoever touches the cobwebs around the golem would die (Ozick, 1997, pp. 44-46). Puttermesser discovers in her research that golem-makers were scientifically minded scholars and intellectuals, like herself (Ozick, 1997, p. 48). Having scientists create something magically real legitimizes the creation, especially in Puttermesser’s eyes. The act of creating a golem still falls within the realm of magical realism since the creator is godlike.
The Problematic Paradise
Besides her unusual entry into the world, Xanthippe’s obedience to Puttermesser helps her in miraculous ways. After Puttermesser is fired for complaining, she runs for mayor of New York and wins. Puttermesser spreads peace around much like a butter knife, making a paradise on earth. Because of the golem’s efforts, New York City has no crime, everyone has a job and happiness reigns:
The coming of the golem animated the salvation of the City, yes—but who, Puttermesser sometimes wonders, is the true golem? Is it Xanthippe or is it Puttermesser? Puttermesser made Xanthippe. Xanthippe did not exist before Puttermesser made her: That is clear enough. But Xanthippe made Puttermesser Mayor, and Mayor Puttermesser too did not exist before. And that is just as clear. Puttermesser sees that she is the golem’s golem. (Ozick, 1997, pp. 78-79)
Who made whom? It is not Puttermesser but her innocuous ways that give her success; it is Xanthippe’s actions on her behalf. Xanthippe takes Puttermesser’s inner desires and makes them shine in the real world.
Unfortunately for Puttermesser, her creation destroys what she creates. The reason a golem does not survive is because it gorges itself on life. Xanthippe constantly eats making her bigger and bigger everyday. Then her appetite turns from food to sex when she sleeps with her symbolic father, Morris Rappoport (Ozick, 1997, pp. 79-82). This act not only constitutes a form of incest, but since Xanthippe is an extension of Puttermesser, it is as if Puttermesser slept with Rappoport as well.
Puttermesser’s paradise is destroyed when Xanthippe’s insatiable sexual appetite wears out the male members of Puttermesser’s administration, to the point where they resign. Xanthippe “will no longer obey. She cannot be contained” (Ozick, 1997, p. 86). Because of Xanthippe’s neglect, New York City quickly sinks back into its old crime-ridden and high unemployment ways, and Puttermesser is destroyed and can never become mayor again.
Soon Puttermesser realizes that in order for her not to be destroyed utterly, she has to destroy Xanthippe. She gets Rappoport to help her get rid of her in a ritual that reverses her creation. Interestingly, Xanthippe speaks for the first time when she is being killed. They bury her in City Hall Park under some flowerbeds with a sign that reads “DO NOT TOUCH OR PICK” (Ozick, 1997, pp. 94-101). However, Xanthippe’s body still creates magic: “(…) Whoever touches or picks those stems of blood-colored blossoms soon sickens with flu virus, or sore throat, or stuffed nose accompanied by nausea—or, sometimes, a particularly vicious attack of bursitis” (Ozick, 1997, p. 101). Hence, like the first recorded golem, her influence can be harmful and will never go away.
As an extension of Puttermesser, the golem is able to do what Puttermesser’s nature will not allow her to do—to make concrete effective change. Puttermesser may be a butter knife, but Xanthippe is the sword. Also, like any sword, it can cut deeply and indiscriminately, even itself. Through her aggressive actions, Xanthippe lifts Puttermesser to the perfect earthly Eden of her dreams and then brutally cuts it away.
Getting Rappoport, Xanthippe’s pseudo-father and lover, to help in her decreation has significance as well. With his dumping of Puttermesser, he helped create the situations that brought Xanthippe into this world. Furthermore, by having sex with Xanthippe, he helped bring down paradise. Assisting in killing his “daughter”is the least he can do. Additionally, since he and Puttermesser’s sex life during their affair is limited, the over-exhausting relationship with Xanthippe balances it out. Xanthippe represents the gluttonous side of Puttermesser, the side she cannot be herself because of her nature.
In the magical indigenous cycle of life, however, paradise lost is found again. Toward the end of the novel, Puttermesser reads about the paradise that unknown to her she is about to join. She is stabbed to death and then raped (Ozick, 1997, p. 215). Ironically, a sharp knife kills her so she does not feel the rape. Typically, rape is a traumatic experience, because it takes away the victim’s power and dignity; however, in Puttermesser’s case, the penis in a twisted way symbolizes, in a Freudian way, the butter knife, because “[F]or her, the rape never happened at all” (Ozick, 1997, p. 220).
The Bitter Knife Afterlife
In Paradise, a finally happy Puttermesser creates her dream life with a husband and a child. The husband is a man she had a crush on when she was young. Unfortunately, her family gradually disappears. She discovers:
In Paradise, where sight and insight, inner and outer, sweet and salt, logic and illogic, are shuffled in the manner of a kaleidoscope, nothing is permanent. Nothing will stay. All is ephemeral. There is no long and no short; there is only immeasurable isness. Isness alone is forever; or name it essence, or soul. But the images within he soul shift, drift, wander. Paradise is a dream bearing the inscription on Solomon’s seal: This too shall pass… The secret meaning of Paradise is that it too is hell. (Ozick, 1997, p. 234)
By living up to her last name, butter knife, Puttermesser’s life of moderation, not being happy or sad, ironically was paradise, not her perfect Eden. She sings a song at the end of the novel:
At the point of a knife
I lost my life.
Butter, butter, butter,
butter knife.
If I were alive I wouldn’t fault
Anything under the heavenly vault.
Better, better, better,
better life.
Better never to have loved than loved at all. Better never to have risen than had a fall.
Oh bitter, bitter, bitter
butter
knife. (Ozick, 1997, p. 236)
Conclusions
By creating a female golem, Puttermesser takes control of her divinity. Trumping the somewhat male-dominated orientation of Judaism, she becomes a goddess who creates life out of the earth. Ironically, her useful not flashy butter knife-like style of living totally encapsulates what Paradise is really like. Living in moderation may be boring and unexciting, but it is the true path to living well. This realization causes the butter knife to become so bitter. Puttermesser so longed for a better life, and she tried to create it. However, what one creates must be destroyed, just like her golem and her version of Paradise.
In the magically real life and afterlife, Puttermesser thinks she has the control to change her life, but in effect she does not—such is life. The Wheel of Fortune or Circle of Life comes up and comes down. However, Puttermesser gains empowerment, even for a short while. That is more than many people ever achieve. The ultimate paradox is that she creates her own heaven and hell. Like her last name suggests, life and death never make a lasting impression. The cycle of life, death, and rebirth are only fated to continue.
References
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