J.D. Salinger's Glass women

Subsequent to author J.D. Salinger's death this week, I've been reflecting on one of my favorite fictional families. Glass family members are featured in Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, Seymour: An Introduction, and the short stories "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "Down at the Dinghy." Generally the most developed and complex of their family narrative are male characters.

Boo Boo, the older sister, has a dedicated story in Nine Stories, in which she is defined in relation to her housekeeper and her son. Her young son tells her, when she tries to play sailor, "You aren't an admiral. You're a lady," which he says his father told him. Boo Boo is unable to effectively assert herself as a wife (to defend her husband from the housekeeper's name calling) or as a mother, in which she has little control or even the capability to teach.

Seymour, who is discussed mostly posthumously and is memorialized in a story by his brother Buddy, is the iconic eldest child. In the story in which he appears alive, his wife is a mere accessory, and they never even interact.

Gender roles are dominant presences in the lives of the Glass children. In Franny and Zooey, we meet Franny, the youngest daughter of the Glass clan, when she is on a frustrating date, and in which it is clear that "sometimes it was hell to control her impatience over the male species' general ineptness." Zooey is consistently condescending to their mother, and appears mostly while in the process of a men's ritual while she looks on: shaving in the family's bathroom.

Despite the overwhelming traditional gender roles though, the characters are often self-aware enough to be frustrated by the accompanying expectations. Seymour cancels his own wedding last minute, but then caves and ends up married anyway. Buddy lives alone in a cabin in the woods. And for Franny and Zooey, their quest for spiritual meaning transcends gender roles. -Sara