From Hebe to Hippolyta: Anne Rivers Siddons' Novels (1985)

Each of three novels of Anne Rivers Siddons is concerned with a view of womanhood, and in one of them she offers labels that characterize beginning and ending stages of femininity. She shows her female characters growing from infancy through a of ladylike and on to a sense of strong individuality, a process Siddons has been defining through all three of her novels. Her women undergo development from a character named Hebe, stereotypically inconsequential, weak female, to a character named Hippolyta, strong woman typified by fabulous Queen of Amazons. Though she uses these names only in her most recent novel, Fox's Earth, Siddons has been working in all her novels--Heartbreak Hotel (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976), The House Next Door (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), and Fox's Earth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981)--to show process of growing up. Moreover, she shows how her characters become heroines by overcoming a rigid of designed to make of them, first, typically sweet little girls, then to make them into proper ladies. A girl's code of conduct in Siddons' novels seems frankly designed to turn a girl into a Hebe. has to be overcome by her characters in order for them to become Hippolytas which Siddons clearly intends for them to be. The is defined for a young woman of college age in Heartbreak Hotel, then for a subsequent stage of feminity, suburban housewife, in The House Next Door, and, finally, for all ages of Southern womanhood in Fox's Earth, in which is overcome only with rejection of matriarchal descent, single most important element in maintaining woman's of conduct. The is not designed to make adventurers of women, but rather to instill in them those values inherited from their mothers, consisting mainly of a loving, subservient duty to men in their lives. The works best when progenitors who intend to use limit themselves to a single female offspring. That is case with DeLoach, only child of Francis and Comer DeLoach, in Heartbreak Hotel; in fact, It was as though was stamped `sufficient' at her birth, and any other child would have been extraneous, an afterthought (p. 12). The purpose of an only child is not, however, to give it more room to grow, not at least if child is a girl. Little Southern boys have worlds to discover or create, but little girls are meant to act as miniature adults, inheriting a world ready-made for them, and so Maggie absorbed talk of Lytton's select adulthood like a hardy, hidden flower in a spring rain (p. 18). The is not designed to make her stand out from her peers, but to make her disappear within a crowd of them. Thus, is groomed through high school which was, for Maggie, a walk-through. Frances' Rules, absorbed as by osmosis through Maggie's faultless olive skin, proved to be workable (p. 18). In high school, she succeeds not by virtue of individuality, but by virtue of her adherence to Code of Rules, and they make her, according to one of her teachers there, the most anonymous girl I have ever seen (p. 20). Thus insulated, typical Southern Hebe can espouse earnestness of inarticulate adult woman like Frances DeLoach, who talked mainly in italics; it was one of her greatest charms for her husband, and kept her a girl to him always (p. 17). On other hand, Maggie's mother, who is a Hebe, could at a certain age just as typically go baroquely crazy with regularity (p. 31), in her symmetrical ... world of camellia shows and porcelain collections (p. 31). But by sticking to Rules, a Hebe can remain impervious to chaos (p. 13), and only occasionally get a little tense in yellow tulle (p. 19). Generally, though, being a typical Hebe represents a better life than not following rules; for Maggie's mother rules had, after all, gotten her off a sharecroppers' red acre and into a lawyer's house (p. …