Powers of the weak

by Elizabeth Janeway

Wth the same open and provocative approach to ideas that has distinguished all her writings on human and social issues and made her one of the most admired voices in the Women's Movement, the author of Man's World, Woman's Place and Between Myth and Morning here ventures boldly into fresh territory. Elizabeth Janeway leads us to re-examine the nature and uses of power-"that ambiguous, menacing, much-desired quality, whose accepted definitions seem to me unsatisfactory." With striking effect, she chooses to analyze the power relationship not in terms of the strong (who traditionally get all the attention), but of the powerless-and above all of "the oldest, largest and most central group of human creatures in the wide category of the weak and the ruled": women. It is a fascinating approach, and superbly fruitful. We start with the infant, epitome of the powerless, learning to impose his or her small will-and in turn developing a sense of the power structures that will govern later life, and the lives of others. We examine childhood problems that range from nightmares to autism-and see how they are in fact power disorders that help explain similar disorders elsewhere. (The isolation of an autistic child, deliberately choosing a destructive self-image and definitions of life that are simply not true, finds a parallel in the desperate situation of certain "ordinary" women.) Here are considerations of dreams as a route into the inner world, "where the developing self wrestles with the demands made on it by external reality " . . . of the workings of power within the political process, from Louis XIII spanked by his tutor to Lyndon Johnson driven out of office ("the image of 'Big Daddy' became that of the ogre eating his young") ... of the "magic connection" between power and the supernatural, which tends to validate the idea that the powerful have a right to their power and suggests why to many people power is a fearful, even repellent, thing.

Genres: Nonfiction

350 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

American author and critic born Elizabeth Ames Hall. When her family fell on hard times during the Depression, Janeway was forced to end her Swarthmore College education and help support the family by creating bargain basement sale slogans (she graduated from Barnard College just a few years later, in 1935).

Intent on becoming an author, Janeway took the same creative writing class again and again to help hone her craft. While working on her first novel, The Walsh Girls, she met and married Eliot Janeway, economic adviser to Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson (he was known as "Calamity Janeway" for his pessimistic economic forecasts).

The Janeways mingled with United States Supreme Court justices and many other luminaries of the day.

At the behest of labor organizer Walter Reuther, she aided General Motors workers with their mid-1940s strike against the company.

Her 1949 novel The Question of Gregory attracted attention due to the eerie similarities between Gregory and James Forrestal, a Defense Secretary and acquaintance of the Janeways who committed suicide. Janeway denied any connection between fact and fiction; she said the real theme of the book was "liberals in trouble".

In all, Janeway wrote seven novels; one, 1945's Daisy Kenyon, was made into a film starring Joan Crawford. For a time she was a reviewer for the New York Times. In that capacity she introduced writer Anthony Powell and served as a champion of controversial works such as Lolita. She was also a reviewer for Ms. magazine.

From 1965-1969 she served as president of the Authors Guild, addressing lawmakers about copyright protection and other matters.

Many of Janeway's early works focused on the family situation, with occasional glimpses at the struggles of women in modern society. In the early 1970s, she began a more explicitly feminist path with works such as Man's World, Woman's Place: A Study of Social Mythology. She befriended Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Kate Millet and was strongly in favor of abortion rights. Janeway continued to write and go on lecture tours. She learned to speak Russian so that she could visit the Soviet Union.

Janeway was a judge for the National Book Awards in 1955 and for the Pulitzer Prize in 1971. She was an executive of International PEN. At its 1981 commencement ceremonies, her alma mater Barnard College awarded Janeway its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction.