59 pages • 1-hour read
Fear of Flying
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of cursing and sexual content.
Fairy Tales
Isadora references several fairy tales, especially early in the text, and always in contrast with the reality of women’s lives, which are demonstrably unfairytale-like. Such stories teach women that marriage is the goal, that it will solve all a woman’s problems, just as the princes they eventually marry save Snow White, Aurora, and Cinderella from evil. A woman alone lives “As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away ‘from all this.’ All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else?” (17). The single woman might be quite happy and fulfilled by living alone, but fairy tales have told her that she can’t be those things without a man. Even when they do marry, like the other military wives in Heidelberg, they seem to “[wander] about in housecoats and hair rollers, always awaiting that Cinderella evening for which it will be worthwhile to comb out their curls. It never comes” (81). Fairy tales are a motif that represent the broken promises society makes to women about marriage, promises that direct and circumscribe Female Desire and the Pursuit of Autonomy.
Further, Isadora is shocked by the contrast between the Nazi amphitheater she finds and the fairy tale forest that surrounds it. She says, “the most astonishing part was the setting: a gigantic pine-rimmed bowl nestled in the unearthly quiet of those fairy-tale woods” (91). That such evil could exist in the midst of such fairytale beauty is further confirmation of the tales’ fiction. Instead of revealing the truth about life, fairytales do the opposite: They disguise reality.
Fear of Flying
Isadora’s fear of flying is so significant that it serves as the title of the novel, and it is a motif that highlights Female Desire and the Pursuit of Autonomy. Flying can mean literal flight—as in boarding a plane—and it can also refer to figurative flight—like embracing solitude and independence, being unafraid to live by one’s own rules.
When Isadora reflects on the fear of literal flying—which she shared with Charlie—she says, “My fear of flying, after all, lets me ride on planes as long as I agree to suffer through the whole flight in terror, but his fear of flying was so bad that he wouldn’t even go near a plane” (308). Isadora hates the lack of control she has when she’s on a plane, but she can do it if she concentrates on keeping the plane aloft while it’s in the air. This suggests a fear of losing control in general, of her goals and choices. The thought of being truly independent or free of others leaves Isadora terrified and paralyzed; she wants emotional connection, but she hates the feeling of responsibility to others, an obligation to be who they want her to be. This is also suggested by her statement that she is “Isadora Wing whose mother wanted her to fly. Isadora Wing whose mother grounded her” (348-49). Her mother wanted her to be independent, to pursue art rather than a more conventional path. However, her mother’s failure to teach her how to be a woman, how to be independent and not care about others’ expectations, also clipped Isadora’s wings, so to speak, making her think she cannot manage such freedom.
Unlike Charlie, Isadora isn’t paralyzed by her fear. She says, “Terrified of flying as I was, I didn’t allow that fear to control me” (396). It is her courage that allows for her dynamism as a character. As soon as she realizes that she is “complete” as she is, that she doesn’t need others to feel fulfilled, she escapes the fear of losing them, of failing to live up to their expectations.
The “Zipless Fuck”
The central motif in Fear of Flying is Isadora’s quest for what she calls the “zipless fuck,” a term that quickly became, after the novel’s 1973 publication, popular shorthand for casual, no-strings-attached sex. Early in the novel, Isadora defines the zipless fuck as “a platonic ideal” that she calls zipless “because when you came together zippers fell away like rose petals, underwear blew off in one breath like dandelion fluff. Tongues intertwined and turned liquid. Your whole soul flowed out through your tongue and into the mouth of your lover” (12). The descriptive language here conveys the seamlessness and ease of this idealized sex while hinting at its impossibility.
Male writers such as John Updike, Philip Roth, and Henry Miller had long written about men’s pursuit of casual sex, but Jong was among the first American novelists to write so forthrightly about similar desires among women, and she quickly earned the admiration of her male counterparts. Miller declared that the book was the equal of his Tropic of Cancer, though “not as bitter and much funnier” (Bengal, Rebecca. “Fear of Flying Turns 40: Has the ‘Zipless Fuck’ Become Quaint?” Vanity Fair, 2013).
Throughout the novel, Isadora yearns for passionate, mutually satisfying sex, free of guilt and obligation, while wondering whether such an experience is possible for her. She initially believes she’s found it in Adrian, but he soon reveals himself to be as needy and controlling, in his own way, as Isadora’s husband, Bennett. This disappointment, too, is foreshadowed in Isadora’s initial definition of the zipless fuck: “For the true ultimate zipless A-1 fuck, it was necessary that you never got to know the man very well” (12). For Isadora, the problem is that patriarchy has conditioned her to feel responsible for men’s desires. Adrian quickly begins to demand Isadora’s attention and empathy, and she cannot refuse these demands. Quickly, the longed-for “zipless fuck” becomes another oppressive entanglement.
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