Fear of Flying

Throughout the text, Isadora is consistently critical of herself. This is not constructive self-criticism but, rather, something akin to insults and even bullying. She would never say about someone else the things she thinks of herself. Isadora criticizes herself for being disloyal to men and for her perceived lack of artistic skill, and she finds fault with almost all her choices. Her harsh inner critic voices the societal misogyny that she has internalized over a lifetime of spent within the patriarchy.

Isadora condemns everything about herself, from her character and intelligence to her talent and body. When she thinks of Adrian while having sex with Bennett, she calls herself a “fraud,” saying that what she was doing was “far, far worse than fucking another man within [her] husband’s sight” (48). Committed to an impossible ideal of romantic fidelity, she polices her own imagination. Isadora also feels “responsible, in a way” for her mother’s frustrated artistic ambitions, though Jude made the choice to have children instead of pursuing her art (54). Further, though Isadora was class poet and won writing prizes in college, she becomes “convinced that nothing she was writing [as an adult] was good enough to send anywhere” (157). She recognizes that others’ work is often lackluster, but she is certain, for no apparent reason, that her “own must be much, much worse” (157).