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    "The King Of Horrors" Is On Women's Side

    Shnyrova Olga, Zakurina Elena

Steven King is one of the most widely read authors not only in the United States, but in other countries as well. Every one of his books becomes a bestseller. We think that the secret of Steven King's popularity is due to the fact that he writes about things, which are close and well known to everybody, rendering them a hue of the unusual and the mysterious. He describes the life of today's American province: small towns, University campuses and farms. Megapolises are rarely made the scene of the writer's books. His heroes are typical members of the middle class, like Steven King himself, who was born in 1947 in a religious farmer's family in the State of Maine and was educated at the small provincial University of the same State.
Before he became a writer, Steven King held highly different jobs for a living - he worked at a laundry, delivered pizzas, was a dish-washer in a cafe. Later, he has made use of the acquired experience in his novels, reflecting in them all the problems, which he has faced himself and which are faced by an ordinary American, such as crime, unemployment, alcoholism and violence in the family. The writer, of course, could not have passed by the women's question and the feminist movement, which gained momentum in the USA in the 1970s, when he started publishing his first works. It is no accident that the heroine of his very first novel, "Carrie", which saw light in 1974, is a schoolgirl from a little town, with serious problems in the family and in her relations with the peers. Women have become the heroines of his other novels as well - "Gerald's Last Game", "Dolores Kleiborn" and "A Madder Rose". In a number of his books, Steven King describes in detail the activities of various feminist organizations and the problems, against which the American feminist movement is waging a struggle - the sexual pestering, violence in the family, economic dependence of women and discrimination on the sex principle. This is particularly typical of his novels, written in the 1990s: "Dolores Kleiborn", "A Madder Rose" and "Insomnia".
The novel "Dolores Kleiborn" describes the position of the American woman in the late 1960s, before women launched a struggle for their rights. Dolores Kleiborn, the heroine of the novel, is a servant in a rich house. She has managed to save 3,000 dollars for her daughter's education. But one day she learns that her husband has taken all the money off her account, and the bank has not even informed her about this. The bank manager explains to her that the husband enjoys the same rights to her savings as herself, since both the spouses have the right to the jointly acquired property. But, he adds, if it was she who wanted to take money off her husband's account, the bank would have informed him to this effect in advance. Soon she learns that her husband tries to seduce their daughter. Left without any savings and with no chance to leave her husband, Dolores decides that the only way out is to murder him. The mistress of the house, where Dolores works, also pushes her into this, because she herself in her time has resolved her problem with her own husband in the same way. Even though she belonged to a much higher social layer than Dolores, she was also constantly humiliated by her husband and, as she could not preserve her high social status, if she divorced him, she committed the murder. Once and again, the phrase crops up in the novel: "Sometimes the woman has no choice but to be a stinker." It is characteristic that the author, far from accusing his heroines, even sympathizes with them.
Rosie, the heroine of the novel "A Madder Rose", who lives in the America of the 1990s, is faced with the same problems as Dolores Kleiborn: a cruel attitude of her husband, who regularly beats her up; it seems he has completely crushed her personality. But, as distinct from Dolores, Rosie finds a different way out: one fine day she just leaves her sadist husband and goes to another town; there she enters a shelter for the women, who have suffered from violence, which is called, Daughters and Sisters. Such asylums or shelters have been established in many American towns, beginning with the 1970s - as a rule, on the donations from charity foundations and from private persons. The same is true of the Daighters and Sisters shelter, described in the novel, which exists on the means from the charity foundation, set up by the well-off Stevenson spouses. Their daughter Anne has dedicated herself to running the shelter. The novel describes in detail the everyday life in the shelter and the process of rehabilitation of its inmates, giving a sufficiently clear idea about the activity of this kind of organizations in real life. The shelter accommodates some 30 to 40 women at a time. It does not seem much, but over 20 years of its existence, 6,000 women were rendered assistance there, and this is not so bad for a small town. Despite this, however, there is a prejudice against the shelter inmates in the town, and even the women inhabitants label them as the Lesbians, living on the alms. In his other novel, "Insomnia", Steven King explains this prejudice: people think that all that happens between husband and wife behind the closed door of the marriage, is their private affair, including the husband, swinging his fists, and the wife, cutting him to pieces with her sharp tongue.
Any interference into the relationships between husband and wife, even if it is necessary, puts the public opinion on the alert and calls forth its disapproval. Besides, rendering assistance to the women victims may turn out to be a rather dangerous affair and require a certain measure of bravery. Thus, Rosie's husband in "A Madder Rose", trying to get back his wife, razes the shelter to the ground and cruelly murders its manager Anne Stevenson, her husband and Rosie's friend Pam.
Steven King raises the problems of violence in the family and of the opposition between the feminist organizations and the conservative provincial society already in the above-mentioned novel "Insomnia", which he wrote soon after "A Madder Rose". The scene of the novel is laid out in the town of Derry, the State of Maine. An unambiguous localization of the scene of action, typical of King's novels, serves to increase the reader's sense of the authenticity and reality of the happening events. Rather often, one and the same thought-up town becomes the site of events for several King's novels; it is as if he creates its chronicle, referring in his subsequent novels to the events, which have taken place in the previous ones. Thus, the townlet of Derry has already been the scene of action in the novel "The It". Now the author, together with the reader, returns to this town after the lapse of a few years. Little has changed in the life of the town inhabitants, but still the new winds have flown about it: the first sprouts of the feminist movement have appeared in the town, too. The Women's Care organization is active in the town, and a medical clinic for women is functioning under it; alongside with the other services, rendered to them, women are also assisted here to get rid of an uncalled-for pregnancy; there is also a service for the psychological aid to women, who have been raped, a round the clock confidence telephone and a guest-house for women. Though the Women's Care activities are manifold, the confrontation in the town of Derry is mostly concentrated on the problem of abortions, because, besides the feminist Women's Care, there also exists in the town a radical conservative organization, The Friends of Life, which is all out for prohibiting abortions. The fact of Steven King's turning to the problem of abortions is no accident at all, because in the America of the 1990s, this issue has come into the limelight. At first, the conflict between the adherents and the opponents of abortions is limited to the picketing of the clinic by the individual demonstrators, carrying posters with the words, "Abortion Is a Murder!", to which few people pay any attention. But gradually the confrontation becomes more acute, because the supporters of the Women's Care decide to invite to the town Susan Day, the leader of the radical feminist organization, Sisters in Arms. In the person of Susan Day, the author portrays a prominent leader of the feminist movement, who has achieved success both on the literary arena and on that of the political activity. Inviting her to Derry to come out in their support, the supporters of the Women's Care count on her popularity and her oratorical gift. Many inhabitants of Derry, both men and women, support this idea as well. On the other hand, this is a pretext to activize for the opponents of abortions. The confrontation of the two organizations results in the much more numerous victims than in "A Madder Rose". The Friends of Life set the guest-house on fire, shoot two of its inmates and arrange for an explosion at the meeting, where Susan Day is delivering a speech. Susan herself and another 70 people perish of this explosion.
It is noteworthy that in the "Insomnia" Steven King no longer approves of the feminist movement so unreservedly: he condemns the feminists' trend to radicalism and their wish to be in the right no matter what the price. The author's position is expressed in the words of Sheriff Leidecker, who makes a regular speech, exposing his own view - that of a reasonable average American - of the conflict between the adherents and the opponents of abortions, and of their activities. He is not glad on account of the forthcoming visit of the famous feminist to the town, and not because he is against the feminist movement, but because he foresees the havoc that may be wrought because of it in the town. Susan Day is for him "a long-legged beauty from the New York City", for whom the visit to Derry is only a way to win still more popularity and "to collect enough material for Chapter Five of her new book". The supporters of the Women's Care, in their turn, are not so much anxious to prevent the closure of the clinic, where abortions are made (for it is impossible to shut it up under the local legislation), as to draw the public attention and to prove their own rightness to the whole town. From the point of view of Sgeriff Leidecker, both the supporters and the opponents of abortions are similar in that each of them is trying to prove that it is his own team that is the best. "I am for the right of the woman to an abortion, if she needs it, but I am sick of the defenders of the option" (of the woman's right to an abortion. - O.Sh.), "who wish to be holier that the Pope of Rome. As I see it, they are the new Puritans, convinced that if you don't think like they do, you will go right to the Hell." The subsequent development of the events proves that the sheriff had all the grounds for this estimate: the setting on fire of the women's guest-home by the fanatic members of The Friends of Life, far from leading to the cancellation of the announced meeting with the participation of Miss Day, made the feminists fight for it still more vigorously, despite the danger. As a result, a still greater tragedy occurs - an explosion at the meeting and a massive annihilation of people.
Steven King is often called the King of Horrors, though he can hardly be counted among the classical representatives of this genre. A distinctive feature of his novels from the books in this genre is that he pays a great deal of attention to revealing an inner world of his heroes, to describing their feelings and emotions, and not so much in the extreme situations, as in their everyday life. It is just amazing how subtly and truthfully he delineates the sensations and the fears of his heroines, many of whom are the victims of violence on the part of their fathers, husbands or teenager peers.
The pages of the novel, "Gerald's Last Game", are almost fully given to a description of the feelings and recollections of the woman, who has found herself practically in a blind alley. The situation itself is for the author only an occasion for showing in bold relief the traumatized psyche of a woman, who has lived through a serious shock as a child because of the sexual pestering from her own father. And even though it has happened to her only one time, it has been enough to exert a strong impact on all of her further life. In "A Madder Rose", the author deals in detail with the psychic state of the victim of a regular violence in the family: a permanent fear of the punishment, a complete loss of independence, the stupefaction and the withdrawal into the world of dreams and illusions as a protective reaction to an unbearable reality. Sometimes, the woman thinks of an escape from the husband, but this idea is instantly extinguished by the common sense, for she is afraid to be left without any means of subsistence and is shy to turn for support, because she is afraid that the others may condemn her.
Most of Steven King's heroines are the women, who have lived through a deep psychological shock and have suffered from cruelty and injustice. However, in the final account, all of them find in themselves enough strength to get out of the seemingly hopeless situation and to try to start their lives anew. The novels of horrors do not, as a rule, have a happy end; such an end is also rarely met in Steven King's novels. It is curious, however, that his novels, in which women play the principal roles, have a satisfactory finale. This can be, possibly, explained by the author's sympathy with women and with women's problems; but not the last among the rest may be an idea, that among his readership may also be the women, who have shared the fate of his heroines. For them an acquaintance with his novels may become an impetus to resolve their problems. In our opinion, Russian women readers will also gain from reading Steven King's novels; in any case, these novels will be of much greater use to them than the tearful women's novels, which have now flooded our domestic book market.

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