Undermining Female Characters: The Role of Women In The Quiet American

Graham Greene focuses greatly on the social and political issues of Vietnam in The Quiet American. Set in the 1950s, this novel is surrounded by the onslaught of the First Indochina War as we follow Thomas Fowler, a British journalist, through a strange, new land. The story also involves an American named Alden Pyle as well as a young Vietnamese woman named Phuong. While a sort of love triangle develops between these three characters, I aim to shed light on the ways in which Phuong, and to that extent, female characters are presented. Although this novel can be read in numerous ways to highlight colonialism, male superiority, and many other tropes, it is important to understand why Phuong and Fowler’s ex-wife, Helen, are presented as they are. I will look into why/how discourse and ideology undermines the female characters, and perhaps even a vast array of women. Hopefully the knowledge produced will show that the characters Phuong and Helen are deeply misappropriated due to their gender. While Greene focuses more on characters Alden Pyle and Thomas Fowler, there is something to be said about the presence of women that is intriguing to further examine. I would also like to understand why they are made to look like generic stereotypes while the male characters are given more substantial roles and backgrounds.

Phuong can be seen as child-like, as she needs to be protected by a male throughout the novel. This is even confirmed by Fowler when he is asked if she loves him, he responds by saying that “It isn’t in their nature. You’ll find that out. It’s a cliché to call them children—but there’s one thing which is childish” (Greene 95). In this case Fowler serves as the subject and Phuong serves as the object, which reconfirms the understanding that “subjects do and objects are done to” (Parker 158). Fowler says that it is a cliché to call her a child, but does so anyway, further asserting his power to do as he pleases with no real ramifications. From this perspective we can see that Phuong is again reduced to unsavory generalizations and yet still desired by these two men. She is broken down into these misappropriated statements, but at times they seem so minute because they are overshadowed by the prominence of Fowler and Pyle throughout the novel.

Greene even mentions the meaning behind Phuong’s name, “which means Phoenix, but nothing nowadays is fabulous and nothing rises from its ashes” (Greene 3). This meaning and commentary takes away from her individuality because if nothing can rise from its ashes, or despair, then what is her overall purpose? Although her name means Phoenix she serves as a figure to satisfy Fowler and Pyle’s need to objectify; although they both recognize that she has some type of influence over them, it is innately not known to her because from their perspective she is meant to serve as an object for them to protect and compete for. From here we can see that she is also fairly underdeveloped compared to Pyle and Fowler who often show more emotion than she does. In the allegorical sense, she serves to represent Vietnam as ‘she’ is invaded by America (Pyle) and Britain (Fowler). Yet she is rather unfeeling and almost appears traumatized after years of being flung from man to man. Her life is almost always planned out because she has no real agency or will to assert dominance. In contrast, we see that Fowler’s ex-wife, Helen, is a different type of woman. Fowler says, in reference to the cage of religion, that she “had found a cage with holes and sometimes I envied her. There is a conflict between sun and air: I lived too much in the sun” (Greene 79). We can see his view on the state of his crumbling marriage; however, Helen provides further insight in her letter as she insults Fowler for never being alone as “he picks up women like [his] coat picks up dust” (Greene 108). She will not grant him a divorce because it goes against her religious beliefs, but she also feels compelled to reply more than a simple no because of the ‘poor girl’ (Phuong) he is involved with (Greene 109). She even says, “We are apt to be more involved than you are” in reference to the ways in which women are tied to, or even confined to, a relationship (Greene 109). Helen serves to expand the canon a bit more because she pushes and ultimately rattles Fowler to his core. He wants to be with Phuong but he also does not understand that his actions have left a mark. While I do not believe that one is supposed to see Fowler in a redeeming light, Greene still maintains his power throughout. It is only here that we see a bit more reluctance and that his past may still have some hold over him even in the present.

Aside from her letter, Helen is also given almost no real qualities other than to serve as a complication for Fowler, as he wants to completely separate himself from his old life. However, she does not take on the role of a victim if we see her as asserting her agency with the letter she sent to Fowler. Phuong does not have a moment like this, one that is more explicitly vocal, but she is also a more difficult character to read. Despite their obvious geographical and cultural differences, they are both women living in a period of time seemingly dominated by male authority.

In turn, these two women become more and more similar because they are tethered to the will of the men in their lives. Thus an ideological issue is produced when reading from this context; Phuong and Helen are the objects of desire, while also serving to complicate the male/female dynamics, but the subjects that rule over them are ultimately white men of privileged and powerful countries. Although Helen is also from England, she may serve to represent Fowler’s tie to his mother country and his attempts to stray from her harsh hold over him.

The hold that these men have over Helen and Phuong is further solidified due to Greene’s inability to make them whole. They serve as glimpses of many other women of the time mainly because there are no definable and unique characteristics to them. Phuong is rather subservient to men whereas Helen is tied to her sense of duty as a religious woman and wife. Furthermore, their characters must play into the social constrictions of the time period. Greene presents this novel around the understanding and framework that this is a man’s world and women are merely living in it. However, this is a complicated viewpoint because there are opposing points to consider.

Jean Gallagher asserts, “vision has…played an important role in the development and gendering of cultural discourses about war” (Acton 53). Carol Acton discusses the role of the gaze and women in her essay “Diverting the Gaze: The Unseen Text in Women’s War Writing.” I find it necessary to position this essay alongside The Quiet American because it can serve to rework preconceived ideas about the role of women throughout different wars. Perhaps women, not only female writers, are at a disadvantage because they are removed from the male gaze. From the context of World War I, Vera Brittain wrote extensively on her experiences as a VAD nurse in London and communicated with her fiancée who served on the Western front (Acton 55). And yet Brittain “did not perceive herself to be the author of [heroic] platitudes, but as a civilian woman she could not participate in the knowledge that rendered them false. She was relying on the authentic words of one who ‘has known and seen’ (Acton 56).

Gallagher also points out that “much war writing by women consciously negotiates the space between the woman’s experience as a noncombatant and the man’s combatant experiences of war” (Acton 56). Again, we see, even in women’s war writing, that women are meant to take more of a backseat because they do not see the actual and physical fighting. However, this begs the question that if one does not see, does it truly make it less real?

Greene provides, mainly, a strict male interpretation of the events in his novel, however, what if the women were given more of a voice? Helen sends one letter to Fowler and is allowed to profess her feelings and Phuong is simply moved around as the novel progresses. Fowler and Pyle are the ones experiencing the war firsthand, which may be, in part, why they are deeply moved by it, but aren’t the women also impacted? In this case, Helen and Phuong are the noncombatants but they, too, have feelings about the events that are transpiring, and yet we do not really see them. I do not think that it is acceptable anymore for women to not be able to tell their version of events, although Brittain did not explicitly fight in WWI, she did see the events before, during, and after because she was the one left behind, just as Helen and Phuong are. The women are left behind to deal with death and destruction, just as many men are, but are not allowed to honestly discuss the heroic platitudes associated with war. We can begin to see the parallels to women writers and women written about throughout war because they:

Are hyperconscious of their presence in The Forbidden Zone (termed by Higonnet to understand that “authentic words” is dependent upon an authentic position from which to view war) where their ‘seeing’ is complicated by their ongoing struggle to establish the legitimacy of their noncombatant perspective as well as by cultural constraint on what and how they see and what they reveal. (Acton 57)

Perhaps what we can learn here is that in two very different examples of war, women are seen as not being able to see from a combatant perspective, but perhaps male writers cannot see from the noncombatant female perspective as well. This may be why Phuong and Helen are given such menial descriptors and development, because Greene could not fully remove himself from the combatant role. Kevin Ruane furthers this point in his essay, “The Hidden History of Graham Greene’s Vietnam War: Fact, Fiction and The Quiet American” in which he discusses Greene’s inspiration for his Vietnam-set novel (Ruane 431).

Ruane uses historical fact and fiction to aid his argument in better understanding this text as it seen as a piece of literature versus a piece of history. Greene has situated this novel as being written as “a story and not a piece of history, yet countless readers in the decades that followed ignored these cautionary words and invested the work with historical authenticity” (Ruane 431). While he was merely “a writer of fiction” somehow he functioned “simultaneously as a chronicler and interpreter of contemporary history as well as an oracle” (Ruane 432). This serves to contrast Acton’s viewpoint on female war writers because it seemingly underestimates the importance of the combatants’ perspective versus the noncombatants’ perspective.

Ruane goes on to say, “Greene underestimated the desire of his readers ‘to make fiction fact’ and to have ‘fiction serving as history’, and to accept the story as ‘real fiction’ (Ruane 434). Scholars have questioned and evaluated the “historical veracity” of this work for years now (Ruane 434). However, this example does not allow for the misappropriation of female characters. Phuong is reduced to being talked about, instead of talked to, and mainly asks simple questions, such as, if someone would like her to make a pipe for them. Instead, Ruane focuses on the covert activities of Greene as Fowler and Pyle mimic them in the novel.

We can also further call upon Michel Foucault to better understand why this criticism uses discourse as a system of perception. Ruane follows this thinking because he shows that there is no objective reality to follow as it is all constructed. Furthermore, Ruane shows that all texts are equalized as we are critiquing culture and not the text itself. There is also no timeless and eternal truth to focus in on because the goal is not toward coming closer to the truth, but rather toward the discourse. This novel and the history of the period become intertwined because they are equal in terms of Foucault’s theory. However, from feminist theory, there is also something to be said about how the women factor into this interpretation. It is helpful to align this text with real events in history, but at the same time there is a fundamental element that is lacking. Again, we can call back to Brittain’s example of being a female writer during WWI. She felt that she did not have the right to discuss these events because she lacked the knowledge required to participate in such discourse, but perhaps we can say the same about Greene. As Ruane notes, Greene understood this sphere because he actively participated in covert dealings, but he did not truly understand what it meant to be a woman who had been left by her husband, nor a woman who had been reduced to generic stereotypes. To reverse this is something that may be contested by others; however, it seems necessary to do so. After all, there is no timeless truth that can be wholly subscribed to because discourse can be used as a system of perception.

Another perception can be found in Phuong’s inability to understand and be seen as a dynamic character throughout The Quiet American as seen in Karen Steigman’s essay, “The Literal American: Rereading Graham Greene in an Age of Security.” Steigman calls upon an essay in the New York Review of Books by Richard West who “crudely dismissed Phuong as a ‘birdbrain who reads nothing but magazine articles on the British royal family” (Steigman 18). Greene often discusses, through Fowlers’s perspective, Phuong’s inability to understand, however it appears that Steigman reworks that understanding. She calls upon Spivak to more precisely pinpoint “Phuong’s inviolable elusiveness—unable to be subsumed or secured entirely by representation” as it relates to what Spivak calls a text’s “connection between woman as reader and as model” (Steigman 21). We do not explicitly know Phuong’s interests, as we are never given a true glimpse into her mind; we can only see from Fowler’s perspective.

A misogynistic viewpoint is thus developed by only seeing Fowler’s perspective of things. Alongside that, there is another, lacking viewpoint which positions history alongside literature. We can use feminist theory and historicism to position and formulate a better understanding of how women can be seen in a larger context. If we take Phuong, who serves as a representation of Vietnam, she is forced to fit into that subservient role as powerful men, in this novel, basically dominate her. Although Fowler and Pyle might argue that they are not that powerful in the scheme of things, they do pose as a threat to the authenticity of the female perspective in times of war. Thus we can see Helen as similarly threatened because of her representation, for Fowler, of mother England, who has a firm grip and influence over him. He tries to escape from these things, just as Pyle attempts to escape from his past American life by adopting a new one in Vietnam with Phuong.

This indicates that the men in this novel are allowed to escape from their duties whereas the women cannot. Greene focuses on the importance of Phuong to serve as a way to force these two men apart, however, she cannot be seen in merely this light because she is more than the object to be flung around.

It is necessary to rework Greene’s novel to allow for new interpretation and to take into account how it is relevant today. While this novel can be read by looking at the male characters only, I felt it was necessary to understand how the female characters play a part in it all. If they were not meant to have any purpose, then they would most likely not be mentioned at all. However, Greene uses them to throw a sort of wrench in specifically Fowler’s plans. He becomes the subject while the women and country of Vietnam becomes the object with which to bend and manipulate, at his will. Yet in the end due to their lack of involvement perhaps Phuong and Helen, although left to react to the atrocities of war and what it does to man, are the ones who are actually free. They are forced to bend to the will of men, but they are also not required to sacrifice in the same way because they are removed from the actual actions and repercussions. The repercussions they face are more akin to societal norms they must submit to, however men, like Fowler, become involved in situations that are unnecessary and actually child-like. Fowler sees Phuong as a child, but he is the one who runs around without any real direction. He may very well have been the child all along, pretending to be the man Greene sets out for him to be.

References

Acton, Carol. "Diverting The Gaze: The Unseen Text In Women's War Writing." College Literature 31.2 (2004): 53-79. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Apr. 2016.

Greene, Graham. The Quiet American. New York: Viking, 1956. Print.

Ruane, Kevin. "The Hidden History Of Graham Greene's Vietnam War: Fact, Fiction And The Quiet American." History 97.327 (2012): 431-452. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.

Steigman, Karen. "The Literal American: Rereading Graham Greene In An Age Of Security." College Literature 39.1 (2012): 1-26. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 May 2016.