MASTER'S THESIS: LARRY MCMURTRY

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Many contemporary feminists still contend that writers, particularly male writers, do not do justice to women. As Elizabeth Ermarth points out in her essay, “Fictional Consensus and Female Casualties,” even famous heroines of fiction have been victims of male writers:

           Their common fate poses a fundamental challenge to the norm of
                        consensus confirmed formally by the novels that destroy them. Among
                        these are some of the great heroines of the nineteenth century – Anna
                        Karenina, Emma Bovary, Maggie Tulliver, Tess Durbeyfield. All these
                        women die of psychic starvation. They die from isolation. (10)

And those are characters who actually received some kind of attention from their male creators.  Feminist critic Cheri Register claims that “a frequent complaint is that few male authors, even those who are sympathetic to women, have succeeded in portraying women with whom female readers can identify” (15). Another feminist writer, Elaine Showalter, says women get short shrift in fiction:

                        Women are estranged from their own experience and unable to
                        perceive its shape and authenticity, in part because they do not see it
                        mirrored and given resonance by literature.  Instead they are expected
                        to identify as readers with masculine experience and perspective,which
                         is presented as the human one. (856)

Thelma J. Shinn offers this viewpoint:

                        … male writers spawned by the war years (1940s) were particularly
                         vehement in their unyielding condemnation of women.  Women are
                         bitches whenever they disagree or try to assert themselves; they are
                         burdens whenever they are passive and subservient. (69)

Shinn goes on to point out that the 1950s “were a period of strategic retreat for women. … Trapped in the boxes that defined their decade …  Americans began to see them as coffins closing life out rather than containing it safely” (121). Mary  Allen maintains  that some of the major American writers of the 1960s – John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth and John Updike – were incapable of portraying well-rounded women:

                        Most heroines of the sixties have no concept of fullfillment outside of
                        marriage . . . The woman of current fiction is not so much enlightened by
                        sexual freedom; she is not effectual as a mother; she develops
                        no skills or talents. And the absurd humor of it all never penetrates her
                        undeveloped mind. (185)

There is one contemporary male author, active the past forty years, who does not fit this mold but is particularly adroit in creating authentic female characters with whom both men and women can relate: Texas’ Larry McMurtry. Yes, this is the same McMurtry renowned for such testosterone-heavy works as  Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, Commanche Moon, Dead Man’s Walk and Boone’s Lick. McMurtry is indeed one man whose feminine side is showing quite predominantly. He obviously understands women – at least from a male’s point of view.  He also can write about them like no other living author.  You know and understand his women.  They are people whom we have met, connected with and even loved.  More importantly, we feel them in our souls.  McMurtry brings every one of his women alive in glorious, living color.  McMurtry cannot be described as a feminist.  His women do not become leaders of the community or the financial world.  They don’t particularly succeed as political or moral icons.  They don’t go where women have not gone before.  But McMurtry is capable of writing women characters so succinctly that they are not only funny, attractive, sad and sometimes repulsive, they propel the novel.  Maybe his male characters, like Augustus McCrae and Woodrow F. Call in Lonesome Dove, are more memorable, but the point is that McMurtry is a man – a male author to be precise – who knows women and knows how to write about them.  Roger Walton Jones agrees: “McMurtry’s fear and anger in response to the simplistic masculine intolerance he felt as a  child in rural Texas would later inspire him to create fiction which celebrated not only women but tolerance as a positive quality associated with civilization” (11).

            Males  are the main characters in fourteen of McMurtry’s novels, while women are the primary leads in eight works of fiction.  But it is usually the women who prompt the males into action, dominate their psyches and propel plots and character motivations. This is not true of all great writers.  Women do not seem to be the same instigating force in the works of Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, John Irving, Ernest Hemingway or Charles Dickens, for instance. According to Clay Reynolds:

           When McMurtry goes after characters he is as tenacious as the Texas
                       Ranger of a century ago: He knows his man or woman, and he grabs hold
                         of the trail and won’t be shaken by idle caveats from readers who
                        would rather see him fit into a mold better suited to a Dobie or
                         L’Amour or even the shallower and erroneous visions of Edna
                         Ferber and James Michener. (5)

          A taxonomy of McMurtry’s major women characters and a comparison to their cinema counterparts will help support the contention that McMurtry was far ahead of his time in portraying feminine spirit, mien and attitude.

                                   

          CHAPTER II

FREE SPIRITS

The free spirit has long been a staple of artistic creation.  McMurtry emphasizes their independence and uniqueness as traits that make this type of woman stand out. Feminists would applaud the originality and dominance of these female characters.  Two of McMurtry’s most unforgettable women are categorized here: Aurora Greenway of Terms of Endearment and The Evening Star and Molly  Taylor of Leaving Cheyenne.  Aurora is selfish, maneuvering, manipulative, exciting, interesting, wildly unique – a full and contradictory character who delights and exasperates both men and women.  And, as Wendy Martin claims: “A literary work should provide role models, instill a positive sense of feminine identity by portraying women who are ‘self-actualizing, whose identities are not dependent on men’” (20).

            That describes Aurora perfectly.  She certainly stands on her own two feet.  One of McMurtry’s strongest assets is his ability to write situations with his female characters that make their actions and responses always believable, funny and interesting. Aurora is always saying outlandish things to provoke her daughter – and others.  Take the way  Terms of Endearment starts:

                ‘The success of a marriage invariably depends on the woman,’ Mrs.
                       Greenway said.  ‘It does not,’ Emma said, not looking up.  ‘It most
                       certainly does,’ Mrs. Greenway said, assuming a stern expression.  She
                       tightened her lips and narrowed her brows.  Emma was letting herself go
                     again – a breach of standards – and she always endeavored to meet any
                     breach of standards with a stern expression, if only briefly. (3)

            The continued exchange between mother and daughter is only one in a long line of priceless conversations throughout the book.  McMurtry understands how women act and is able to convey this unerringly:

           Aurora took another candy.  She looked aloof.  Sterness might  present
                       problems, but aloofness was her element.  Life often required it of her.
                       In gathering after gathering, when her sensibilities were affronted, she
                       had found it necessary to raise her eyebrows and cast a chill.  There was
                       little justice.  It  sometimes seemed to her that if she were remembered at
                       all it would probably only be for the chills she had cast. (7-8)

            Aurora’s attitude and behavior make her a free spirit like no other.  She does not exactly behave or think the way one might expect a middle-aged widow to act.  Look at  Aurora and her suitors.  She has a lot of them.  There is the retired general, an aging Italian, a diminutive millionaire oilman, a suave man-about-the world, a young (for her) psychiatrist and just about anyone she fancies.  Aurora is able to dazzle all of them with her delightful banter, her elegance and beauty.  She is relentless in her pursuit of whatever she wants.  Aurora’s presence is tempered by her daughter, Emma, a chubby but still sexy young woman who wants to find her way in the world –  and is not finding it easy.  But it is definitely Aurora’s presence that helps define the other male characters. Without her, they would revel in nothingness.  It is Aurora’s personality and being that help define them.  The general is an egomaniac who is totally structured by Aurora’s presence.  He is a 65-year-old egocentric bully who is cowed by this wisp of a 50-year-old woman.  He spies on her from his house.  He calls her incessantly.  She doesn’t want to talk.  He does.  His wife never made him wait – she was right on time for 43 years. Aurora’s response?  “What a ghastly thought . . . I’m afraid I’ve never marched to any man’s drum and I’m far too old to start now.  Also I have observed that it’s generally weakminded people who allow themselves to be slave to the clock  . . . ” (94).

            Aurora is a singular woman, not to mention an unusual female character who dominates every man she meets.  She is subservient to no one.  Men are usually smitten with her, yet totally clueless as to how to handle her.  They can barely hold their own in a conversation, much less figure out how to earn her attention and allegiance.  Aurora comes out on top in almost every situation she faces with a man.When the general grows weary of losing the war to her, she responds:

                       ‘Now Hector,’ she said, ‘you’re sounding resigned again . . . I hope you
                       haven’t allowed  me to beat you down again.  You’re just going to have to
                       learn to defend yourself a little more vigorously if you want to get along
                       with  me.  I should think a military man like yourself would have more
                        skill at self- defense’ (101-02).

            She even boggles the mind of the general’s handyman.  He thinks the general is a stern taskmaster but nothing compared to Aurora, whom he cannot figure out in the slightest.  “It seldom took her more than two minutes to put him between the horns of a dilemma, as she had just had, and the thought of having to live his life between the horns of thousands of dilemmas was more than  F.V. could face” (105).

            Aurora and the general go out for lunch and end up having a minor  car wreck  with millionaire Vernon Dalhart, a socially backward but likable little man who quickly becomes another would-be suitor and slave to Aurora.  Vernon pulls his earlobes and cracks his knuckles, and Aurora typically puts him in his place. She can’t tolerate his fidgits and tells him so.  Instead of being put out with her, Vernon tries to please her all the more.  In fact, he – a lifelong bachelor – only knows her about an hour before he claims his love for her.  Typically, Aurora is neither abashed nor surprised.  She expects such reverence as her natural due.  How could a man like Vernon help but fall  in love with someone like her?  Yet it still startles her, and McMurtry can convey these feelings like no other author: “In her loneliness and out of momentary inadequacy in regard to her life she had exerted herself and demanded love from the only person who was at hand to give it; and there it was, all over Vernon’s windburned, freckled and panic-stricken face” (131).

            It is Aurora’s presence, her personality, her very being which are so important to understanding McMurtry’s male characters.  The most enduring of her suitors, Trevor Waugh, has been married three times but had first known Aurora when they both were in their early 20s, 30 years before.  You get to know this man immediately from Aurora’s feeling about him – the way he looked, the way he smelled (salt, leather, spice) (197).  He is one who totally understands Aurora and knows that she will never marry him but realizes he cannot stop trying.  No matter what happens, Aurora always knows how to handle the situation: “‘Trevor, propose to me as much as you like, but  don’t try to hold hands with me while I am handling silverware,’ she said” (200).

            He claims that without her he has no hope.  She is quick to point out that the fact that she won’t marry him is what preserves his hopes.  If she did marry him, she would just be his wife.  Of course, Trevor does not know how to handle this, and, as usual,  Aurora gets the upper hand.  She not only tolerates his description of other women, she enjoys it because she knows that she is his true love.  And in a moment of wild ardor, he gets his hand trapped in her bra and almost breaks his wrist.  It is a wildly comic scene that typically does not even faze Aurora.  Of course, all her actions and reactions are what help define Trevor – another suitor who is merely putty in Aurora’s hands.  Another great moment is when two suitors  – Hector (General Scott) and Alberto (the Italian) – converge on her house when Aurora is not there.  She shows up when the two have been waiting inside.  Naturally, Aurora is up to handling the situation.  The two men are ready to kill each other when Aurora invites Alberto to dinner with her and Hector.  This practically gives the general apoplexy.  She gives the general rum and Alberto wine. She calms the two down like only she can. Alberto proceeds to fall asleep at the dinner table, while Aurora admonishes the general for his unruly behavior.  Aurora cools the general off saying that Alberto just brought her some flowers and fell asleep at her table – and what is the harm in that?  No matter how volatile the situation, she always controls it. Indomitable Auora brings up the fact that all her suitors might end up as close friends. John M. Reilly understands the essence of Aurora: “The art of McMurtry has rendered Aurora Greenway in so many dramatic episodes that readers feel they have lived with her . . .  episodes have repeatedly made the same point of her vanity and controlling personality so that character and theme are now inseparable” (60).

Aurora’s life is picked up again in The Evening Star in which she dominates the action along with her maid, Rosie.  Aurora is irrepressible – thanks to McMurtry.  It is impossible to keep her down.  Her personality, dialogue and the fiber of her being dominate the book and define everyone else.  Here’s a typical conversation between Aurora and Rosie:

            ‘I wish Trevor hadn’t died.  Trevor always favored the shortest distance
            between two points, and there were only two points that interested
            him, where human beings were concerned.’  ‘Which two?’ Rosie asked.
            Besides being interested in whether Aurora and the General still had a sex
            life, she was curious about the sexual behavior of  Aurora’s former
            boyfriends.  ‘Which two would you suppose?’ Aurora asked.  ‘You
            should have been named Nosie, not Rosie.’ (25-6)

McMurtry  continues his mastery of having Aurora dominate any situation she is in whether or not they are with a  man, woman, suitor, rival, friend or maid.  She resumes her priceless conversations with the general and, as usual, he ends up on the short end. Because their relationship is so tenuous and difficult, she suggests that they go into therapy.  The general, of course, takes this not to be a treatment but a place – “Isn’t it somewhere in the Maldives? or somewhere?” is his answer (38). But even his response doesn’t throw Aurora: “T-h-e-r-a-p-y. Therapy. And it isn’t in the Maldives, it’s in the Medical Center . . .  I intend to have us on psychoanalysis so quick,  it will make your head swim.” “‘It won’t be a new feeling,’ the General said. ‘You make my head swim every day’” (38-39).

 One of McMurtry’s best qualities as a writer is his ability to make something out of nothing.  Take this conversation in the bedroom after Aurora has crawled into bed and removed the glove that Hector wears:
                      ‘What happened to my glove?’ he asked.  ‘I took it off, Hector,’
                      Aurora said.  ‘I don’t feel like holding hands with a glove.’  ‘Yes,
                      but you  don’t like it when my hands get cold either … I’m caught
                       either way.’  ‘You’re no more caught than I am, you know …  
                       Either I am holding hands with a glove or I am being fondled by an
                        icy  claw.  It’s very disappointing that this is how life ends.’ (74)

The other free spirit of considerable note in McMurtry’s fiction is Molly Taylor of Leaving Cheyenne, who  just might be Aurora’s soul mate. She has many  of the same qualities, not the least of which is the ability to control everyone and everything around her.  Gideon is seemingly the hero of the novel, with Johnny as a secondary character. But it is Gideon’s woman, Molly, who ties everything together.  She is a young woman who loves two men, but her feelings are so strong for them that rather than hurt either one,  she marries neither.  Instead, she weds a ne’er-do-well so she will probably feel less guilty when she plays around with Gideon and Johnny.  She ends up having sons by Gideon and Johnny, and both sons die in World War II. But Molly and her loves all survive into their 70s, always loyal, always loving. Molly shows an independence that is not common in literature. She tells Gideon when he suggests marriage: “I don’t want to marry you or nobody else. Girls who get married just to do a lot of things with boys ain’t very nice. I don’t like it. I’d just as soon do all those things and not be married, and I mean it” (29).

The character of Molly was a forerunner in American literature just as McMurtry was a pioneer as an author. His women were ahead of their time, and they helped define the male characters.  Register writes:

            Feminist critics believe that novels by male authors are becoming more
                        resolutely ‘masculine’and consequently even more misogynistic than
                        before.  The Rose, the dark-haird sensuous unsubmissive woman Fielder
                        discovered in nineteenth-century American novels, became Hemingway’s
                        American Bitch.  And Norman Mailer has made her still ‘bitchier.’ (4)

These sweeping generalizations were not true in McMurtry’s literature.  His women  – like Molly – stand on their own.  When she first has sex with Gideon, he is astonished when he finds out it was not her first time.  But she, on the other hand, is not even hesitant to let him know.  When she doesn’t bleed, he questions her.  Her response: “You only bleed the first time” (52).  So she subtly lets him know that he was not the first.  She is a very liberated woman as far as conventional morals but not as far as her total life experience.  She is perfectly happy being a rural housewife with no ambitions or goals.  And her revelation stuns Gideon so much that you learn that he is a very moral, traditional, old-fashioned young man.  Molly certainly is unusual. She tells Gid she cannot go to dances with him any more because she promised Eddie she would only go with him.  And she sticks to her word even though it’s a dumb promise.  And, instead of marrying the stable Gid or the likable Johnny, she ends up with reprobate Eddie – just for that reason. But she surprises Gid again by announcing that she wants him to father her child – not the ne’er-do-well Eddie.  And she does. This woman has complete control over three men’s lives – Eddie, Gid and Johnny – yet remains an irresistible woman, a creation who is total McMurtry.

McMurtry on Film

The efforts of the film community to put McMurtry’s novels on celluloid have been extensive but mostly unsuccessful – compared to the literature itself.  The filmmakers’ inabilities to do justice to McMurtry only reemphasize the effectiveness of his characters.  The film version of Terms of Endearment in 1983 was a stunning accomplishment and earned five major Academy awards notably, for best actress (Shirley MacLaine as Aurora) and for James L. Brooks’ adapted screenplay. As incredible as it may seem, this cinematic equivalent of the novel had to be the least  like McMurtry’s books of all the adaptations.  First of all, the screenplay is basically just the last 62 pages of a 417-page book, and it is about Aurora’s daughter, Emma Horton’s life and dying of cancer.  The book is really the story of Aurora Greenway and her relationship with her daughter Emma, her many suitors and her maid, Rosie.  Secondly, many of the characters  – women and men – do not even resemble the characters in the book.  (There is nothing wrong with Brooks’ screenplay; it’s just not a true adaptation of Terms of Endearment). The most obvious difference from book to screen is that Aurora’s No. 1 suitor, retired general Hector Scott, a cranky, boisterous, egotistical ex-Marine, has been turned into a much-younger, lecherous, fun-loving ex-astronaut. Brooks tries to maintain the singular individuality of Aurora on the screen and partially succeeds.  But his “Terms” turns out to be Emma’s story, not Aurora’s.  The talent of MacLaine allows Aurora’s aura to shine on film.  But McMurtry spends so much more time with Aurora on the page that he is able to convey her soul and personality far better than Brooks could ever have done on celluloid. The relationship between Auora and Emma is very tenuous in the book. Emma is likable but chubby, not real attractive.  Debra Winger turns her into a lovely person, charming and full of fun as a daughter, mother and lover. McMurtry’s  Emma is much more fully rounded, and the love and antagonism between mother and daughter are more developed.  Aurora can be a real pain to deal with every day, and McMurtry is able to portray this in every nuance. 

Thanks to an actress of Shirley MacLaine’s ability, Aurora  comes alive once more in the film version of The Evening Star.  The cinema, however, cannot match the depth,  complexity and humor of McMurtry’s writing.  As a result,  the men are not as effective on the screen as they are in the pages of the book.  It does not help to take the general and turn him into Jack Nicholson (the astronaut).  The film is completely different and far less successful than the written word.

The cinema equivalent of  Leaving Cheyenne, called “Loving Molly,” leaves a lot to be desired. Changing the title was  the least of the filmmakers’ myriad mistakes. “Loving Molly” is undoubtedly  the least successful film adaptation of all of McMurtry   books. Sidney Lumet, usually an intelligent and astute director, was given a cast and screenplay that were inadequate, and he did nothing to improve either.  The three actors chosen to play the lead characters – Blythe Danner as Molly, Anthony Perkins as Gid and Beau Bridges as Johnny – are not only totally wrong for their parts, they never get a grasp on the characters.  All three seem entirely different than the impression one gets in reading the book. Molly is one of McMurtry’s singular characters – a totally independent and fearless woman which is beyond Danner’s conception.  Bridges is totally colorless and ineffective as Johnny, while the wimpy Perkins is almost the total oppostite of the Gideon created by McMurtry.  It would be interesting to see another attempt at the filming of this book, but any images will probably remain inferior to the word in this case.  The film is an entirely different story from the book, and most viewers were either bored or turned off by it.

CHAPTER III

A GOOD WOMAN ISN’T HARD TO FIND

To reinforce the premise that McMurtry  creates incomparable women, this taxonomy continues with a perusal of some of his most memorable characters –  the good women of his western novels, namely Clara Forsythe Allen of Lonesome Dove and Dead Man’s Walk,  Lady Carey of Dead Man’s Walk and Mary Margaret of Boone’s Lick. Foremost is the strong, independent Clara Forsythe Allen, the young woman with whom  Gus McCrae is smitten in  Dead Man’s Walk.  Clara is beautiful, intelligent, forthright and obviously not under the thumb of any man.  She controls the situation from the moment she steps on the scene in Dead Man’s Walk:  “Gus had merely glanced at her, supposing that she was too busy to notice, but she caught his glance and looked at him so directly that it unnerved him.  He would have retreated back to the muskets had she not immediately smiled at him in a quick, friendly way” (114). In any conversations that Clara has with Gus, who is quite witty, verbose and outgoing himself, she usually controls the situtation.  He is shocked when she is so bold as to talk to him outright. “‘Dispose of this paper – I can see that you’re tall, but I don’t know if you’re useful,’ the girl said.  ‘I’m Clara.  Who are you?’”  (116).  Gus courts her for several years, always wandering off with the Rangers until Clara has had enough.  Then she tells him she is going to marry a horse trader named Bob Allen, and, of course, he tries to change her mind:

                       ‘Nope,’ Clara said firmly. ‘I’ve spent enough of my life
                       waiting for you to get home from some jaunt. I don’t like
                       waiting much. I don’t like going for weeks not even
                       knowing if you’re alive. I don’t  like wondering if you’ve
                       found another woman, in some town I’ve never been to.’
                       (Commanche Moon  208)

       And no matter how Gus tries to talk her out of marrying another, he can’t do it himself.  When we meet Clara in  Lonesome Dove, she is settled down on a ranch  in Nebraska with two young girls.  Her three young sons have died of disease, and her husband lies upstairs in a coma with a fractured skull, waiting to die.  Yet Clara runs the ranch with grit and skill, determined to maintain a life for her and her girls.  When Gus shows up to see her after 16 years, the first thing he thinks about is how formidable a woman she is – “perhaps too formidable” (610).  He has more than met his match.  And Clara is cowed by no man, including Woodrow Call, whom she despises, saying so. (Lonesome Dove 745).  And, of course, it is Clara’s presence and attitude that explain much about the character of Augustus McCrae.  His worth is affirmed because Clara’s worth is obvious, and her very being makes Gus more.

            One of McMurtry’s most incredible women makes a brief showing near the  end of Dead Man’s Walk.  Her name is Lady Carey, and she also is a prisoner of the Mexicans – and a leper.  She wears veils to hide the horrors of her disease, yet she maintains her regalness and dignity, inviting the boys to tea their first day in the Mexicans’ charge.  How she is able to accomplish this is never quite explained, but she is a dominant woman subservient to no man, captive or not.  She has a 10-year-old son and a regal Negro maid who uphold her social position.  The Mexicans, apparently satisfied with killing several of the Texas Rangers, allow the remainder to ride off with Lady Carey.  Indians stand between them and Galveston, Texas, but they are no problem for Lady Carey.  She strips, gets on a horse, puts a snake around her neck and proceeds to frighten the Indians into submission.  This is one woman who is cowed by nothing – man or beast.  And her presence, experience and intelligence are important to the understanding and realization that most of Texas Rangers are just boys by comparison.

            Not to be left out of McMurtry’s esteem is the leading character of his latest western, Boone’s Lick.  Mary Margaret fits into this category of good women nicely – a strong, independent presence who heads up her family and goes looking for her husband in Wyoming.  Her husband’s brother, her father,  step-sister, daughter  and two young sons accompany the expedition, but there’s no doubt who is in charge.  One of the first things he does is shoot the sheriff’s horse out from under him, pretending that she thought it was an elk, in order to feed her starving family.  And when her entourage finally comes across her wandering husband, there is no doubt who takes charge of the situation: “Ma was perfectly cool – it startled Pa a little.  He may have forgotten how cool Ma was in a storm – or it maybe that he just wasn’t used to people who didn’t seem to care that he was  mad” (Boone’s Lick 252).  And then  Mary Margaret explains why she dragged her family hundreds of miles to look for their father:  “‘. . .  I’m not the sort of woman to quit a man through the mails,’ Ma said.  ‘I can only quit a man face-to-face, and right here and now I’m quitting you’” (254).  Then she hauls off and gives him a “roundhouse slap that would have floored any man less tall and stout than Pa” (255).  So Mary Margaret, it turns out, goes hundreds of miles just to tell her husband she is divorcing him.  Does that sound like a subservient woman?  And soon Mary Margaret has insulted the rude commander of the fort, who is demanding that she be thrown out.  But she even turns out to be right about his ineffectiveness as he is shortly massacred by Indians.  Her character also helps define the young narrator, her brother-in-law and husband-to-be and even the rest of her family.

McMurtry on Film

Thanks to a stunning portrayal by Anjelica Huston, Clara is brought to vibrant life on celluloid.  Her feistiness, her attractiveness, her independence, her strength and her determination are all aptly  portrayed.  However,  film just verifies the strength and effectiveness of McMurtry’s words.  It cannot equal the clarity and authenticity of McMurtry in print.  The same can be said for Lady Carey.  Words and the imagination create indelible portraits that cannot be matched in living color, and the effect of his creations are considerably diminished on film.

CHAPTER:  IV

 WOMEN WHO KNOW WHAT THEY WANT

McMurtry continues in the last decade with his mastery of women in his western novels. The taxonomy of female characters is extended with two young women who know what they want – and go and get it. Both have prostitution in their background, and both lend immeasurably to McMurtry’s color and depth in his novels and characters. Feminists would find the pair  – Lorena of Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo, and Matilda of Dead Man’s Walk – worth investigating.  Lorena is a pretty, young prostitute who longs to escape the badlands of Texas for a more civilized life in San Francisco.  It was difficult for young, single women to survive in the Old West.  Lorena did the best she knew how, resorting to selling herself in order to get by to live more comfortably than she might have.  Very few people might have recognized her worth.  One who does is Augustus  McCrae, who not only appreciates her services but also treats her with kindness, affection and respect  –  something she has never known.  Lorena’s presence tells us more about Gus’s character and stature as a man and human being than strict exposition ever could.  McMurtry’s perceptions are extraordinary.  She is stolen by the most vicious Indian of the plains but is rescued by Augustus who becomes her hero.  And after Gus dies, she feels virtually that she has nothing to live for.  But  Lorena is stronger and smarter than anyone else in the novel had envisioned.  Taken in by Clara Forsythe, she learns to read and write.  Soon she becomes known as the most adept pupil in Nebraska.  And she ends up marrying a young ranger, Pea Eye, with whom she has five children,  helps run a ranch and then still manages to find the time to become a school teacher.  And these accomplishments all derive from a former prostitute whose self esteem had been non-existent.  She ends up as the backbone of her family and even leaves home and children to look for her husband, who goes on another mission with the Texas Rangers and Captain Call, a man she regards with disdain for taking Gus from her and then her husband.  But Lorena never relents and prevails in the end.

     Matilda Roberts in Deadman’s Walk  is one of McMurtry’s great creations.  She is totally independent, tough, feisty  and entirely her own woman. She’s also big:

            Matilda Jane Roberts was naked as the air. Known throughout south Texas
                        as the Great Western, she came walking up from the muddy Rio Grande
                        holding a big snapping turtle by the tail. Matilda was almost as large as the
                        skinny little Mexican mustang Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call were
                        trying to saddle-break. (13)

            Matty is a prostitute, and she’s in charge.  The men like her, but most are scared of her, especially if they are in debt for her favors.  Matty’s not shy,  either, as she strolls around in the buff.  “I’m not stingy about offering my customers a look” (18).  And she seems to have control of every situation.  Half of the Rangers were scared of her.  Most of them she viewed as total incompetents who would run up debts and not pay them (18). Leave it to McMurtry to create a woman who is totally intriguing and totally original. Once more, it is her character which helps define the personality and attitude of everyone else in the book.

McMurtry  on Film

            The failure of the film versions of the novels to flesh out the female characters in  the way  that McMurtry does continues to substantiate the author’s success with women and the ineptitude of the screenwriters to interpret his vision.  The film version of Lonesome Dove is not able to show the strength of character that McMurtry endows upon Lorena.  She is able to survive everything she goes through in Lonesome Dove and emerge a whole, intelligent, controlling woman in Streets of Laredo.  A presence and dignity is conveyed in the book that the cinema tries to emulate but not as successfully. Unfortunately, the cinematic version of  Dead Man’s Walk  is not able to do Matty justice,  either.  First of all, she is shown as a slightly plump woman who is liked and admired by most of the cowboys, not the intimidating and frightening creature created by McMurtry.  The entire flavor of Matty’s independence and feisty spirtit is lost.  The teleplay by McMurtry himself is true to the book, but the characters on film are not able to breathe life into McMurtry’s creations.  Matty is a victim of Hollwyood which often requires photogenic characters who not have the spirit and the integrity endowed in the literary creations.

     CHAPTER V

                                                            THE SURVIVORS

Three of McMurtry’s women are sheer “survivors,” characters who withstand whatever is cast their way and come out on top.  They unerringly support the contention that McMurtry creates well-wrought women.  The three fulfill every demand made of them and emerge scathed but always persevering: Halmea in Horseman Pass By,  Genevieve Morgan in The Last Picture Show and Rosie Dunlup in Terms of Endearment and The Evening Star.  Even in McMurtry’s first novel, Horseman, Pass By, published in 1961, he showed a great talent for writing women characters.  Some male writers have made women the protagonists of their novels, but it is difficult to find one who  seems to know his female characters better than McMurtry.  His female supporting characters – like those in The Last Picture Show – always seem to be the prime motiviating forces behind the males.  Women have not been the dominating factor in the  canon of literature. Most women are relegated to subservient roles.  That’s not always the case with McMurtry. In Horseman, Pass By, a black housekeeper named Halmea is central to McMurtry’s book.  There’s a lot more to Halmea than the writer’s presentation and the reader’s assumption might at first presume.  She may not be real ambitious and hard-working,  and she obviously is earthy and sexy, but she thinks enough of herself to resist Hud’s advances and leaves a good job in order to maintain her dignity and self-respect. But it is as a guiding, maternal figure for the motherless, teen-aged Lonnie that she makes her presence felt.  Lonnie does feel a stirring of lust for Halmea, but it is her companionship – her humor and motherly instincts – which have an influence on Lonnie. Most importantly, it is Halmea’s presence that helps reveal the most about the novels’ leading male characters.  Take Lonnie’s Granddad – an 80-year-old rancher who lives for his work and his cattle.  But his thoughtfulness about Halmea reveals more about him than any lines of description could: “‘Why don’t you take them bowls in to Halmea?’ he said to me. ‘She might want to get her dishes done’” (8).

Her interaction with Hud tells more about his character than anything else the author could write.  Here are some comments from Hud directed to or about Halmea which tell reams about his character:  “Then let the nigger bitch gather ‘em up herself . . .   (8).  “Let her work a little . . . She sits on her butt all day”  (8).  “Naw, she wasn’t bawlin’ when I went in . . . I gave her a little tittie squeeze . . .  A man gets to wantin’ a little chocolate milk” (68).  Hud beats up Halmea and rapes her.  Her reactions tell a lot about her and him.  “Don’t gimme dat drunk talk.  Mistah Hud wasn’t drunk.  An’ drunk don’t mean he can come in an’ do dat to somebody”  (116).  And Lonnie is more than just a teen-aged boy trying to find himself.  He not only lusts after Halmea, he loves, respects, needs and actually likes her.  There are countless scenes where Halmea’s very presence tells us all about Lonnie.  Halmea obviously thinks a lot of the boy, knows that he has a crush on her and likes playing with him:  “Halmea was standing all spraddle-legged reaching in the icebox for a jar of pickles, and I tried to give her the hip when I went by. But she straightened up too quick.  ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘befo’ you wets you  didy’” (14).

            When Hud physically abuses Halmea, Lonnie is quick to respond: “Goddamn you . . . Don’t you do that no more” (68).  And when he sexually attacks her, Lonnie comes to her defense by shooting at Hud, even though he misses.  John M. Reilly profoundly agrees with the influence that McMurtry’s women have on men: “When women can realistically appear as characters in fiction, there is a range of conventions about flirtation, courtship and marriage allowing the release of male devotion and tenderness” (103).

In The Last Picture Show, Genevieve Morgan, a waitress at the local café, is truly a survivor.  She is a sexual object for most of the boys but ends up more as a surrogate mother.  She was described as  “still pretty, high-breasted, and long-legged … Sonny liked it himself and had as many fantasies about Genevieve as he had about Jacy Farrow” (30).  One learns the most about Sonny, a seemingly quiet, not very bright boy, through these women.  Just watching Genevieve wash the dishes gets Sonny all excited (33). Sonny complains about too few girls in the town, but it is really Genevieve he is lusting after.  Conversations with the waitress reveal more about the introspective Sonny, his father, his thoughts, his dreams.  Sonny does not accept money from his father, because he believes his dad needs it more than he does.  “‘You’re the only boy I know who won’t even let his own father give him money,’ she says” (35).  But Genevieve recognizes that Sonny has a crush on her and is very vulnerable.

Rosie, Aurora’s maid of 42 years, and the third survivor, is a delightful counter-character to Aurora.  The two are as different as night and day.  Aurora is sophisticated, educated, manipulative and totalling dominating. Rosie is a domestic with six children, a person who is as simple as Aurora is complicated. The two bounce off each other like ping pong balls,  and they make every scene they are in breathe with life and vitality. Rosie has some epic battles with her husband that show she is one woman not easily pushed around.

McMurtry on Film.

The contention that McMurtry’s well-wrought women were far ahead of their time can find support in the cinematic versions of his novels. Film has not been able to do justice to McMurtry’s women, altering them to meet its needs and standards. The fact that Halmea was an African American woman raped by a white man was obviously too much for the movies to deal with in 1963.  The movie version of Horseman, Pass By,  “Hud,”was an astonishing achievement, brilliantly acted by Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas and Patricia Neal, with an incisive screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr. But it was not Horseman, Pass By.  The filmmakers had the temerity, the gall,  to change the black housekeeper into a southern white woman named Alma!  And she is not raped by Newman’s Hud, merely attacked.  There are many other differences between the film and the book, but the concern here is with the main female character.  The decision to make her  a world-weary white woman,who is wise to Hud and his character changes the tone and tenor of the entire story.  Halmea seemed a part of that culture; Alma is a visitor.  The changes alter the responses of the male characters to the hired woman – on film.  Halmea, because she was black, seemed more like hired help; Alma comes across as more like family – in a year previous to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Genevieve’s impact in the novel of  The Last Picture Show is far greater than in Peter Bogdanovich’s film, because the situation is difficult to portray, and the book leaves much to the imagination.  McMurtry himself said in Film Flam, his essays on Hollywood, that people are always going to be disappointed that their favorite book  never has the same impact on celluloid:

                    If the movie doesn’t allow the most abundant possibilites for feeling as
                    the book has – and movies made from books  seldom do – then they
                     emerge disappointed.  Over the years this disappoinent has collected in a
                     large lump in the public bosom, prejudicing them against the the whole
                     notion of adaptation … The only way a director could really duplicate
                     their reading experience for them would be to photograph the pages of
                     the favored book and play them in slow motion. (20)

The uniqueness of Rosie’s  character is not verified on film.  In fact, in “Terms of Endearment,” because the filmmakers opted to concentrate on the last 60 pages of the book,  Rosie is barely documented at all.  McMurtry realized that the written success of the repartee between Aurora and Rosie partially drove the original novel and extended their conversation in The Evening Star.  Rosie dominates the action with Aurora in scenes that are both humorously and poignantly fulfilled.  And the film version, while far less successful than “Terms of Endearment,” recognizes Rosie’s importance to Aurora and the story.  In the book, Rosie is pursued late in life, after her husband is dead, by Aurora’s neighbor,  Arthur, a roly poly man, whom Aurora really does not care for.  However, Rosie marries him  and contracts cancer but returns to Aurora’s to die in her real home.  The film makes Arthur a much stronger character, which turns Rosie into a shallower person than McMurtry indicated.  The film brings Arthur and Rosie together, but the book’s intention was to reemphasize the importance of Aurora and Rosie’s relationship and the regard they had for each rather than Rosie and Arthur.

CHAPTER VI

A GOOD MAN WILL SATISFY THEM

Even though  the women in this chapter may bow to a man’s advances, they continue to support the contention that McMurtry creates well-wrought women.  The first woman to become a primary character in McMurtry’s fiction was Patsy Carpenter in Moving On  (1970).  She is pretty, feisty and independent but with a strong desire to nest; she wants someone to fight for her: “She felt that her nerves were beginning to split and curl like the ends of her hair sometimes did, and she was on the point of raking things wildly out of her purse when she looked up and saw the clown approaching” (9-10).

The most incredible thing about Moving On is McMurtry’s ability to portray women.  Everything he writes in this book is real and right on target.  It’s McMurtry’s understanding of women’s psyches and feelings which makes his dialogue and description of them so uncanny.  “She wanted to talk, and having him (husband Jim) so soon asleep made her feel lonely, as it often did” (21).  “Patsy couldn’t stop crying, and the reason she couldn’t was because Jim refused to understand why she started crying in the first place” (37).  In talking about Jim’s uncle, she says, “‘You’re a nice man,’ she said smiling. But she felt almost tearful. Small gracious things, like about the eggs, sometimes flooded her with feelings of gratitude” (46).

McMurtry usually knows what a girl would do in any given situation: 

             Patsy sat at the narrow little dressing table in the motel room, unhurriedly
                         arranging her hair . . . Patsy lifted her hair, trying to imagine how she
                       would look if it were long enough to be arranged in coils.  Often she sat in
                       front of mirrors for some time contemplating herself as she might be if she
                       looked otherwise.  She was far from indifferent to her looks, but on the
                      whole she was content with them and felt no urgent need to make radical
                      changes. (72)

Whatever McMurtry writes, is so natural, so real, so true to the spirit of the moment.  Everything he writes about Patsy and Jim Carpenter rings true from their  frequent arguments to their dailliance with sex.  Nothing in the entire book sounds false.  As  Jones concludes: “McMurtry’s fiction can be counted on to take the reader on a magical ride, transforming the ordinary to wisely reflect the possibilities for redemption in the human soul” (77).

        That’s what the author does in Moving On.  As Aurora’s daughter Emma’s best friend, Patsy is good-looking, rich, catty, backbiting and would steal a boyfriend at the drop of a zipper.  The interesting thing is how Aurora and Patsy love and care for each other and don’t seem to be able to live and enjoy life without being entangled in each other’s lives through bickering, aruging, chatting and driving each other manic.  The characters of all three of these women define the male characters that surround them,  from Aurora’s suitors and grandchildren to Rosie’s boyfriends and future husband, Arthur, and Patsy’s psychologist Jerry whom she steals from Aurora. Complicated?  Not in the hands of McMurtry, who makes everything work like no other author can.

Desert Rose  (1983) continued McMurtry’s mastery of female characters but in an entirely different vein.  Where Aurora was a totally dominating character in the flesh, Harmony is the opposite.  Regarded as the most beautiful woman in Las Vegas, Harmony  is a naïve, simple, trusting, lovable soul, but her character dominates the book in spirit. She may be as strong and demanding as Aurora, but she is likable and irrepressible. Her life is always interesting, because McMurtry makes it so and, as in his other works, her presence helps define the men.  It is McMurtry’s women who lead the way, and the men pale in comparison. Jones has a similar feeling for Harmony:

            Harmony’s constant unselfish involvement with others gives her a
                        realistic perspective on dreams which enhances rather than destroys her
                        ability to deal with reality. Her maturity in this regard is all the more
                        remarkable when one considers she makes her living creating a larger
                        than life illusion (63).

Harmony is distinctive in her beauty, her shallowness, her simplicity, her trusting nature.  She certainly seems to be a beautiful person in more ways than one even if she is not  a mental or emotional giant.  McMurtry knows her, feels her character, and she leads his story from the beginning.  You want to get to know Harmony better, and you always support her.  McMurtry’s impressions of her keep one reading.  And,  as always, he knows how to convey what a woman thinks and how she would act in any situation.  Harmony can’t sing or dance.  She is not intellectually gifted.  Yet she is hard to forget:
                        Harmony would look our her window and see him standing and think oh
                        Wendell, she couldn’t help it, unhappiness just made her feel tender, when
                         she saw a guy looking that way she wanted to maybe just lay her
                         palm against his cheek, or maybe a kiss, something to let him know her
                        heart did sort of go out to him even if she didn’t understand precisely why
                        he looked so sad. (19)

            McMurtry knows how to breathe life into his women.  Harmony seems perfectly defined before the story even evolves: “He (Wendell) moonlighted at the all-night Amoco station and Harmony always felt a throb of love because he was such a gentleman and cleaned all her windshields  and even her mirrors, even the rearview mirror inside the car which of course in a desert got dust on it too” (21).

            Who else but a Harmony could be excited by the way some old guy cleaned her windshields?  Her best friend is Gary, who is gay, and her boyfriend is Denny, who is a  moron.  A child drowned once in a hotel pool where he was a lifeguard, because he was having sexual relations with a woman in a towel room.  Still, Harmony thought that was no reason not to give a guy a chance.  And Harmony is so naïve that when Denny steals her insurance check out of her mail box, she tries to talk herself into believing it’s just a loan.  And one of the reasons she liked Gary so much is that he never criticized.  Then there is Giorgio, a guy who owns a little bar but is really in love with Harmony, so she decides:

                       From behind the bar Giorgio was smiling at her with his big white teeth
                       again.  He was quite a nice-looking guy really, very  Italian.  Now that
                       he was out of baccarat he always wore bright shirts, they looked like silk,
                      with the sleeves rolled up to show his muscle, he was always sort of
                       smiling and showing off his muscle, it was kind of charming really, you
                       could just see him thinking how could any woman resist me.  Harmony
                        loved it when some guy sort of preened like that for her, it was sweet and
                        also more fun usually than actually going out with him (47-48).

                The Late Child (1995) does not have a reputation as one of McMurtry’s more effective novels, but it is an unexpected delight –  a very funny, picaresque and interesting because practically all of its characters are women.   Basically, the novel is about Harmony and her 5-year-old son, Eddie,  and their adventures in New York City and around the country with relatives and friends.  Harmony’s gorgeous daughter, Pepper, has died of AIDS, and they meet her lover, Laurie, along with a gallimaufry of other memorable female characters.  But no matter how unique or unusual they are, the ways they think, talk and respond to situations are totally realistic –  and usually funny. Harmony wonders what will happen when her sister goes out with an old acquaintance who was supposed to be her date:

                         ‘You don’t think she’d do anything on the first date, particularly since it
                         was supposed to be my date, do you?’ she asked – beginning to feel a
                         little insecure. ‘Do you know about Masters and Johnson, that couple in
                         St. Louis?’ Neddie asked. ‘They’re doctors.’ ‘Do they have a talk
                         show?’ she asked. ‘No, they’re them sex doctors that they send molesters
                         to, and stuff,’ Neddie said … ‘Your sister’s been to see them three times.
                          . . . They’re trying to cure her of sex addiction, but so far they ain’t had
                           much luck.’ ‘What?’ Harmony asked. Her mind had been sort of
                           switching channels. . . . ‘Pat’s got a sex addiction?’ ‘Yep, it’s the talk of
                           Tarwater, and has been for years. Masters and Johnson thought they
                      could get her calmed down, but they ain’t having no luck.  If you ask
                      me, Pat’s more revved up than ever.’” (58)

CHAPTER VII

CONCLUSION

In all his novels, essays and autobiographical writings,  Larry McMurtry never discusses his affinity for women, but it possibly stems from three elements that he writes about in his autobiographical Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen.  His grandmother lived in the same house with him until she died when he was 8 years of age without  ever addressing a “single syllable” to him. (20). Secondly, he  recalls distinctly 44 years of discord beween his mother and father, all echoing from a slap his grandmother gave his mother in the kitchen in 1935 (48).  Thirdly, he attributes his  “notion of character” from watching “my father struggle against the mesquite.  Character came to mean struggling on in the face of hopeless odds” (190).  And that’s exactly what McMurtry does.  Most women seemed incomprehensible to him, so he obviously decided to write female characters whom he understood and admired.  His sympathetic approach to their plight  and his penchant and preference for making them equal or superior to any man have helped to make those characters and his fiction memorable and rewarding.