20th Century Gothic

ELLEN SCHWAMM's How He Saved Her, the fictional autobiography of a New York socialite, may well interest fans of the 19th-century Gothic romance. Her Nora Ingarten is, enviably enough, the Gothic heroine of the '80s. Admittedly not young and violable. Nora is already married, the mother of two chic and witty Amherst-bound offspring. But her marriage to a conservative tax lawyer has stunted rather than matured her, and she has persisted as confused, dogged and sensitive as a teenage heroine. How He Saved Her tells the story of Nora's enlightenment through her elusive and brutal seducer. Lautner, who true to Gothic convention looms tall, dark, and (as this is a novel of the '80s), moves with the "highly specialized eroticism of heavy machinery."

The novel sets itself up as a parable: "Sadistic women have a lot to teach the rest of us," the narration concludes at one point in all seriousness. The beautiful, wealthy and unfulfilled woman leaves her husband and the comforts of a Fifth Avenue apartment to become a "courtesan to truth," or more literally, to Lautner. Her predicament revolves around her inability to determine what constitutes duty--to an oppressive mother, an enfeebled father, a rigid and insecure mate--and to free herself of all unincurred obligation. Secondly, she aims to lead a moral life, to fight hungers of all sorts. Her dream is rooted in memories of a past vacation trip to India.

Nora as heroine is defenseless and lovable but tries our patience. She hasn't an ounce of spunk--an unfortunate deviation from the Gothic tradition. Asking for a joint bank account becomes a crisis of independence. After being robbed of her wedding ring and wristwatch, she wonders whether the event was unreal or surreal. Our sympathy for Nora is further lessened by Schwamm's emphasis on Nora's contradictory and oppressive wealth. It is hard to feel for the frenzy of the poor little rich girl when it is described in terms of "her pulse...beating against the hammered gold cuff on her wrist."

NORA's autobiography is that of a disciple, but one senses that she as narrator has still not understood the ideal towards which the novel pushes, the grasping of Lautner's particular ideology. Her struggle is therefore simply a document, neither cast into perspective nor interpreted incisively. This results partly from the limitations of Schwamm's technique: the author frequently displays such annoying faults as complacently explicating the dialogue she has just penned. Nora's attitude towards her father, for example, is summarized: "She loved him and regarded him as wise-after-all. Sometimes she was ashamed of him, but mostly she loved him. He was her father." Descriptions tend to lack sensitivity of image. After a morning run in which she is pursued by two men. Nora's emotional state is discussed with passionate imprecision:

If I said that she was an arrow speeding towards the world's great heart and that she could almost feel its warm red pigment seeping into her pores, would that be acceptable? It was like that.

In contrast to the flatness of Schwamm's description, her dialogue is extraordinarily real. The novel does offer an unparalleled portrayal of the life of New York's leisurely class in the '80s; Schwamm's setting includes Max Ernst dresses, original Bauhaus furniture and Balducci's. The snubs and gossip at the parties and charity auctions which so bore Nora furnish some of the most absorbing information we receive, and here the narrative commentary finally achieves the appropriate level of irony.

For what ultimately bogs the novel down is its lack of irony. Our perception of Nora's leisurely predicament is caught up in her own hesitancy. The parable does not deliver a satisfying revelation, but it still manages to drain us of sympathy for Nora. How He Saved Her entertains us, but leaves us dissatisfied.