"You know what I think... I think that we're all in our private traps-clamped in them-, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and... and claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we can never budge an inch."
-Norman Bates
When one considers the many general and personal traits of behaviors that imply a man has chauvinistic tendencies, there are countless examples that come to mind. The most renowned form of chauvinism comes in the form of the most typically acknowledged type: the male chauvinist pig, any man who believes in the marked, definitive, and irrefutable superiority of his own gender to the fallibility and weakness he has pompously designated to what he considers to be the fairer sex. A man who imbues characteristics of a chauvinistic pig traditionally has the equally detestable facets of being a sexist, a bigot, one with great prejudice, and one who discriminates unfairly in all his life’s endeavors. There may be some remarkable arguments by those who view the character Sammy in John Updike’s “A&P” as a chauvinist, but a close reading of his narrative ultimately proves otherwise. Sammy is merely a normal adolescent male whose natural response to an awakening sexual appetite is to discuss his innate responses to the equally natural allure female protagonists in the story in the best language he has mastered for such an occasion.
First, compare the small group of females (coming into the market in attire obviously more fitted for an afternoon on the beach) to the other female customers Sammy is more familiar with encountering. Upon first noticing the blossoming three girls, Sammy is initially interacting with “a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows” (Updike 375). Obviously much older in both countenance and demeanor, the attention of the reader is instantly compelled to note the customer’s time-bided anger that is elicited when Sammy mistakenly charges her for one of the purchases twice – interestingly, “a box of HiHo crackers” (375) is the item in Sammy’s hand when his attention is drawn away from his task to the three scandalously dressed females entering the store, an early example of Updike’s frequent utilization of common items as tongue-in-cheek symbols of sexuality. Aside from the clothes the girls are wearing (or lacking, from the perspective of Mr. Lengel, the store manager), Sammy marvels over their general, physical contrast to other customers who “are usually women with six children and varicose veins mapping their legs” (377).
The dissimilarities between the intrigue brought about by the girls and the regular “sheep…all bunched up” (378) is palpable not only in Sammy’s reaction to their presence, but in the more blatant and sexually inappropriate reactions of Stoksie, Sammy’s married friend and co-worker, and the older butcher, “McMahon patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints” (377). In fact, even the store manager has his own reaction to the girls, albeit one of both parental and managerial disapproval. In fact, in order for one to argue that Sammy is a male chauvinist pig, one would have to give equal attention to the same description befalling Stoksie, McMahon, and even –for entirely different, but equally arguable reasons—Lengel with his “sad Sunday-school-superintendent stare" (378). At least Sammy’s dalliance from PG-rated thoughts is rooted in his natural desire to respond sexually to that which he finds exciting.
Regarding such intrinsic thoughts such as those concerning the language Sammy uses throughout the story, one would best sum these multiple examples up as the language of a nineteen-year-old male living in a town where the appearance of three attractive girls such as these is obviously a rarity. His initial summations of the females as ranging from “chunky” to “‘striking’ and ‘attractive’” quickly turn to more overt and brazen when he describes Queenie’s bathing suit and notes “what got me, the straps were down” (375). This unexpected surprise and all the unspoken promises of the implications of her determined movement inspire even further physiological responses in Sammy. When Queenie “stopped, and turned so slow,” Sammy mentions, “it made my stomach rub the inside of my apron” (377). One could infer that if Sammy were truly a male chauvinist, he might be more likely describing all the graphic images of the activities the girls have led him to consider. Instead, Sammy notes that it usually takes an extreme situation such as that which is at hand for him to draw the attention of regular customers away from their mental shopping lists. It seems only fitting here that the two items mentioned as being forgotten from the list of memorized items are the phallic symbol “asparagus” and the major double entendre that comes with the second purchase: “ah, yes, applesauce!” (377).
Despite the myriad examples of somewhat subliminal archetypes and symbols of sexuality, Sammy, like most other normal adolescent males, saves his most passionate language for the later part of the story. Not chauvinistic, his passage describing his personal interaction with the girls is Sammy’s sample of his most lustfully laden. Although the words have an obviously intended and thinly disguised sexual undertone, Sammy’s description is far more amorous and amusing than aggressive and apoplectic a la male chauvinism:
“I uncrease the bill, tenderly as you may imagine, it just having come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known were there, and pass a half and a penny into her narrow pink palm and nestle the herrings in a bag and twist its neck and hand it over, all the time thinking” (379).
Sammy is clearly likening this financial business transaction to the way he imagines a sexual act between the two of them would progress, tenderly and virginal. Are these really the words and phrases of a male chauvinist pig, or are they more likely the words of a respectful, but impassioned nineteen-year-old heterosexual male who has awakened urges to the impulses of sexual frankness?
The ultimate argument against calling Sammy something as decisive as a chauvinist is his decision to act as best he can on the only appropriate subject: his manager. Although he is clearly hoping that the girls will overhear his resignation from the position, and thus be deemed their “unsuspected hero” (379), Sammy does have some degree of altruism in his decision to quit as he remembers “how [Lengel] made the pretty girl blush” (380) before leaving the store in the middle of his shift. A true chauvinist would never have wanted to display some moral remonstrance of the situation. Instead, a real male chauvinist pig would have outwardly agreed with his manager’s public humiliation of the girls while silently engrossing himself in the nubile flesh he has just seen disappear around the corner.
Works Cited
Updike, John. “A&P.” Literature for Composition, 8th ed. Ed. Sylvan Barnet,
William Burto, and William E. Cain. New York: Longman, 2007. 375-380.
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