Updike encodes America’s decline as female bodily grotesquerie

Evidence

Decay is also experienced in personal and physical terms in Terrorist. Jack is acutely aware of his own bodily decline, particularly when he is with Ahmad’s mother, Teresa “Terry” Molloy, during their affair. However, the trope of slackening and deterioration is most mercilessly attached to Beth. Beth is a huge female grotesque, a “whale of a woman giving off too much heat through her blubber” (20), whose largely sedentary lifestyle consists of devouring fattening foods and watching soap operas. Bloated Beth literally embodies the cosseted decline of America and is also damned as an inadequate provider of wifely comforts for Jack. In time-honored Updike style, the male gaze ensures that female value is conferred largely through bodily and sexual attributes. … Although there are brief passages of female focalization, courtesy of Beth and her protective sister, Hermione, by and large women are linked to the themes of the flesh, its potential for corruption, and instinctual sensory experience, which is valorized in the end as that which unites human beings across difference. However, the fact that all of the female characters are defined in relation to males—as either sex objects or frustrated lovers or spouse material—means they fail to rise beyond a secondary role of providing a counterpoint to Ahmad’s fixation with purity. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 131

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s engagement with how fiction’s representational politics shape its political bearings — relevant ground for reading how Naqvi and Hamid treat female characters.