More Than Female Savagery

Women's Way with Love and Death

Women have always been masters at devastating domestic retort in art as well as life. Feminine sensibility in fiction is popularly supposed to deify feeling, but the better women novelists have customarily proved short on gush and coolly capable of dealing out the kind of cruel punishments that love gone wrong (or right) often seems to breed. It is hardly surprising, in this age when violence seems so fashionable, to find a handful of female writers, some celebrated, some not, skillfully spinning tales of love and death.

THE PUBLIC IMAGE by Muriel Spark. 144 pages. Knopf. $4.50.

Muriel Spark's novels are somewhat predictable in form, but they'are always brief, funny, shrewd and a little daft. Usually, she takes a group of similar people--bachelors, schoolgirls, residents of a hamlet--and throws them into a common dilemma. The Public Image departs from that pattern.

This time there is only one person in the culdesac, a newly successful English movie star named Annabel Chris topher. Though neither pretty ("a peaky face and mousey hair") nor clever ("a deep core of stupidity that thrives on the absence of a looking-glass"), she projects well-bred sexiness on the screen. In the hands of Luigi Leopardi, a chimerical Roman director, she becomes "the English Lady-Tiger." The public image is painstakingly built up by the movie company, and inevitably it begins to seep into Annabel's psyche. Her husband Frederick, an intelligent, surly man, is a much-photographed adjunct of the image, and when he sees his wife retreating into fantasy, he dramatically kills himself at the spot commemorating the martyrdom of St. Paul. Why? To shock Annabel back to herself? Or to play a hideous joke? Frederick leaves four ludicrous letters--all accusing Annabel of scandalous behavior--in a place where they will be found by his old friend Billy, who happens to be a veteran blackmailer.

There are elements of a thriller in all Spark's fiction, and The Public Image is no exception. The mystery here lies in the recesses of Annabel's personality. "She had never been given to problems" and is slow to recognize catastrophe when it comes calling. But Billy and Luigi succeed in leaving the truth at her door. "We have some Vatican money in this movie, confidentially," purrs Annabel's practical Pygmalion. "The reaction to those letters would finish your movie career."

While Annabel decides how to deal with her career and with Billy, the author toys with her conscience like a sadistic cat. Spark's portrayal of human venality is ruthless. First, Annabel calls a press conference--where she is surrounded by weeping neighbors--to deny that her husband intended suicide in the first place. Like a small child, she tries out little lies and daydreams, but she reassures no one but herself that the truth can be contained. The author observes it all, and from the crudest angle.

What saves the book from being mere female savagery is Spark's balancing sensitivity to naked human need. Annabel debases herself in a desperate attempt to protect her blameless, hardworking existence. Without sentimentality, the author pities Annabel; the reader can laugh at her but cannot side against her.

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