Book: The Passion of Alice
Author: Stephanie Grant
Publisher: Bantam Books; Reprint Edition (September 1, 1996)
Temperance is
simply a disposition of the mind which binds the passion.
― Thomas Aquinas
Curiously,
though, the word “passion” comes from pati, the Latin word meaning “to suffer.”
However, this last definition of passion is the
one that is rarely considered when reading works of literature featuring women
and lesbians: The Passion of Christ is the biblical account of Jesus
Christ's arrest, trial, and suffering—it ends with his execution by
crucifixion upon Calvary. While details vary, most versions of the Passion begin with the events in the
Garden of Gethsemane. A few include the Last Supper, while others begin the
story as early as Palm Sunday,
when Jesus entered Jerusalem to the applause and adoration of the masses.
Think Monday
Night Football with donkeys and palm fronds, instead of nose tackles and nachos.
Regardless of specific details, this definition
of Passion is about injustice, doubt,
fear, pain and ultimately, degrading death. Spiritually, the Passion is the perfect example of
suffering, which is one of those perky and pervasive themes of the Christian
religion.
Of course, suffering is not the only theme of the
Passion, although some Christians
believe that Christ's suffering and the wounds that he suffered redeem humanity
from sin. Another theme
is incarnation, and how the death of Jesus shows humanity that God had become
truly human, and that he was willing to undergo every human suffering, right up
to the final agony of death. Yet another theme is obedience, and that despite
initial, and very human, reluctance and fear, Jesus demonstrates his total
acquiescence to God's wishes.
But the final theme is victory—the victory of Christ over death,
which is why the Passion is ultimately
inseparable from resurrection.
“I was used to being perceived as having a good attitude.
Self-control, self-effacement, self-denial. People like this, especially in
girls.”
― Stephanie Grant, The Passion of Alice
Stephanie Grant’s debut novel, The Passion of Alice, takes readers on a
vastly different journey through the famed year of 1984. Alice Forrester is a high-functioning
5’10”, 89 lb. anorexic who barely survives a President’s Day episode of heart
failure. Upon her discharge from the intensive care unit, she becomes a patient
at the hospital’s renowned eating disorders clinic. The Seaview program is part
twelve-steps, part tough love, part new age self-discovery, and part
speed-dating free-for-all. Alice’s overbearing mother, Syd, along with an oddball group of staff and doctors work to help the young woman to understand her
addiction, its triggers, and how she can regain control of her weight and her life.
But Alice learns more about herself and the margins of her personal
canon through her co-conspirators and fellow patients than she ever could
through the anemic, one-size-fits-all clinic services. As these young women tentatively
explore the depth and breadth of friendship, ambivalence, trust, and desire,
they taste for the first time, the possibility of things like normal lives. But
before these feel-good realities can settle in and take root, the fragile
balance begins to disintegrate, and the rippled looking glass of the anorexics,
bulimics, and compulsive overeaters begins to crack. Shocked into the ultimate
reality of their eating disorders, the women test the boundaries of their
compulsions and deprivations. Alice, in particular, plays the heroic role of
plate cleaner, knowing well that one day she will reclaim her capacity for the
divine. But before she has a chance, the hedonistic, undisciplined, and unrepentant
Maeve takes Alice on an unplanned adventure down a rabbit hole of sexual
awakening and true self-knowledge. And, if it doesn’t kill her first, it will
change her life, forever.
Make no mistake, The Passion of Alice is about women and appetites. As the narrator
and protagonist, Alice’s self-starving is no more about self-hate, doubt, or
fear then it is about self-image. Instead, her anorexia is a form of
clarification and ultimate self-knowledge, a way of differentiating between
want and need, beginning and ending—an example of spiritual achievement
where what one knows is automatically created, and what is willed is fully
known in its truth.
But, for Alice, passion and suffering go hand-in-hand—if she can feel
passion, then she will suffer. So, she controls her passions by denying herself
food, companionship, desire, and sex. She uses her anorexia as a tool for
managing her passions, starving herself until nothing is left but the fine point
of her existence. What happens, instead, is that when she reaches her true
essence, she is greeted by the undeniable desire for women and sex.
Ms. Grant’s rich
and raw secondary characters play the foil to Alice’s dry wit and biting
sarcasm, and are as varied and unrelenting as their eating disorders. From the
regal Queen Victoria to the enigmatic child star, Amy. Through Louise, who is
searching for love, and the waif-like, disintegrating Gwen, to the bulimics
obsessed with exercise and shiny spandex, and ending with the purse-soiling,
coke-snorting Maeve, who is the physical and spiritual antithesis of Alice. The
first-person narration is clean, crisp, and full of surprising observation
tinged with casual contempt. It manages to tell a story that is multilayered, droll,
heartbreaking, and unbelievably powerful, all the while giving voice to a
chorus of shared taboos.
 |
| Author, Stephanie Grant |
The Passion of Alice is a sharp,
stark, and edgy novel that takes on the dark and debilitating truths of eating
disorders in women. And, while the story primarily focuses on Alice, an
anorexic, it takes great pains to shine a bright light on the toxic perceptions
and relationships women have with food, body image, societal expectations, and
sexual appetite. Ultimately, though, the message is about resurrection, and while
Christ’s passion culminated with his
acquiescence to God’s wishes upon Calvary, Alice’s passion ceased at the very moment she acknowledged she needed one
compelling, chaotic, and flawed woman, in every imaginable way.
Published in 1995 by Houghton Mifflin, Stephanie
Grant’s The Passion of Alice was
nominated for Britain’s Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction and the Lambda Award
for Best Lesbian Fiction.
As a side note, I picked up The Passion of Alice not long after
listening to my wife, Ann McMan, talk with Bev Prescott on Cocktail Hour
Productions’ The Barbell show—the episode was titled Once More, with Feeling: Body Image
After 50. Ms. Prescott does an amazing job of talking about health and
wellness in the lesbian community, and Ann was unbelievably frank and open
about her successes, failures, and challenges, one day at a time.
