Elizabeth Gilbert's Contradictory Feminism in "Eat, Pray, Love"

Not since Frances Mayes' bestselling Under the Tuscan Sun has a memoir garnered more divorcée and love-lorn female readership than Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. Also a New York Times bestseller, Eat, Pray, Love ends up being a travel trilogy contained all in one book as Gilbert takes the reader on her year long adventure through Italy, India, and Indonesia in search of pleasure, faith, and the ability to balance the two. Gilbert premeditates this course of enlightenment as a type of post-apocalyptic divorce vacation, using this spiritual self-improvement slant as a sales pitch to her editor in order to finance the trip itself. It would be expected that such an immense undertaking for an emotionally fragile divorcée would end as a poignant saga of the triumphant woman, irresistable bait to any oppressed, or depressed, woman who may feel lost in the world and is seeking guidance-and, truthfully, that includes most women in the West. However, Gilbert's feminist exclamations do not truly emerge until the last part of the book, in Indonesia, where they seem to cling more to a misogynist lexicon than that of an empowered Amazon.

"I wonder if giving myself to a man again will ruin my journey/writing/life," Gilbert thinks during a post-flirt fest contemplation session (269). How generous it is of Gilbert to consider herself a gift to men, though any feminist worth her salt would balk at such a notion. The act of giving usually involves an exchange of property, and Gilbert's use of the verb is a throw back to the age where prospective husbands bought their brides for eighty head of sheep.

It would be assumed that Gilbert is unaware of her precarious word choice and the position it has now placed her in, a position that could have been avoided by simply exchanging "giving myself to" to "getting involved with." But she is clearly aware of the history behind her patriarchal society when she muses on these days of yore and says that her "father would not have just given [her] away in marriage to anybody (286)." Despite in the next paragraph stating that she has "no nostalgia for the patriarchy," she is clearly subconsciously clinging to the strong foundations it has left behind.

Gilbert's aim is to "become an autonomous woman (286)." To do so, she claims that she must "become [her] own husband...and [her] own father, too." She congratulates herself for doing so after turning down the proposal of a sexual relationship with Felipe, her older Brazillian male suitor. Unfortunately, her refusal only lasts one night, a night of unfulfilled desire that she attempts to quench with fried potatoes, but only the orgasmic release of masturbation ends her suffering. The next night, after Felipe makes her dinner, his simple request of: "That's enough, darling. Come to my bed now," instantly gets her there (288). However, only the night before she "felt it was too soon for [her] to be receiving a gentleman suitor (286)." Oh, what a difference a day makes.

Once Gilbert establishes a sexual relationship with Felipe, he continues to pour his elaborate and excessive mixture of English and Portuguese wooing over her; in fact, she says he is "the endearment master (295)." Despite his building her up through adorations, her skewed word choice's contradiction continues. During a phone conversation with him while she is away on a road trip with her Balinese-American friend Yehudi, she says he "proceeds to detail with careful specificity the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth things he is planning to do with my body when he gets me alone in his bed again (293)." Gilbert repeats again her subconscious idea that her female body is an object that can be given and taken, bought and sold. She does not say that he is planning on doing these things to her but with her body, as if the activities described therein are only between Felipe and her living corpse. Or, in a less extreme sense, as if the activities are solo ones where Felipe acts with her body as an accessory, like a tennis racquet or pogo stick.

Perhaps Gilbert is of the point of view that Felipe's proposed acts for her body are a positive thing where all she has to do is sit back (or lay ON her back) and be adored. Coincidentally or not, this is exactly what she recalls him saying, that "he wanted absolutely nothing from me whatsoever except permission to adore me for as long as I wanted him to (288)." However, it is necessary to evaluate the difference between being allowed to relax and be adored with being made the sex toy of one man's bout of masturbatory fantasy. It is Gilbert's choice of words that has relegated her experiences to the latter.

In a less obvious way, once Gilbert's road trip is finished and she returns to Felipe's bedroom "for approximately another month [which] is only the faintest of exaggerations," she again hints at Felipe's use of her as a sex object (294). She says he adores her with "single-minded concentration (294)." Of course he adores her single-mindedly, because, with her as his sex object, his pleasure is the only thing he has to drive for. Though she seems to think it is her pleasure that is being driven at. While the realities behind this memoir may have unfolded in the manner that Gilbert seemingly wants the reader to imagine, the way in which she leads up to this point has her in a position rather submissive to Felipe.

The toll of Gilbert's, possibly self-issued, role as sex object begins to make itself known as she starts "losing days here, disappearing under his sheets (295)." Gilbert is losing herself in another man, exactly what she states she wants to avoid when she wonders if giving herself to another man will ruin her trip, her career, or her life. Losing herself does not necessarily ruin her life; it just eliminates it. It is Gilbert herself who says, "Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story," in describing her relationship with David, her ex-love (20). Is then addiction the hallmark of staying in a man's bed for a month where one loses days and begins to disappear? Does Gilbert believe this is not an infatuation-based love story? She claims to believe this is a negative thing, though it appears she is enjoying it much more the second time around.

It seems to be a divine sign from above, something Gilbert should have been longing to get, when her infatuation with "too much lovemaking" gets her stuck with a raging urinary tract infection. The reality of life breaks in harshly here. However, even this "godawful pain" fails to make Gilbert think twice about what she is getting herself into, something that seems to be a mid-life crisis of sorts in reflection of her "wayward youth" when she also experienced this "affliction of the overly sexed (297)." But she still places herself at the whim of Felipe, who apologizes for "inflicting [her] with this pain (299)." Gilbert fails to take responsibility for her part in the sexcapade that she claims brought on this infection. In not taking responsibility for the outcome, she removes herself from the preliminary act itself-again leaving Felipe alone as the sole-participant.

Felipe had been after Gilbert from the beginning when she was "standing with [her] back to him," and he knew he would "do anything to have that woman (310)." He says to her while recounting the story, "And it was easy to get you...All I had to do was beg and plead (310)." After two nights of asking her to become his lover before she agrees, hardly begging or pleading-though easy, he now "has" her. But Gilbert feels him beginning to revolve his life around her, which prompts her to say, "It's lovely to be treated this way. But it also scares me (311)." Gilbert's fear of Felipe's addiction to her is reminiscent of how her ex David pulled away when her need for him exceeded his comfort level with it.

Gilbert seems to have forgotten something else similar between her relationship with Felipe and her relationship with David. A passage early in her novel describes the beginning of her relationship with David:

"But, oh, we had such a great time together during those early months when he was still my romantic hero and I was still his living dream. It was excitement and compatibility like I'd never imagined. We invented our own language. We went on day trips and road trips...We had more fun waiting in line together at the Department of Motor Vehicles than most couples have on their honeymoons...The first summer of Liz and David looked like the falling-in-love montage of every romantic movie you've ever seen, right down to the splashing in the surf and the running hand-in-hand through the golden meadows at twilight. (19)"

The resemblance to this former reality and the one Gilbert is currently living with Felipe is obvious. She is still at the stage where she is acting in that crazy way that love induces lost in her infatuation. Somehow, though, she still thinks she has grown leaps and bounds from where she once was now that she is "happy and healthy and balanced (329)."

Gilbert says she admits that this is "an almost ludicrously fairy-tale ending...like the page out of some housewife's dream," and "Perhaps even a page out of my own dream, from years ago (329)." Yes, it is a page out of her own dream. It is a page out of her own reality. Yet, she believes that she "was the administrator of [her] own rescue (329)." Assuming that her rescue is from being a broken, dependant woman, it is probably a little too early for Gilbert to be making such claims.

Of her new persona, her new "womanhood," she says:

"I think about the woman I have become lately, about the life I am now living, and about how much I always wanted to be this person and live this life, liberated from the farce of pretending to be anyone other than myself. (329)"

As for being "liberated," it is unclear if Gilbert has actually found freedom in all of the areas she wanted to bring and balance together. Everything has worked out perfectly for her during this yearlong spiritual journey. The toughest thing that she has to endure is learning to sit through the "182 Sanskrit verses of the Gurugita," which she learns to love so much that she continues to chant it even after she has left India (287). If liberation comes after struggle, her actions are remarkably unchanged.

Time, instead of a new intrepid personality, seems to be the true healer of the pain Gilbert was suffering from her divorce and split from David. With the addition of Felipe, acting as David did after her divorce, she finds a new cast for the story of her life. Gilbert claims victory in the personal crusade to become her own woman, autonomous, balanced, and at peace with both her worldly pleasures and divine spirituality. But looking back over her experiences, especially those at the end of her journey that should be the ones most indicative of the success or failure of her journey, it appears that the evidence does not match the verdict. "A page out of some housewife's dream," is what Gilbert intends to write all along, because the independent woman storyline falls flat when you look under the covers of Felipe's bed and past the cover of Eat, Pray, Love.

Works Cited
Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat, Pray, Love. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.