Short Story A Doll Pretty But Empty

Sadie Neville
Mr. Odegaard
English 103
31 May 2016
A Doll, Pretty But Empty “Black Box” a short story by Jennifer Egan was published as a series of “tweets” on the popular social site Twitter. The story is told through the recorded thoughts of an unnamed woman who is the protagonist of the story. Shortly into the story, it is made obvious to readers that the woman is a spy who has been sent on a mission to become the companion or “beauty” of her “designated mate”, a man known to be dangerous. It is understood that the woman’s thoughts will be made into a field guide for later agents, and it is revealed that the story is the unedited record of her thoughts, allowing readers to conclude that the protagonist is speaking freely throughout the story. Despite the fact that she is a spy gathering important information, the woman is repeatedly treated like an object and is subject to the misogynistic tendencies of the dominant men around her, causing her to be disempowered. Through the progression of the story, the objectification of the protagonist by both the men in her immediate vicinity and the agency she works for is apparent. At the start of the story the protagonist has just begun her mission of playing the part of a “beauty” for a criminal. The use of the term beauty refers to the outside appearance of the women. The men in the story have reduced the
women to their features treating them based off their beauty rather than personality. Because she is a “beauty” the protagonist is regarded as fungible or interchangeable with the other “beauties”. She is to be neither more nor less than they are, exhibiting no individuality. The woman is used by the men as a piece of jewelry or “arm candy” meant to “become part of his atmosphere: a source of comfort and ease” (Egan 197). She is expected to be an attractive but invisible object in her “mate’s” life, a doll, pretty but empty. And as such, is passed from person to person. When she is abandoned at a new man’s house she becomes his “beauty” to use as he pleases. She has no power, vulnerable to the whims of these dominant men. The “powerful men” are not the only beings in the story guilty of objectifying women. The agency that the protagonist works for, acts in the same way reducing her to just her body and using that body as a tool for their purpose. Through the technologies implanted in her body, the agency treats her as if she was merely a mechanical drone rather than a human being. The author writes, “Your physical person is our Black Box; without it, we have no record of what has happened on your mission” (Egan 211). The agency does not care about whether the protagonist lives or dies. They only care about her body. Her physical being is their “Black Box” which can be defined as a mechanical device used in flights to record the happenings of a flight. The protagonist has been reduced to a simple recording device meant to gather and save intelligence, and she is treated as such. She states, “You need not identify or comprehend the language your subject is using” (Egan 198). When recording foreign conversations one wouldn’t expect their machine to understand the words spoken, just as it isn’t expected of the woman. The woman is not serving the function of a human spy, but that of a machine meant to stay in the background and record what happens around her. Objects are generally used to satisfy some sort of desire whether it is entertainment or something more serious like education. As an an object the protagonist is used to satisfy the sexual desires of men. Repeated scenes of rape are depicted in the story. One such instance is at the start of the story when the increasing amounts of trepidation felt by the woman as she swims to a secluded place with her “mate” are unmistakeable. The man with her perceives the woman’s fear but does not care, which can be deduced from the author’s writing: “‘Relax, relax,’” uttered in rhythmic, throaty tones, suggests that your discomfort is not unwelcome” (Egan 196). He is aware of her fear over what he is doing but is disinclined to be concerned about it. She is merely a doll, and as such her feelings are disregarded, unimportant to the man who “plays” with her. One other occurrence of rape is obvious later in the story, when the woman has been abandoned at another man’s house. When she is discovered, the woman is taken to a bathroom where she is once again raped, this time by the new man. The rape of the protagonist by these men can be observed as examples of misogyny which is the negative attitude toward and the mistreatment of women. As a victim of misogyny and objectification, the woman shows a distinct lack of power in the face of the men. Once again, the agency the protagonist is working for is guilty of the same actions of the men, showing little to no regard for her physical and mental health as long as she serves her function. Which is shown during the rapes in the story, when the protagonist employs what she calls the “Dissociation Technique” which she uses to mentally escape the violence occurring to her body. From her use of this, readers can surmise that her agency taught her the technique. Allowing for the further realization that the agency knew that violence such as rape would happen to the protagonist. Instead of being empowered by her work as a spy the woman is disempowered by the dehumanization she experiences at the hands of the agency. The objectification of the woman prompts a loss of individual identity and with no individual identity, no understanding of her own mind, the woman has no way of being empowered. A person has to be somebody before they can have power. A doll for instance, is incapable of having power. From the beginning to the end of the story there are repeated instances where the protagonist is expected to show no individual identity. She is expected to “mirror” the personality of her first “mate” and behave the same as the other “beauties” around her, expected to behave more like a robot than anything else, not feeling or thinking anything for herself. The woman states in the story, “Avoid excessive self-reflection; your job is to look out, not in” (Egan 201). She is not supposed to understand or “reflect” on her own mind or personality. One definition of a Black Box was stated above, defining a black box as a device that records information, another definition states that a Black Box is “a usually complicated electronic device whose internal mechanism is usually hidden from or mysterious to the user” (Merriam webster). The Black Box in the story is the woman’s body as stated previously, but it can be more specifically narrowed down to her mind or brain, which is where the storage device for the record of her thoughts is located. When looking at it that way, readers can deduce that the “internal mechanism” of the protagonist’s mind is hidden from her personally, and more broadly from the agency, both of which can be considered “users” of her “Black Box”. Whether they are being treated based purely on appearances or more seriously mistreated such as in cases of rape or abuse, there is a distinct lack of power on the side of women.
Media such as pornography perpetuates this misogyny, causing men to mistakenly believe women to be objects or “playthings” not worthy of respect or care as human beings. Even through meaningful work, such as serving one’s country, there are ways in which women are mistreated. Just as the protagonist in the story, women everywhere are objectified and dehumanized, treated as lesser citizens by the patriarchal society they live
in.
Work Cited
"Black Box." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 22 May 2016.
Egan, Jennifer. “Black Box.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. Twelfth ed. N.p.: W.W. Norton, 2015. 194-215. Print. 21 May 2016.