Good Men and Absent Women in Camus' The Plague

So already, this is not the first time I've written about Camus' The Plague* in this blog. It's not even the first time during the current coronavirus pandemic. 

I don't always assume that ignorance and evil are connected. But anytime ignorance promotes human fatality generally--and treats as "normal" and acceptable high numbers of fatalities within historically oppressed, under-served American groups, that connection must be made. It's not just ignorance of COVID-19 and best ways to control its spread that's problematic; its also ignorance of the ongoing effects of the longtime systemic oppression on some groups' health and well-being. Much is known about both of these, at least by those who make it their business to know and understand. The all-too-common problem is some people's willful not-knowing about either or both. And that problem is as ugly as the bloody-mawed rat on the adjacent book cover.

Here's what Camus had to say about it:

"The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness (131).** 

Personally, I think we shouldn't forget that some people--few, but some--are both ignorant and malevolent. The powerful ignorant who view plague or coronavirus as a means of ridding the country of people whom they deem "undesirable" are a threat to us all, but, obviously, more of a threat to those they deem "undesirable." If only these willfully ignorant didn't cling to their blindness with such righteous fervor.

There's something else, though, that's been bothering me--over the years, and more so in the last couple of days. Yesterday, I read and posted on my Facebook page a really wonderful essay about the The Plague by Tony Judt that was published just two months after 9/11. The way that Judt elucidated how each of the book's major characters chose to respond to the plague in Camus' allegorical novel reminded me of the character-centered small-group activities I so often assigned while my various classes were reading the novel: in collaborative reading-and-thinking groups, the students in each of the small groups became experts on one major character's response and character, and then shared that expertise with the whole class. 

Then as now, though, wonderful as their work often was, I felt that we were missing something: the women. Plenty of women were affected by and continued to live their lives and think their thoughts during the German occupation of France during World War II, which The Plague, among other things, represents allegorically; many women were part of the French Resistance. 

But still women are at best peripheral in Camus's novel. There's no Dr. Deborah Birx figure, outnumbered but present, among the town officials discussing whether to use the word "plague" to describe Oran's affliction, whether to close the gates of the city. I don't know whether to chalk it up to "the times," to Camus, or to both.

But I can't help thinking that women were less interesting or important to Camus than men. One could argue that when Camus said, "men are more good than bad," he was merely adhering to the convention of using "men" to represent all people. But I'm not so sure about that. The three women in The Plague who are significant enough to be mentioned multiple times are never referrred to by their names, and are defined only in relationship to particular male characters to whom they are very important****:

• there is Dr. Rieux's wife, who leaves Oran to convalesce from an unnamed illness at a sanatorium just as the rats are beginning to die;

• there is Dr. Rieux's mother who arrives to keep house for her son while her daughter-in-law is away, and who responds "calmly" to the news of the dead rats with "'It's like that sometimes'" (14);

• and there's the French journalist Rambert's lover, who is back in France, where he yearns to return to reunite with her.

If 1940s Oran is indeed a place where only town fathers and never town mothers would have been involved in formulating a response to a public health crisis, then I might be asking for fabrication rather than history. But if the women were at the table, let's put them there. And if they weren't at the table, let's imagine a few of them there, or at least in a few places nearby, like the other parts of the room, the house, or the town office building; or on the street outside. To whom would these women have listened? On the basis of what they heard, what might they have done or said, and with what effect?

The word "ignorance" has passive and active definitions. From the passive viewpoint, it  simply denotes a lack of information or education: I don't know what/that I don't know or could know, so I neither ask nor act. From an active viewpoint, however, it refers to my willful disregard or ignoring of something, my choice not to pay attention: I lack knowledge or understanding because I chose not to pay attention to what might have illuminated me, what might have brought me out of my passive ignorance. Furthermore, if I'm not clear-sighted, I'm all the more apt to continue not to pay attention to that which would enlighten me.

Helen Hunt as an American Journalist in Poland

Dr. Rieux's mother embodies so much quiet goodness, so much understanding of "life" as she endures without need and anxiety during the plague outbreak in Oran. But there has to be more than one way to be a good woman, a useful woman in the city of Oran in The Plague. I've been watching World on Fire***** on Masterpiece Theatre; so far the women are hardly in the background--and so much is at stake.

* Bookseller image on AbeBooks.com web site: https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=22401071410 
** Camus, A. (1991). The plague. New York: Vintage Books.  
*** Photo accompanying post on Think: Opinions, Analysis, Essays entitled "Trump's coronavirus response is questioned daily. But Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx aren't infallible" by Ying Ma, published on April 27, 2020: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-coronavirus-response-questioned-daily-dr-fauci-dr-birx-ncna1192266
**** Photo accompanying post in India Today entitled "15 quotes by Albert Camus on God, Truth and Absurdity": https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/albert-camus-quotes-953074-2017-01-04
***** Photo accompanying post in Salon entitled "'It's our foundation myth': PBS' 'World on Fire' challenges the World War II narrative we know" published on April 5, 2020: https://www.salon.com/2020/04/05/world-on-fire-masterpiece-pbs-world-war-2-peter-bowker/?ref=hvper.com