Fear of Flying (novel) Fear of Flying (novel) Fear of Flying is a 1973 novel by Erica Jong which became famously controversial for its portrayal of female sexuality and figured in the development of second-wave feminism. The novel is written in the first person: narrated by its protagonist, Isadora Zelda White Stollerman Wing, a 29-year-old poet who has published two books of poetry. On a trip to Vienna with her second husband, Isadora decides to indulge her sexual fantasies with another man. Its tone may be considered conversational or informal. The story's American narrator is struggling to find her place in the world of
Feminist poetry deviance. Historically, the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century was an era of surplus women, who had to work to survive: by 1911, 77 per cent of women workers in the UK were single. Alongside the struggle of suffragettes campaigning for votes for women, many British feminist poets sought to emulate the example of Victorian women writers, often expressing their radical political beliefs through poetry. Often the writers were not professional poets, but wrote out of necessity, including satirical portraits of politicians, or writings from prison, as in "Holloway Jingles", a collection of writing from imprisoned