Jitterbug Perfume

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1984

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

The Effect of Magical Realism on Everyday Life

The difference between the fantasy and magical realism genres is a small one. What distinguishes magical realism is its reserved use of magical effects, which add a touch of metaphysical flavor to an otherwise plausible narrative. Magical realism often deals with adult themes like sex and dying, and it is common for magical realism novels to take long views of history as their backdrop.

Magical realism is a good vehicle for the kind of big ideas that don’t often show up in traditional novels. For instance, Robbins can make broad comparisons between the practice and belief of Hinduism, Christianity, and Buddhism using the zany, referential backdrop of immortality. Alobar’s take on history is very long, and his authority on what happened, say, 500 years ago is beyond reproach. The magical becomes credible.

In fact, magical realism sometimes has the paradoxical effect of making obvious fantasy blend with the sort of spiritual thinking and future projection many of us rely upon to get by in day-to-day life. One may be a hard-hearted materialist, but it would be unthinkably cruel for such a materialist to deny the immortality of a dying couple’s love, or a young orphan’s hope that someday things will get better. In this sense, magical realism is a loophole in the everyday magic of daily life, employed (much like political ideology) to provoke behavior and guide matters that are less than life and death, such as who deserves a good job, or who gets to be happy. Tom Robbins exploits this loophole with zeal, organizing whole swathes of society into the worthwhile and the effectively worthless.

Individualism and Self-Reliance

Though Jitterbug Perfume is told unconventionally, and in a way that often highlights its own iconoclasm, its ultimate lessons are rooted in fundamental American themes of individuality and self-reliance. Prior to novel, Alobar viewed putting kings to death at first sign of aging as “natural, inevitable and just” (20). Then he spots his own white hairs and, not wanting to die, hides them, creating a new paradigm in which aging kings are not immediately put to death. We are encouraged to view the idea that he would submit to his own death, according to clan values, as something slightly crazy. “Death is not a personal matter, is it? It is the business of the clan,” says Wren (22), as she struggles to process the altered status quo. And where “the notion of an individual resisting death” was foreign to her, “the concept of the uniqueness of a single human life was alien to the point of babble” (26). Yet the new paradigm is a sound one, according to the book, and we are encouraged to root for Alobar as we would for any hero as he fights again and again for his own survival against arbitrary public values. This reinforces the idea that to fight for one’s individuality is to fight for bodily survival (and even superhuman immortality), whereas submission to laws and codes of ethics is equal to suicide.

The key to becoming this sort of rare individual changes from scene to scene. Sometimes it happens through hard work and effort, sometimes through study, and sometimes through fated luck, depending on who is narrating at the moment. Immortality, as Alobar and Kudra have practiced it, is very rare. Average citizens can’t do it. As Alobar says, “Those who possess wisdom cannot just ladle it out to every wantwit and jackanapes who comes along and asks for it” (92).

In this sense, things like transcendental knowledge and immortality represent the enormous wealth of the American ruling class, earned using the same narrative of unrestrained individuality and willpower. Likewise, these special problems cannot be put to scientific scrutiny or government control. Alobar spends the final section of the novel sabotaging scientific experiments in immortality, and, as Wiggs says of governmental bodies, “The death urge is so ingrained in ’em, in every polluted cell o’ their shriveled old brains, that nothin’ could make a difference” (262). The few people who do experience transcendence (or who are lucky enough to stand nearby during a lecture on transcendence) have one thing in common. Kudra, Alobar, the LeFevers, Madame Devalier, and Priscilla are all entrepreneurs. Such people are the only sorts who can “be their own bosses,” as it were, even regarding physical scientific law.

The Strong Female Protagonist and the Male Perspective

Throughout a great portion of English-language literature, female characters were written as secondary to male characters. When they were centered in their own narratives, they were depicted as passive and acted-upon, rather than as drivers of their own stories. It is for this reason we commonly note strong female protagonists but rarely strong male protagonists. This assumption bears with it an unequal weight of prejudice from the start, and it’s often the case that use of a strong female protagonist can disguise other flaws in gender dynamics, especially when employed by a male author when he wants to make very broad, speculative points about which kinds of characters are leaders and which are followers.

At first glance, Priscilla Pardito fits the archetype of a strong female protagonist. She speaks out openly on her own behalf. Her sexual desires are not hidden away but acted upon without shame. She also has an intellectual curiosity she indulges by performing “genius” experiments on perfume in a quirky apartment laboratory. Yet Priscilla does not guide her own destiny but drifts from interest to interest, ignoring important plot cues, until she meets Wiggs Dannyboy. Once Wiggs enters the picture, she becomes an audience to him, pining for him despite his clear indifference to her. She spends much of the book listening captively while a male representative of the author dictates his thoughts about every subject under the sun. She bears almost no part in the resolution of the plot, never figuring out for herself the secret to K23’s formula. In the end, she receives a cash payout as a passive observer of the story—happier, perhaps, but no wiser.

This paradigm repeats itself with the characters of Kudra and Madame Devalier, both of whom fit the strong female protagonist archetype. When her husband dies, Kudra is presented two choices: throwing herself on her husband’s funeral pyre or becoming a widow, a fate considered “worse than fire” (81). Choosing neither, Kudra runs away, demonstrating considerable strength and resolve. When she meets Alobar, those same attributes inspire him, drive him forward—but then Kudra disappears from the story altogether. Her headstrong ways exist only to help Alobar grow as the main character and serve no purpose to her within the plot but to banish her from the book until the very last pages. Madame Devalier at first seems a font of wisdom and self-determination, until it becomes clear that she, though a master perfumer, cannot figure out the secret to K23. The ultimate purpose of these characters, the reason why Robbins presents them as strong despite their near-total passivity, is to be credible and likeable witnesses to the men of the story, who do most of the growing and lecturing.