Puttermesser Paired by Cynthia Ozick
"Puttermesser Paired" is a novella by Cynthia Ozick that explores the life of Ruth Puttermesser, a New York attorney in her fifties who yearns for intellectual companionship and love. Having set aside her legal career, Ruth immerses herself in the world of her literary idol, George Eliot, hoping to find a modern counterpart to Eliot’s partner, George Lewes. As Ruth navigates her feelings of isolation and aging, she encounters a younger man, Rupert Rabeeno, at a museum. Their connection deepens as they read Eliot’s works together, and she envisions a profound relationship based on the intellectual intimacy that Eliot and Lewes shared.
However, as their relationship develops, tensions arise regarding their differing interpretations of Eliot’s life and the roles they play. Ruth's idealized vision of friendship clashes with Rupert’s interpretation of Eliot’s later life with John Cross, raising questions about identity and authenticity. The novella examines themes of desire, companionship, and the complexities of recreating historical narratives in modern relationships. Ultimately, Ruth grapples with the realization that her expectations may not align with reality, leading to a poignant exploration of human connection and the search for meaning in love.
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Puttermesser Paired by Cynthia Ozick
First published: 1990
Type of plot: Psychological
Time of work: The late twentieth century
Locale: New York City
Principal Characters:
Ruth Puttermesser , an unemployed attorney in her fifties, seeking an ideal mate for a marriage of mindsRupert Rabeeno , a painter in his mid-thirties who copies famous paintings for postcards
The Story
Ruth Puttermesser, a New York attorney, has set aside gainful employment to live on her savings and think through her fate. In her fifties, she has a strong self-image of being brainy, cherishes a devotion to the nineteenth century novelist George Eliot, and finds herself very much alone. Dismayed to recognize her signs of aging, she decides she should marry. Ruth idolizes Eliot—another homely female intellectual, but one who found a happy fate—and lives in her subjective reality of "selected phantom literary flashbacks." She has immersed herself in biographies of Eliot and in Eliot's letters, nurturing a dream that she will meet a latter-day copy of George Lewes, Eliot's intellectual companion and lover, and share with him the same transcendent intimacy of souls ascribed to Eliot and Lewes by her biographers and portrayed in Eliot's letters. New York, however, seems to be filled only with the self-regarding egos of shallow and isolated failures at marriage, with the leftovers and mistakes who flirt superficially, mask their vulnerabilities behind flippancy, and neglect their children.
At a gathering at which she has chanced on such types, Ruth feels aloof and yearns to find virtue, knowledge, mutuality, and intellectual distinction embodied in a contemporary Victorian gentleman—another Lewes. Then she sees a man some twenty years younger than she is and connects him with her vision of Lewes. She is hurt that he does not even notice her.
Soon afterward, Ruth sits in the Metropolitan Museum, reading Eliot's letters; gradually she becomes aware that a painter is copying one of the masterpieces to be used as a postcard. Striking up a dialogue about whether his work is mimicry or reproduction, she discovers that he is the same young man whom she recently noticed. His name is Rupert Rabeeno. Fascinated by his insistence that he does not duplicate but, rather, reenacts a process, she is convinced by his lively talk that she has found her Lewes and invites him home for tea. They begin reading Eliot's novels together, which Ruth sees as reenacting the nightly reading by Eliot and Lewes and, therefore, as building the same mental and emotional intimacy that the nineteenth century couple had shared. Rupert often interrupts the reading to recount details of his past. When Ruth feels the time is right, she shares her dream of ideal friendship, directing Rupert's attention to Lewes and believing that Rupert understands her as Lewes understood and sympathized with Eliot. He signals his apparent rapport by moving in with her.
When they begin reading Eliot's biographies, Ruth is disturbed to discover that Rupert previously had known little of Eliot and nothing at all of Lewes or John Cross, the man twenty years her junior whom Eliot married after Lewes's death. As they take turns reading aloud, reenacting Eliot's life, Rupert shows far more energy and enthusiasm for reenacting the role of Cross, creating a Cross quite different from Ruth's understanding of him, than he has shown for complying with Ruth's wish that he try to make himself into Lewes. Although Ruth insists that Eliot and Cross were true lovers, Rupert maintains that Cross never consummated his marriage. Rupert believes that Cross's attempt to make himself into an intellectual copy of Lewes to keep Eliot from feeling the loss of her longtime companion caused Cross's nervous collapse and leap into the Grand Canal of Venice during their honeymoon. Rupert's re-creation of Cross trying to be Lewes for Eliot is so convincing, so alive, that it leaves Ruth feeling that he has taken Lewes, the great mind and generous soul of her dream, from her and given her instead the athletically and practically focused Cross, man of the outdoors. When Rupert next proposes marriage, however, Ruth feels reassured that he really does understand ideal friendship and will be her Lewes. On their wedding night, Rupert repeats his reenactment, charging toward the window Cross-style, but leaving by the door, as Ruth calls after him, forced to acknowledge that he is only a copyist.
Bibliography
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Cohen, Sarah Blacher. Cynthia Ozick's Comic Art: From Levity to Liturgy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Friedman, Lawrence S. Understanding Cynthia Ozick. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991.
Kauver, Elaine M. Cynthia Ozick's Fiction: Tradition and Invention. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Lowin, Joseph. Cynthia Ozick. Boston: Twayne, 1988.
Pinsker, Sanford. The Uncompromising Fictions of Cynthia Ozick. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987.
Rainwater, Catherine, and William J. Scheick, eds. Three Contemporary Women Novelists: Hazzard, Ozick, and Redmon, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983.
Strandberg, Victor H. Greek Mind/Jewish Soul: The Conflicted Art of Cynthia Ozick. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
Walden, Daniel, ed. The Changing Mosaic: From Cahan to Malamud, Roth, and Ozick. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.
Walden, Daniel, ed. The World of Cynthia Ozick: Studies inAmerican Jewish Literature. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1987.