Touching Bottom- Feminist Literary Theory

In the short story, Touching Bottom, the traditional roles of the male and female characters have been reveresed. Typically, the male protaganist is the hero of the story, but in Touching Bottom the narrator, a women named Kari Strutt, is the one who saves the day when she decides to swim parallel to the shore to call for help. In doing so she frees her step son and self from a potentially deadly current. Whilst women usually are the rescued, she becomes the rescuer of a male in the text. The other main male character of the story is the narrator's husband who also does not play the usual heroic male role. He plays quite the opposite in fact; he is the lowly scum flirting with other women, not giving a damned about spending time with his family, and ultimately the safety of them, a man so ignoble he destroys his second marriage in the course of the book. Without the physical strength and the will to endure of the protaganist, the husband would have lost his son, because of his preoccupation and infidelity.

The time period of which Touching Bottom was written allows Strutt to do something which women of the past could not. She is able to liberate herself from her unfaithful husband by divorcing him after the incident at the beach. In doing so she severs the ties between her and Ian, her step- son, which is most likely the hardest part of the divorce, considering her relationship with Ian is a closer more bonding one than the one she had with her former husband. Later in life she is able to meet up with Ian as an adult and discuss memories with him. Strutt says that "Ian is a man now... He is tall, and handsome, and very smart." In their entire visit they do not mention his Father once. Perhaps this is because her former husband continued his life in the same way he was with her, and therefore he is an undesireable person to speak of. The narrator never gives any indication of regreting her decision to divorce Ian's father, except that she would not be able to see Ian. She says " I came home", so being married and living with Ian's father never was a home to her. She makes no reference to a new family, but being alone seems much better for her than being with her former husband.