The Automobile in Fiction

While in graduate school during the early 2000s, I devised an independent study focused on my growing interest in the relationship between women and cars. What follows is one of the response papers in which I examine how gender influences the meanings ascribed to the automobile in popular fiction.

If the automobile existed merely as a mode of transportation, it would be found primarily in showrooms, on freeways and in public parking lots and personal garages. If it were regarded as simply an object of technology, the car would be praised for its utility and practicality, and cursed when it didn’t perform to expectations. If the automobile was only valued for its usefulness, it would be regarded in the same manner as other technological necessities of the home and workplace, such as the washing machine, dishwasher and office copier.

However, the automobile has taken accumulated a variety of alternative meanings since the Model T first rolled off Henry Ford’s assembly line. As David Laird suggests, automobiles promise “power, mobility, freedom, even a ‘poetic’ space that beckons from beyond the too familiar course of things” (244). Rather than simply a means to get from here to there, the car serves as a symbol of status, daring and sexual prowess. It is considered a home away from home or a room of one’s own. In the US, the automobile is not only found in the driveway, but in films, art, music, popular culture and literature as well. In such locations, the car is not just a prop or background; rather, it often serves as a reflection of a particular society and is imbued with cultural and personal meaning. In literature, the automobile is often a metaphor for our hopes and dreams, for how we live and what we want to be. While there are certainly a number of attributes that influence the car’s role in literature, one of the most significant is gender.

There can be little argument that the car is considered a masculine technology. And in literature, whether in a real or symbolic capacity, the automobile is most often a male space, located within a masculine environment. Loren Estleman portrays such a gendered location in Motown, a crime novel loosely based on events that occurred in Detroit during the summer of 1966. The auto industry, faced with mandatory automobile safety upgrades during the era of the “muscle car,” provides the backdrop for three parallel storylines and a lot of dirty business. The major players in Estleman’s novel are male, and the “muscle cars” they drive are fueled by testosterone. Motown’s women are stereotypical at best; they not only reveal Estleman’s notion of women’s place, but also represent the pre-feminist ideology of the auto industry. As a crime novel of the noir genre, Motown is concerned about what cars, and the car industry do, rather than the meanings ascribed to automobiles. Estelman’s storyline reflects, in the words of David Laird, “a society enormously dependent upon the automobile both as a means of transportation and as a source of economic activity” (244). Motown is built on plot rather than ideology; the cars in Estleman’s novel move the narrative literally rather than figuratively. 

In other literary genres, however, the automobile is often a metaphor for male experience and masculine character. Unlike fictions such as Motown, the focus of narrative is not the car or car industry. Rather, the presence of the automobile in the novel fulfills a symbolic purpose. Marie Farr, in “Freedom and Control,” asserts that in such contexts, male writers “accept the popular myth that identifies the automobile with male sexuality, power and control: in their works, driving often becomes a rite of initiation or a test of masculinity.” In these fictions, men are the drivers, and as such, carry the narrative forward. The dreams that the car represents  – success, adventure, conquest and youth – are the property of men. If women are present in such narratives, they are only going along for the ride.

The first appearance of the automobile in women’s literature occurred in the “road trip” genre. Women’s travel stories offered women writers the opportunity to explore the possibilities of female automobility. As Deborah Clarke remarks in “Domesticating the Car,” “women wrote increasingly about journeys, about mobility, and about the power inherent in this increased freedom” (101). Unlike male writers and drivers, women do not take the independence automobiles offer for granted. Access to the car does not equal independence, as it has often been instrumental in restricting women’s movements while keeping them close to home.  For decades, cars have been sold to women as a form of domestic technology. Farr suggests that to the 1950s American housewife, the automobile had become “the vehicle through which she did much of her most significant work, and the work locale where she could most often be found.”

The second wave of feminism inspired many female writers to call upon the automobile to reflect women’s growing agency and autonomy. Like their male literary contemporaries, women writers employ the car as metaphor to equate driving with living. The automobile in women’s literature often provides women temporary freedom from the constraints on how they are allowed to live. Thus while male writers use the automobile and the act of driving as symbols of power and control, female authors appropriate and reconfigure male images so that power as control transforms itself into “the power of being one’s own person” (Farr).

The car as “home away from home” or a “room of one’s own” has special meaning to women. Often unable to leave their children behind, automobiles in women’s fiction often serve as a moving family. In women’s fiction, cars may also function as a personal space away from domestic and familial responsibilities. While both male and female writers ascribe meaning to the automobile in fiction, the reality of women’s lives suggests that the metaphor has alternative meanings, determined by the gender of the writer and the driver.

Since its invention, the automobile has been firmly linked with masculinity. Women’s access to the automobile, and the meanings associated with it, has been qualified at best. Women’s fiction provides admission to a culture that has been historically closed to female readers and drivers. It infringes on the masculine car culture and reclaims and reconfigures the automobile into women’s own image. As Deborah Clarke writes, “American fiction reflects and shapes the dynamics between women and cars” (195). The automobile in contemporary American women’s fiction provides evidence that women are, in fact, viable and significant participants in American car culture.

Estleman, Loren. Motown. New York: Bantam, 1991.

Farr, Marie T. “Freedom and Control: Automobiles in American Women’s Fiction of the 70s and 80s.” The Journal of Popular Culture 29 (1995) 157-69.

Laird, David. “Versions of Eden: The Automobile and the American Novel.” The Automobile and American Culture. D.L. Lewis & L. Goldstein, eds. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1983. 639-651.

Visit to the Sloan

I first visited the Sloan Museum in Flint, Michigan a number of years ago. I remember the Sloan Panorama of Transportation as a pretty typical car museum – over 100 vehicles in a voluminous space with placards describing each car. That original Sloan Museum building, built in 1966, closed in 2018 for a major overhaul and expansion. After a 5 year hiatus and $30 million renovation, the newly imagined Sloan Museum of Discovery re-opened to the public in July 2022.

The transformation of the Sloan Museum is not in name only; rather, it embraces a totally new, different, and exciting concept. The old museum was geared toward the car enthusiast – individuals interested in the automobile itself rather than how cars related to the culture. In the new museum, cars are not the focus but rather take a supporting role. As the museum is primarily geared toward children [it was packed with kids during my visit], the automobile is called upon primarily as an educational tool. The automobile is intertwined with Flint’s history, which is reflected in the interactive exhibits in the History Gallery. While the automobile does not take center stage, the influence of the automotive industry is evident in stories about Flint life, employment, neighborhoods, schools, housing, and tourism. The History Gallery leads into the Durant Vehicle Gallery, which offers rotating exhibits about the history and future of the automobile. In this large space, the roughly 30 cars are on display not as examples in their own right, but as representative of automotive innovations that impacted people’s lives, including the automatic transmission, safety features, brakes, tires, comfort, and style.

Unlike its former incarnation, the Sloan Museum of Discovery is not all about cars; rather, the two auto-themed galleries are only part of a larger space which includes four hands-on learning galleries and exhibition hall geared toward young children. One of the galleries included a simulated car repair shop which welcomed kids to try their hands at automotive mechanics. I was pleased to see a young girl in a hard hat and safety vest working diligently under the hood.

The visit to the Sloan Museum of Discovery was undertaken as part of my current project to examine how women are represented in automotive museums. While women were not prominent in the museum exhibits, they were present in small but important ways.

The ‘Dunning Carriage to Cars Exhibit’, part of the History Gallery, is funded by the Margaret Dunning Foundation. The signage accompanying the exhibit reads: ‘Dunning was a successful businesswoman known for her love of classic cars. She established the foundation in her name in 1997. It nurtures the preservation and teaching of automotive history and other charitable interests in Michigan.’ Dunning was a philanthropist, history buff, classic car enthusiast, and huge proponent of automotive education. Her foundation not only funded the exhibit in Flint, but also programs in automotive technology and auto design in various schools throughout the state. Her contributions to the Sloan are in tandem with the museum’s mission to serve as an educational experience and resource for residents of Genesee county and other Sloan visitors.

Other references to women include their important role as members of the Emergency Brigade during the 1936 General Motors Sit-Down Strike. As noted in Jalopnik, “Many think of factory work, and therefore a strike in the automotive industry, as something primarily men would do. But it was the members of the Women’s Emergency Brigade, a paramilitary group of women inside the United Auto Workers union, who proved to be the secret weapon in that group’s triumph over General Motors.” Women are also included in exhibits focused on safety – in the car and on the factory floor.

The museum does not shy away from the auto industry’s negative impacts on the city of Flint. An underlying theme in the History Gallery involves the automobile’s affect on race relations through the displacement of black Flint residents via expansion, highway construction, and eventual loss of industry to the area.  

While my intention in visiting the Sloan was to examine how women were represented, I came away impressed with how the museum endeavors to serve as a source of automotive education of all who visit, regardless of age, race, or gender.