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The two Mrs. Cheneys

BY BLAKE ALLMENDINGER

In 1981, Lynne Cheney, wife of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, published “Sisters,” a Western historical romance that received little attention and soon went out of print. The media rediscovered the novel only in 2004, when Cheney played a prominent role in her husband’s reelection campaign — a time when anything pertaining to the vice president was considered newsworthy.

Plans for reprinting the novel, however, were scrapped when Cheney informed the book’s publisher that she did not consider “Sisters” to be “her best work.” Today, Cheney no longer mentions “Sisters” in her résumé. Pundits have speculated that Cheney sees her novel as a political handicap: Two characters in it are involved in a steamy romance, the argument goes, drawing attention to the fact that the Cheneys have an openly lesbian daughter.

Yet there’s nothing more than a hint of lesbianism in only one of the novel’s subplots. The main plot features a heroine who is something even more shocking — given that “Sisters” is written by a social conservative. The heroine, Sophie, is a biracial activist — part Caucasian, part Native American — who runs a newspaper empire in New York City.

As the novel begins in 1886, Sophie has returned to her native state, Wyoming, to investigate the mysterious death of her sister, Helen. We learn that Helen had been

married to a cattle baron, James Stevenson, in the town of Cheyenne. A frontier entrepreneur, he has made his fortune by flooding the open range with his herds, stealing livestock from competitors and lynching anyone who calls him a thief.

Sophie concludes that the settlement of the West by such lawless men has not necessarily resulted in the establishment of civilization. This comes as a shock, considering that Cheney has attacked feminists, ethnic studies professors and homosexual-rights advocates, accusing them of infiltrating America’s colleges and teaching “narratives of victimization” focused on oppressed women and racial minorities.

At first glance, “Sisters” resembles one of those narratives — the supposed lesbian romance in the story involves Helen and a homely spinster. But their relationship may or may not have been sexual. Further, Sophie learns that James has raped Helen at least once and that she has had several unwanted pregnancies and painful miscarriages.

In short, Helen is one of those oppressed minorities allegedly favored by college professors and other bleeding-heart liberals. In contrast, Sophie isn’t a downtrodden, Victorian wife but a modern-day feminist who gets bored in a room full of women. The novel “uses the metaphor of sisters to confront the differences among women, and the impossibility and futility of absolute sisterhood as a feminist goal,” Victorian scholar Elaine Showalter has written.

There seem to be two Mrs. Cheneys: One complains that history textbooks pay too much attention to women and people of color; the other publishes a Western centered around a biracial heroine instead of a white, male protagonist in an oppressed frontier town. So which one is the real Mrs. Cheney? The one who promotes traditional beliefs, conservative values and Republican causes? Or the one who pens racy and embarrassing novels?

Allmendinger is professor of English.