Jong specialized in eighteenth-century literature when she was working towards a doctoral degree at Columbia University, and the most obvious precedent for the book's structure and tone — including the bawdy humor that simultaneously exposes and defends against serious and unpleasant realities — is to be found in such books as Henry Fielding's Tom Jones. Among more recent novels, critics often called Fear of Flying a female version of Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (1969) or compared it to J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951).

A number of novels with similar themes were published at almost the same time as Fear of Flying, including Sue Kaufman's, The Diary of a Mad Housewife (1967), Dorothy Bryant's, Ella Price's Journal (1972), Anne Roiphe's, Up the Sandbox (1972), and Marge Piercy's Small Changes (1973). All dealt, at least in part, with the search for selfdiscovery by a woman already married and supposedly "happy...