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'The Women's Room' in 2009: No Remodeling Needed

2 years ago

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Review of "The Women's Room" (Penguin Books) and "The Love Children" (The Feminist Press), By Marilyn French.

Marilyn French died on May 4, and I spent the summer devouring the new edition of her 1977 novel, "The Women's Room," and its sequel, her final novel, "The Love Children," due out this month. I read while I waited in the dentist's office and the carpool lane, gobsmacked by the number of women who flagged me down to volunteer anecdotes about who and where they were when they encountered "The Women's Room." The stories ranged from the reflective -- "I read that in a feminist literature class in college" -- to the angry -- "I left my first husband after reading that book."

In the forward to this edition of "The Women's Room," French reiterates her 1977 dream for the book: "I wished for a world in which no one would comprehend it because women and men had found a way to live together in felicity." Unfortunately, I don't think she got her wish.

"The Women's Room" still resonates because it poses tough questions about power, gender equality, and the institution of marriage. Does equality equal felicity? When confronted with a philandering husband, did Jenny Sanford's education, wealth, or Wall Street resume grant her many more options than Mira and her friends?

Novelist Fay Weldon claimed that "The Women's Room" is "the kind of book that changes lives." I read it in the late '80s, way post-"Mad Men" and Gloria Steinem, and it certainly sensitized me to the chasm between my newly conscious self and the sad epiphany that the shorter I wore my skirts the more ads I'd sell for the radio station that had offered me a solid stab at financial independence. I sure didn't want to end up like the novel's protagonist Mira, the beautiful, brainy, 1950s suburban housewife who subjugates herself for the financial security of marriage, although I never quite found a female role model in the workplace either.

Perhaps "The Women's Room" sold 21 million copies because, according to Gloria Steinem, it "expressed the experience of a huge number of women and let them know that they were not alone and not crazy." After Mira puts her husband through medical school, endures endless bad sex, bears two sons, and masters "good housewifery" skills, which included making her house smell "fresh of lemon oil and soap," he leaves her for a "little chippy." Some of her friends suffer similar fates and end up suicidal, institutionalized, destroyed, and forever beholden to their husbands. This narrator bitterly observes, "You don't have to rape or kill her; you don't even have to beat her. You can just marry her."

"Thin and brittle as a saltine," Mira moves to Cambridge to pursue a Ph.D in English literature at Harvard. She finds a diverse group of women friends, intellectual fulfillment, a dashiki that matches her blue eyes, and a generous lover. At the end of the book, Mira ends up alone, the cost of her unwillingness to sacrifice her wants for her lover's, regardless of their intellectual and sexual compatibility. She never realizes her teaching dreams, but she pens the bitter truths about her friends, whom she describes as departed spirits who have descended upon her, clamoring to be let out.

"The Love Children" is a more hopeful novel about the post- "Women's Room" challenge to create new roadmaps for love and life. While Mira pushed back against the oppressive gender roles of the suburban '50s, Jess Leighton, daughter of a Harvard professor, a more actualized version of Mira, must chart her course amidst the political, social, and racial upheaval that marked the late 1960s.

Jess's opportunities seem limitless, yet she has no model for acquiring or sustaining her desires, which include a loving relationship. Her quest to find love is messy and non-linear, complicated by her father's abandonment. After Jess becomes pregnant, her father, an alcoholic, artistic version of Mira's Norm, accepts her offer for redemption, enabling Jess to re-open her heart to the possibility of love. "I didn't know but I was grateful, and my old love for Dad began to flow like a long-clogged tap that was suddenly cleared." French was far less forgiving toward her male characters in "The Women's Room."

Jess' search for professional fulfillment also reflects French's shift from the explosive call to battle for women's rights to a gentler invitation to create sustainable living. Despite Jess's intellectual promise, she drops out of college to live on a commune and learn organic farming. She becomes a restaurateur whose name is mentioned in the same breath as Alice Waters. Jess gets the guy, too, an organic mushroom farmer who vacuums and adores children.

"Scratch a woman, find a rage," claims one of the heroines of "The Women's Room." In contrast, the word "happy" appears over and over in "The Love Children," to the point of distraction. In one of the more poignant moments in the book, Jess's mother offers this advice to her heartbroken daughter: "It takes a lot of willpower to create happiness." In "The Love Children" and in "The Women's Room," French's characters (Jess more handsomely than Mira) are rewarded for their valiant efforts to create lives that are nuanced, joyful, and full of possibilities.

"The Love Children" concludes with the post-9/11 Jess definitively asserting her desires: "I only know that I want my happy life, I want to keep it, I want it more than anything. And that if I were to live again, fifty times over, that is what I'd want." Given the social and political upheaval she's encountered, she asks if it is important "in the scale of things that a few people achieve happy lives? Does it create a usable example?" For Jess, the heir to her father's sizable fortune, and other women who don't need to worry about their children going to bed hungry, I'd say, heck yes.

I no longer wear short skirts to sell advertising, yet I'm still on the lookout for a role model. My 2009 version will successfully balance her life's work with relationships, community, and the proper upkeep of her body and soul. Like Jess Leighton, to do this she will make creative and non-traditional choices, choose passion over pedigree, and love over wound-licking. She will remember her sisters who have and will continue to struggle for equal rights, yet with the snap of her fingers, she will summon the "willpower to create happiness," a worthy legacy for French's final novel.

Filed Under: Woman Up

Tagged: Gloria Steinem, GloriaSteinem, Jenny Sanford, JennySanford, Maryilyn French, MaryilynFrench, The Love Children, The Womens Room, TheLoveChildren, TheWomensRoom

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