"A nomad I will remain for life, in love with distant and uncharted places." -Isabelle Eberhardt
"A nomad I will remain for life, in love with distant and uncharted places." -Isabelle Eberhardt
Everyone needs a wife; even wives need wives. Wives tend, they hover. Their ears are twin sensitive instruments, satellites picking up the slightest scrape of dissatisfaction. Wives bring broth, we bring paper clips, we bring ourselves and our pliant, warm bodies. We know just what to say to the men who for some reason have a great deal of trouble taking consistent care of themselves or anyone else.
“Listen,” we say. “Everything will be ok.”
And the, as if our lives depend on it, we make sure it is.
I recently read Meg Wolitzer’s newest book, The Female Persuasion , and then immediately followed it up with her 2003 novel, The Wife . The quote above is from The Wife, near the end of the book, a few pages before the bombshell hits the plot. I had been waiting for something to happen, enjoying the story and yet knowing that something more had to be coming. As I got closer and closer to the end, I felt there had to be more and it had to happen soon and boy, did it. At the time, I didn’t realize the quote above was a big clue to the bombshell and it stuck out to me just the same.
Wolitzer’s The Female Persuasion
had a feminist theme throughout, yet was not a book about feminism. It was not a feminist guide or manifesto. The character’s certainly had you thinking about the role of the women, the role of the feminist and yet The Wife was more specific about…you guessed it…the role of wife. I find it interesting that The Wife
is nearly fifteen years old and I’m just now reading it and find it to be so relevant. Women have been trying to find their way as wife, mother, self for a very long time and it’s something that continues to be examined, written about, and discussed at length. A quick search on the role of a husband brings up mostly links about husband in the biblical sense and a handful of Focus on the Family articles. Is this not something men think about? Do they think about it and it’s pushed aside because it’s not manly?
In my own relationship, I certainly see myself fitting the quote and yet, it’s not because it’s expected OF me (well, maybe it is now because I’ve made it the norm) and I’m trying to look back and see when and how I decided that was my role. Most of the time, taking on the traditional wife role irritates me and yet, I’ve done it to myself. We joke about trying out a role reversal, especially when I’m bitching about doing the dishes yet again, and I’d really like to give that a try. I recently (this week!) learned how to start the grill, which is very empowering and also now a burden. I liked not being able to grill and here it is, no longer an excuse!
The one thing I’ve still got going for me…I can’t start the lawnmower.
So as with everything….baby steps.
Follow up reading:
- The Interestings by Meg Wolizter
- Monstrous Domesticity by Faith Wilding
- Feminist Art and the Maternal by Andrea Liss
- The Second Sex by Simone de Beavoir
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