Floating Face Down in Housewifery
Please note that I am now an Affiliate Marketer on Amazon. This means my book reviews will include a link to the book on Amazon. If you purchase the book using my link, I will earn a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you. More details here. Thank you for supporting my Book Blog in this manner.
*****
Here is a great quote from Liars by Sara Manguso: “I had infinite patience with my one-year-old, whom I held to the behavioral standards of a two-year-old, and almost no patience with my husband, whom I held to the behavioral standards of a mother.”
Many women who are wives and mothers will identify with this quote. I certainly did! In fact, I identified with a huge majority of this book. But therein was my problem. It brought back too much pain from the reality of being a woman in a patriarchy, especially as that plays out for a woman in a heterosexual marriage.
Here is the basic story: Jane is a writer and a teacher. Her husband, John, is a failed artist who is now pursuing a career in film production. In the course of growing his career, the couple and their child move back and forth across the country five times in less than six years. Of course, he goes off to work leaving all the details of their move and their life and their family to her. To say she is depleted is an understatement. Jane puts it this way:
“I floated face down in housewifery.”
Again, I identified!
Which again, was a problem!
And now, here are half a dozen quotes with which I also identified. Some struck a chord in me as an ex-wife and some as a woman in other relationships with men. Just the same, oh my!
“Tonight I learned why my mother always squealed and shrank away when my father tried to touch her: She was a fortress. And inside that fortress was rage, and in the center of that rage was the pain of the insult of being treated like a stupid maid. My fortress is the same, with smaller hips, surrounded by a corona of migraine.”
“I’d already asked John to email me his itinerary for Calgary…Vibrating like a tuning fork, I sent him the same email for the fourth time.”
“I decided to examine my rage, determine what I needed, and rely on John for no part of it. I imagined never needing to ask him for anything ever again.”
“I’d given up two and a half years of my academic career…following John around in lieu of going on the market for a full-time teaching job. I was a layer cake of abandonment and hurt and fury, iced with a smile.”
“We’d fallen into a groove: John made art on the weekends because he felt entitled to, and I did errands and chores on the weekends because I felt responsible.”
“John and I both caught the child’s cold. John stayed in bed for two days; I took the new kitten to the vet and bought groceries and did dishes and laundry and planned all the meals and took the child to school and so on. I took one nap but otherwise kept everything up. And that is a mother’s cold.”
Two thirds of the way through the book John leaves Jane for another woman and then she deals with that.
I didn’t find anything new here, just a lot of anger that is/was very similar to my own. But I have no need to relive all that pain.
They say that misery loves company. So for those in the throes of such a relationship, read this book! But for those who managed to get away from their misery, maybe not.
*****
Click here to learn more about Liars on Amazon.
*****
Thank you for reading this review. It would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to my blog/newsletter. You will receive exactly 28 emails from me in a year’s time. They will include 4 reports for book lovers and 24 slice-of-life blogs. Thanks for considering this. Lorie
Leave a Reply