I have finished reading a book that, in all frankness, is one I should have stopped reading but it was so mesmerizing in it's lameness that I couldn't. I relegated it to the loo. (Rabbit trail: Have you ever read the short piece "The Body Rituals of the Nacirema" by Horace Miner? Very funny description of, well, I can't tell you. You have to read the story yourself to figure it out. Check here, third paragraph for a helpful hint.)
Anyway, imagine my surprise! When I googled this book, I discovered it is also going to made into a MOVIE. This is one time I hope the movie is WAY better than the book. Perhaps they think this will be the next Dances with Wolves. I seriously doubt it but it's worth giving it the old college try! And for those of you who might not know how the book-into-movie-thing works, a production company buys the rights or option to make a movie of a book. That purchase usually has a time limit, say 5 years. If no movie gets made, the rights/option can be re-sold to another production company. I learned this from Sheri Reynolds, who was my Creative Writing prof at ODU. We will have to wait and see if time runs out on the movie of One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd.
Part of the problem I have with this book is the stereotypes. Girl from rich family falls in love with a common man and gives it all up (kind of like Sybil in Downton Abbey). Rich father disowns said girl and has her imprisoned in the lunatic asylum (unlike Sybil). Southern belle is a drunk with a little white lapdog. Preacher woman looks like death warmed over. Irish twins are thieves. Escaped slave is beautiful, sings so sweetly, and has one friend, the disowned rich girl. The mute girl speaks only when it's not English. A British woman who studies birds is named Flight. The disenfranchised try to find a new home and acceptance with other disenfranchised. Social experiment fails miserably. Granted, this is "semi-historical" fiction but still . . . these are trite and over-used.
This author, Jim Fergus, is not as capable as George RR Martin to successfully switch voices to go with characters. We begin the novel with an introduction that is wooden and confusing. Then the story proceeds in journal-entry form, except that the journal entries contain actual dialogue - no "he said" and then reporting of what was said; journals are mostly summary. The "journal" had scenes more appropriate to a real novel, not one with a subtitle of "The Journals of . . . . " So right there, as a reader I am pushed out of the text. The third section is written from a Abbot's point of view, which I felt was largely caricature. The final section ends with an epilogue from the same character's point of view who wrote the introduction - still wooden and confusing.
Another problem with this novel is the accents. Anything said in an Irish brogue, Southern drawl or Cheyenne is in italics. Whoever picked the font for that should be forced to read an entire novel in it; I found it difficult to actually see and decode.
There were some descriptions of the plains and nature, in general, which were nicely done. Mr. Fergus did provide an excellent bibliography should one wish to read his primary sources. The story's genesis is an historical fact and quite a wonderful idea: "In 1854, at a peace conference at Fort Laramie, a prominent Cheyenne chief requested of the U.S. Army the gift of 100 white women as brides, but the army refused." I just wish it could have had a better treatment.
This book is also Mr. Fergus's first, which means I should probably be nicer but I can't help it. If I am going to spend money and time on something I'd like for it to be halfway decent; maybe I expect too much from the 20% off rack at Target.
This book would make a great summer or beach read if you want something light and fluffy with a little romance and a predictable ending. But I can't help wonder if, perhaps, there are better choices.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
The Feminine Mystique
Would you enjoy reading a book whose author denigrated your life choices? Who called you a burden on society because of those choices? Who said you lived in a concentration camp and acted like one interred there? Who intimated you were not a productive citizen or a contributing member of society? Who said that your college education was wasted because you were a mere housewife? Who called you "over-productive" for having several children? Well, that book would be The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, which has been one of THE MOST difficult of our WEM books to read. I'm a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom so I certainly felt, very often, while reading this book that my choices would not make Ms. Friedan happy (but I guess we are even because her life choices didn't make me too glad either!). So many times I wanted to put it down this book and never pick it up. I did not finish it on schedule with my WEM group. Yet, I have to also admit this has been one of the most fascinating books I've ever read.
Before I begin, know that this book is the cornerstone of women's studies departments in universities all over the US. I would go so far as to even say feminists consider it their bible. I get that. I get that this book was life-changing and culture-changing when it came out. Mary Kassian has captured this spirit, this alive-and-wellness of Ms. Friedan's book: "Over the past decade, the ideas of feminism have been popularized and integrated into societal thought. Consequently, it has become difficult to distinguish feminism as a philosophy from mainstream thought" (p. 12). The intermingled nature of feminist thought with the mainstream showed up when I recently opened a cookbook and found these words: "The most irksome decisions I faced as an adult and working mother seemed to be made at the grocery store. Fundamentally trivial, they were nonetheless maddeningly fraught, involving questions of time, quality money, First World guilt, maternal guilt, gender, meaning, and health" (p. 2). Then Jennifer Reese, the author of this cookbook writes this about her mother canning: " . . . my young mother - a math major, one of three women to graduate from her law school class in 1964 . . . . When they were in their early forties, my parents divorced. I never saw my mother can anything ever again" (p. 238). Betty Friedan would have been so pleased that Jennifer's mother stopped contributing to the feminine mystique but again, she'd be quite unhappy with me since I've taken up canning!
The genesis for this book came about because Ms. Friedan conducted an "intensive questionnaire of [her] college classmates, fifteen years after [their] graduation from Smith" (p. 49). While doing this research, she discovered a problem that had no name and this book is her effort to define that problem. Her conclusion is that: women didn't know who they were; the magazine editors contributed to this by writing articles focused on home management and dumb housewives; the women themselves didn't want to be anything but wives and mothers; Sigmund Freud and Margaret Mead didn't help at all; college education for women was too heavy on the home-ec type courses and didn't encourage women to strive for a career; advertisers thought women's sole function was to buy things for the home; and women made a mistaken choice when they felt they had to pick between being a housewife or having a career and thereby giving up on themselves when they gave up on a career. Her solution for these women was to make a life plan and become educated, to have the government pay for education and child care for women just like was done for the GIs, and for women to work on finding themselves, creating an identity for themselves.
While I think this book has helped women in many ways by "[drawing] attention to crucial problems that exist for women in society" (Kassian, p. 10), I also think it has had a grave unintended consequence: women are now forever locked in mortal combat with each other - stay-at-home mothers vs. working moms. (Can't we all just get along and be Proverbs 31 women??) This book gave women permission to judge others' choices because they choose to work or be at home. It is amazing how many times that cultural pendulum has swung back and forth between those two choices.
The genesis for this book came about because Ms. Friedan conducted an "intensive questionnaire of [her] college classmates, fifteen years after [their] graduation from Smith" (p. 49). While doing this research, she discovered a problem that had no name and this book is her effort to define that problem. Her conclusion is that: women didn't know who they were; the magazine editors contributed to this by writing articles focused on home management and dumb housewives; the women themselves didn't want to be anything but wives and mothers; Sigmund Freud and Margaret Mead didn't help at all; college education for women was too heavy on the home-ec type courses and didn't encourage women to strive for a career; advertisers thought women's sole function was to buy things for the home; and women made a mistaken choice when they felt they had to pick between being a housewife or having a career and thereby giving up on themselves when they gave up on a career. Her solution for these women was to make a life plan and become educated, to have the government pay for education and child care for women just like was done for the GIs, and for women to work on finding themselves, creating an identity for themselves.
While I think this book has helped women in many ways by "[drawing] attention to crucial problems that exist for women in society" (Kassian, p. 10), I also think it has had a grave unintended consequence: women are now forever locked in mortal combat with each other - stay-at-home mothers vs. working moms. (Can't we all just get along and be Proverbs 31 women??) This book gave women permission to judge others' choices because they choose to work or be at home. It is amazing how many times that cultural pendulum has swung back and forth between those two choices.
I must say, I do understand some of the feelings of the women quoted in the book. Cooking, cleaning, laundry are all very monotonous and repetitious plus, they are just not plain fun. My Aunt Carol works magic with a stain remover but not I, who is lucky to catch the stain before the dryer! Training and educating a little man all day is emotionally draining and tiring, not to mention fraught with certain measures of guilt. I get that too. And sometimes I feel like my intellect is atrophying but then I join a book club, read hard books, and blog. This is a choice I made with my husband which we feel is in the best interest of our family. No where is that kind of choice given any credence in this book. Every job has drudgery, so get over it and get to work.
This is the real struggle I have with this book. Betty Friedan urges women to leave the home and to choose to do so. However, if you choose to be at home, you have made the wrong choice because that choice isn't going to have a positive impact on society. Excuse me? Raising well-adjusted, intelligent, educated children doesn't have a positive impact on society? Only by working outside the home can women accomplish what Ms. Friedan wants them to, which is really to just stop being a housewife.
Now, I think if this book had been written today, it might have been labeled hack journalism. While she does have endnotes, so many times her sources are unnamed, vague and frankly, sometimes I wonder if they even exist. She uses statistics from a single county in New Jersey to try to prove that housewives were committing suicide in disproportional numbers (p. 417). She disparages Freud but then has no problems using him to prove her point later on. And let's face it, this entire book rests on the answers of a questionnaire sent out to women like Betty Friedan - women who were in a social and economic position to go to college, roughly 200 respondents. That is a pretty small statistical sample on which to base a revolution, especially in 1957. In the epilogue, she relates a personal example of a college professor discouraging her from getting a Ph.D. That's a pretty convenient and handy anecdote. I hesitate to go so far as to call it made up, but it sure begs that question.
This is the real struggle I have with this book. Betty Friedan urges women to leave the home and to choose to do so. However, if you choose to be at home, you have made the wrong choice because that choice isn't going to have a positive impact on society. Excuse me? Raising well-adjusted, intelligent, educated children doesn't have a positive impact on society? Only by working outside the home can women accomplish what Ms. Friedan wants them to, which is really to just stop being a housewife.
Now, I think if this book had been written today, it might have been labeled hack journalism. While she does have endnotes, so many times her sources are unnamed, vague and frankly, sometimes I wonder if they even exist. She uses statistics from a single county in New Jersey to try to prove that housewives were committing suicide in disproportional numbers (p. 417). She disparages Freud but then has no problems using him to prove her point later on. And let's face it, this entire book rests on the answers of a questionnaire sent out to women like Betty Friedan - women who were in a social and economic position to go to college, roughly 200 respondents. That is a pretty small statistical sample on which to base a revolution, especially in 1957. In the epilogue, she relates a personal example of a college professor discouraging her from getting a Ph.D. That's a pretty convenient and handy anecdote. I hesitate to go so far as to call it made up, but it sure begs that question.
I would like to suggest you read Heidi's assessment of this book, here and here. Heidi's dread at writing this review was mine own! She's a member of our WEM book club and is incredibly thoughtful and insightful, presenting some very different observations.
All that said, I would highly recommend you read this book. I cannot guarantee you will agree with everything but I sure can promise it will make you think and give you a certain measure of enlightenment and understanding!
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
WEM Book Club
When you think of Book Club, what comes to mind? Ladies, sitting around on couches in someone's living room, laughing and talking? Some snacks near-by? Meets once a month? The hostess decides the book?
Well, my WEM book club is not like that! I have only met three of the members in person. All of our discussions are online, although we do laugh and talk, just not in person! The books are already chosen for us by Susan Wise Bauer. Take some time to read her bio - very impressive and shows she knows what she's talking about. So I can rest assured the books in this annotated bibliography were chosen with intent and purpose. The more I read, the more I can see of the intent and purpose.
These books are not typical and are challenging in their language (seriously! Who reads Thucydides for fun? Okay, maybe Victor David Hanson but he's the only one who comes to mind.) They are not titles I would normally pick for myself, except some of the fiction. Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, The House of Mirth, Great Gatsby and 1984 are books I read before WEM but that's it! I read to become better educated and to be well-informed so Susan Wise Bauer's book has, in fact, given me a classical education that I never had! (And a side note about The Well-Educated Mind. Do not read the blurbs that describe each book, especially the fiction. They contain spoilers, which happened for me with Uncle Tom's Cabin.)
When I read these books, and a lot of others, it's with a pencil in my hand. I underline. I circle. I write question marks and exclamation points. I ask questions. I make notes. I mark places where I think a map should be. I note other authors and their works and the dates of those works. I try to have a dialogue with the text and, by extension, with the author when I read these books. This helps me to spotlight important points, which then helps me answer the questions our fearless leader Sarah posts every Monday over the assigned reading segments; Sarah breaks the books down for us into manageable sections. The group then proceeds to have an email discussion of the questions Sarah asks, the comments and observations the group members make.
We don't get to read fiction anymore. That was the first section and included such titles as the ones above plus Moby Dick, Madame Bovary, The Trial, Song of Solomon and Possession to name a few. I confess, I much prefer fiction. However, I really did not like Madame Bovary. It gets my least favorite vote, yet it has an important place in literary history. (Egads, feminism is everywhere - I did just finish The Feminine Mystique.)
"The Story of Me: Autobiography and Memoir" is the next section of the WEM books. We proceeded through the lives of such people as Augustine, Rousseau, Booker T. Washington, Hitler, Malcom X, Charles Colson and Elie Wiesel. That's right, I read Mein Kampf. Are you shocked? Don't be. He was quite mad. You should see all the highlighted parts and comments in that book.
And now we are at "The Story of the Past: The Tales of Historians (and Politicians)." Herodotus, Plato, Machiavelli, Paine, Wollstonecraft, Marx and Engel, and Kenneth Galbraith were some of the authors of these historical tomes. The best book, by far, was Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day about the D-Day Invasion. I highly recommend it, and will be adding it to Caleb's readings when he is in high school.
While reading this section, I began to envision our readings as a spiral vortex where the same authors and themes which shaped culture and influenced thinking across the globe were showing up in different literary genres. Thomas More's and John Locke's ideas of government shaped Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Flaubert's introduction of a female character who did as she wanted and Wollstonecraft's ideas of women's right are are antithetical to Rousseau's but are culminated and furthered in Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. See what I mean? Feminism is everywhere.
I have finished The Feminine Mystique which lead me to start The Feminine Mistake. That's next week's topic, so stay tuned!
Well, my WEM book club is not like that! I have only met three of the members in person. All of our discussions are online, although we do laugh and talk, just not in person! The books are already chosen for us by Susan Wise Bauer. Take some time to read her bio - very impressive and shows she knows what she's talking about. So I can rest assured the books in this annotated bibliography were chosen with intent and purpose. The more I read, the more I can see of the intent and purpose.
These books are not typical and are challenging in their language (seriously! Who reads Thucydides for fun? Okay, maybe Victor David Hanson but he's the only one who comes to mind.) They are not titles I would normally pick for myself, except some of the fiction. Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, The House of Mirth, Great Gatsby and 1984 are books I read before WEM but that's it! I read to become better educated and to be well-informed so Susan Wise Bauer's book has, in fact, given me a classical education that I never had! (And a side note about The Well-Educated Mind. Do not read the blurbs that describe each book, especially the fiction. They contain spoilers, which happened for me with Uncle Tom's Cabin.)
When I read these books, and a lot of others, it's with a pencil in my hand. I underline. I circle. I write question marks and exclamation points. I ask questions. I make notes. I mark places where I think a map should be. I note other authors and their works and the dates of those works. I try to have a dialogue with the text and, by extension, with the author when I read these books. This helps me to spotlight important points, which then helps me answer the questions our fearless leader Sarah posts every Monday over the assigned reading segments; Sarah breaks the books down for us into manageable sections. The group then proceeds to have an email discussion of the questions Sarah asks, the comments and observations the group members make.
We don't get to read fiction anymore. That was the first section and included such titles as the ones above plus Moby Dick, Madame Bovary, The Trial, Song of Solomon and Possession to name a few. I confess, I much prefer fiction. However, I really did not like Madame Bovary. It gets my least favorite vote, yet it has an important place in literary history. (Egads, feminism is everywhere - I did just finish The Feminine Mystique.)
"The Story of Me: Autobiography and Memoir" is the next section of the WEM books. We proceeded through the lives of such people as Augustine, Rousseau, Booker T. Washington, Hitler, Malcom X, Charles Colson and Elie Wiesel. That's right, I read Mein Kampf. Are you shocked? Don't be. He was quite mad. You should see all the highlighted parts and comments in that book.
And now we are at "The Story of the Past: The Tales of Historians (and Politicians)." Herodotus, Plato, Machiavelli, Paine, Wollstonecraft, Marx and Engel, and Kenneth Galbraith were some of the authors of these historical tomes. The best book, by far, was Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day about the D-Day Invasion. I highly recommend it, and will be adding it to Caleb's readings when he is in high school.
While reading this section, I began to envision our readings as a spiral vortex where the same authors and themes which shaped culture and influenced thinking across the globe were showing up in different literary genres. Thomas More's and John Locke's ideas of government shaped Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Flaubert's introduction of a female character who did as she wanted and Wollstonecraft's ideas of women's right are are antithetical to Rousseau's but are culminated and furthered in Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. See what I mean? Feminism is everywhere.
I have finished The Feminine Mystique which lead me to start The Feminine Mistake. That's next week's topic, so stay tuned!
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
The Scottish Prisoner
Let's get a few things out of the way first.
*There may be spoilers for you, so proceed with caution.
* I own all the Outlander books, in this matching style and size.
*While I discovered the Outlander series rather late, I am a huge fan!
* I have read them all twice, except for the last one, Echo in the Bone, which I've only read once.
*Once the readers are given a definitive date for the publication of Written in My Own Heart's Blood, I'll start re-reading the entire series with the goal of timing the ending of Echo and then jumping right into Written.
* I visit Diana Gabaldon's site regularly.
* I do not look forward to a movie of these books, despite whatever speculations have been appearing on FB regarding that.
* I do not read the Lord John books. Chloe sums up why nicely in her Open Letter to Diana Galbaldon:
*There may be spoilers for you, so proceed with caution.
* I own all the Outlander books, in this matching style and size.
*While I discovered the Outlander series rather late, I am a huge fan!
* I have read them all twice, except for the last one, Echo in the Bone, which I've only read once.
*Once the readers are given a definitive date for the publication of Written in My Own Heart's Blood, I'll start re-reading the entire series with the goal of timing the ending of Echo and then jumping right into Written.
* I visit Diana Gabaldon's site regularly.
* I do not look forward to a movie of these books, despite whatever speculations have been appearing on FB regarding that.
* I do not read the Lord John books. Chloe sums up why nicely in her Open Letter to Diana Galbaldon:
And while we’re on the topic of boyfriends. I can’t speak for the rest of your readers, who apparently are ponying up the bucks and buying Lord John books, but I don’t want to read gay romance. Even if it is the saintly Lord John. I’m just not into that.
Yes, he’s a nice enough fellow; I don’t begrudge him his love life. BUT I absolutely do not want to read about it. Haven’t you made enough amends now to all the homosexuals of the world when you created a nice gay character after that evil sadomasochistic pervert, Black Jack Randall? Can you please stop now and focus on the main thing–finishing this story right? Because even if all Lord John does is get a twinkle in his eye for the guy across the room, I’m not going to pay good money to read about it. I’m afraid that I’m just a simple straight woman who isn’t into gay sex. Sue me. That’s just the way it is.
And so, before I started reading The Scottish Prisoner, I asked on a Facebook group I'm a member of if anyone had read it and whether I should or not. I only got encouragement to read the book and since it was a library book, I was out nothing. Like Chloe said, I would NOT be paying money to add this book to my Outlander collection, no matter how good it might turn out to be.
I proceeded with extreme caution.
I got to what I didn't want to read on page 112 and had to skim/skip until page 122, but that was the only episode, thank goodness. Throughout the whole book, there is this constant undercurrent of Lord John mooning over Jaime or some other man. Puh-leeze. <gag> Maybe Lord John is Diana's alter ego and really it's her mooning over Jaime. But hey! if he was my creation, I'd certainly create someone I'd moon over.
But the bottom line for me is that this book is certainly not Diana's best. Supposedly this book fits in the Voyager timeline. So I got out my Voyager book to place it. (I have done the same thing with other books. Sick, I know.) The Scottish Prisoner fits, not very neatly, between chapters 15 and 16 of Voyager. The spark, the adventure, the things I love to read Outlander books for was certainly missing from this little tome. Too much traveling, back and forth, and while the traveling had a point, it was tiresome. Gabaldon is an awesome writer but somehow she didn't bring that awesomeness to this little volume; she didn't make me care about Jaime and Lord John like I care about Jaime and Claire. I did like it when Jaime would pray for "Claire and the child." That would spark, but then flame out with whatever came next. I think Jaime's missing Claire was carried off much better in Voyager.
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