The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage [Paperback]

Cathi Hanauer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2002

My friends and I moaned about how tired we were. During dips in our conversation, I found myself looking at the teenage couple seated at a table, their chairs side by side. They kissed. My friend asked me about my marriage. "Are you guys having sex?" she asked bluntly... I wanted to laugh.

-- Jill Bialosky

Women today have more choices than at any time in history, yet many smart, ambitious, contemporary women are finding themselves angry, dissatisfied, stressed out. Why are they dissatisfied? And what do they really want? These questions form the premise of this passionate, provocative, funny, searingly honest collection of original essays in which twenty-six women writers invite readers into their lives, minds, and bedrooms to talk about the choices they've made, what's working, and what's not.

Here are a few things people have said about me at the office: "You're unflappable." "Are you ever in a bad mood?" Here are things people -- okay, the members of my family -- have said about me at home: "Mommy is always grumpy." "Why are you so tense?" "You're too mean to live in this house and I want you to go back to work for the rest of your life!"

-- Kristin van Ogtrop

With wit and humor, in prose as poetic and powerful as it is blunt and dead-on, these intriguing women -- ranging in age from twenty-four to sixty-five, single and childless or married with children or four times divorced -- offer details of their lives that they've never publicly revealed.

I didn't want to be a bad mother I wanted to be my mother-safe, protective, rational, calm -- without giving up all my anger, because my anger fueled me. -- Elissa Schappell

The result is an intimate sharing of experience that will move, amuse, and enlighten. This is the sound of the collective voice of successful women today, in all their anger, grace, and glory.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"This book was born out of anger," begins Cathi Hanauer, which seems appropriate considering the book's title: The Bitch in the House. What could have been a collective gripe about the day-to-day routine of holding a family or relationship together is instead a witty, and sometimes bitchy, read. These postfeminist mothers, lovers, wives, and independent women candidly put forward their anger in the taffy-pull world of household responsibility. Jill Bialosky puts it most succinctly, "I had wanted to get married, but I realized now that I had never wanted to be a 'wife'." There are essays written by those who willfully, and often playfully, seek a life independent from domesticated routine, and others who have aged past the concerns of being a self-fulfilled and responsible mother. Author and poet Ellen Gilchrist, who is also a mother and a grandmother, sets this lasting tone of contentment, "Family and work. Family and work. I can let them be at war, with guilt as their nuclear weapon and mutually assured destruction as their aim, or I can let them nourish each other."

Not entirely angry, it is ultimately a satisfying read. There are no intended messages on how women can improve their relationships with their husbands, partners, and children. That is the beauty of the book. They have instead revealed modern motherhood, and solitude, as it is, and may have been all along. --Karin Rosman

From Publishers Weekly

In the spirit of Virginia Woolf, who wrote of killing the "Angel in the House," these 26 women mostly professional writers focus on the inner "bitch": the frustration, anger and rage that's never far from the surface of many women's lives. They sound off on the difficult decisions of living with lovers, marrying, staying single and having children. Those who haven't chosen the single life are almost always frustrated by their mates' incompetence or their toddlers' neediness. (They reserve special scorn for overly laid-back live-in lovers content to live off a hardworking woman's checkbook.) While a handful of entries touch other sources of anger being criticized for one's weight, simultaneously caring for ailing parents and a young family, coping with a husband who's out to win his baby daughter's loyalty most focus on the love vs. work problem. For many of these women, this means a struggle over the right to be a bitch and inflict unpleasantness on others for the sake of a higher goal (one's work) versus the feminine imperative to "make nice." While unbridled rage is terribly cathartic even in print it's the quieter moments that provide more food for thought. Daphne Merkin's observation that she's "more equipped to handle the risks of loneliness than those of intimacy" and thus better off divorced, or Nancy Wartik's thought that "some compromises might actually be healthy," will ring true for many readers. Others may find it comforting to know that even smart, articulate, successful women can have deeply unsettled inner lives.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (September 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066211662
• ISBN-13: 978-0066211664
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (91 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,458,409 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

146 of 154 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bracing and illuminating, September 21, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage (Paperback)

Anyone under 50 who doesn't relate to the issues raised in these essays -- work, marriage, children, and compromise -- is living in a bubble.

Don't be put off by the title -- or by the common misrepresentation (like by Katie Couric on the Today Show) that it's the whining of women who seemingly "have it all." The point is, you CAN'T have it all, and have to try to forge happiness anyway. Crack it open and you won't put it down.

My favorites include "Atilla the Honey I'm Home" about a woman who is ultra cool and competent at work and then comes home and takes out all her stress on her family. "How We Became Strangers" about the effect the arrival of a first child has on marital bliss. And "Crossing the Line in the Sand" about losing your temper with your kids.

The book is organized in rough age order of the contributors, so it starts with women in their twenties just on the cusp of What The Future Holds, and ends with a few in their (60s?) about the roads taken and not. In between you have a wide range of experiences -- fidelity and not, equal parenting and not, successful relationships and not, getting married or not, feeling good about work or not.

These aren't easy issues and the book confronts them head-on. The essayists don't provide solutions so much as comfort -- a community of like-minded souls who realize what we're all up against and are trying to make sense of it all.

68 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amen, Sisters!, October 14, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage (Paperback)

I realize this book was written by seemingly white, middle class Yankee women -- but it sure spoke to me, a black woman way down in the deep south.
Obviously, I didn't relate to all of these women -- some I thought were a bit triffling and way too self-absorbed.
But reading some of these stories was like reading my own journal, but more eloquently put, especially "Excuse me while I explode", and "How we became strangers".
I was comforted to know that I'm not alone in my daily struggles to be a good Mom, wife, friend, daughter and co-worker. Just that fact alone helps me to exhale and be grateful for all of my plessings.

76 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but annoying and unbalanced, October 1, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage (Paperback)

I found several of these essays quite interesting, but grouping them together as a "women speak out" book is misleading. I found it frustrating that the majority of women in the book were upper-middle class, educated and for some reason they all lived in New York City (not all, but many). I'm assuming (but could be wrong here) that they were mostly white. It got me thinking...why didn't the editors get an essay or two from a Hispanic working-class mom in California? Or a divorced woman in Detroit?

Also, I hate to say it, but a lot of these women come across as whiny. I know, I know. I'll get kicked out of the feminist club for saying it (and trust me, I've paid my dues), but there's a lot of delusion among these women. They seem to expect the men in their lives to behave...well...like women. And that just isn't realistic. There's also a lot of justifying of what in my opinion is questionable behavior. Personally, I found the essay by the woman who had a married man's baby really frustrating. Not because she kept the baby and went on with her life, but because she seemed to have no guilt or remorse about sleeping with a married man. It's as if the man's wife doesn't exist at all to her -- she's written off in one sentence (did she ever even find out her husband fathered another woman's child?).

There are some terrific pieces in here, and the writing is very strong, but overall it was a depressing disappointment.