Our Treacherous Hearts [Paperback]

Rosalind Coward (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 28, 1993

So many things appear to have changed for women. In theory there's equal pay and opportunity, working mothers are no longer stigmatized, there's even been a woman prime minister. Yet in many deep and fundamental ways, little has altered. It is still women who take care of dependents, and who abandon or downgrade their careers to do so. Women still give over privilege and power to their male partners, and are happy - at least in the first instance - to make endless sacrifices for their children. Are women just making the best of a bad job? Did feminism underestimate women's satisfaction with the traditional roles, especially mothering? Or is it evidence of a deeper complicity in women, a collusion which means they don't really want to break with traditional roles? This book looks at women's collusion with what feminists call male oppression. Do the pleasure and joys that bind women to the home and family outweigh the anxieties and fears that drive them to lose their identities in their men and their children. The book is based on extensive interviews with women who discuss their feelings about men, children and work, allowing the author to explore the downside of women's investment in the family, the envy and competition which can erupt within the happy home, and the guilt, anxiety and frustration of women's daily lives.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Women will remain exploited until they stop denying the bitter truth of their "inferior" positions and stop complying with their male exploiters, insists Coward, a British broadcaster, in this penetrating and wide-ranging analysis-cum-manifesto. She searches for the female feelings that, she believes, often go unacknowledged: the tendency to idealize men, to be manipulative, to play the victim, to enjoy the attention conferred by pregnancy and motherhood, and to collude in the notion that a woman is only as good as her own well-toned body. And though the people she interviews are British, Coward, clearly, is not speaking only about her country; in fact, she includes cogent opinions from feminist writers on both sides of the Atlantic. And her case that women are, in some respects, worse off now than before--languishing in guilt and servitude to children, doing double duty at home and work--is persuasive. Coward's points are, in general, well taken.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Faber Paperbacks (June 28, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571168108
• ISBN-13: 978-0571168101
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,880,269 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mandela: The Authorized Portrait was created by a team of award-winning writers, photographers, and researchers in collaboration with Mandela's closest living comrades from Robben Island, Mac Maharaj and Ahmed Kathrada. Among the narrative contributors are biographer Mike Nichol and three interviewers personally selected by Nelson Mandela: Ros Coward, Professor Tim Couzens, and Amina Frense.