Customer Reviews

Women and the Common Life: Love, Marriage, and Feminism

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Lasch chronically falls victim to those who fail to grasp the radical nature of his critique. He approached social issues from a perspective which quickly eludes the typical intellectual constraints of right and left. WOMEN AND THE COMMON LIFE may well become the largest victim to the casual reads to which his work is so often submitted.

Despite all the talk about the dynamic nature of the patriarchy and renaissance drama, the main gripe of WOMEN is that feminism sold its soul for a mess of pottage. Primarily through comparison of Friedan's FEMININE MYSTIQUE and Goodman's GROWING UP ABSURD, Lasch reveals that feminism was uniquely poised to furnish a broad assault on the predatory capitalism, cheap consumerism and therapeutic stupor that has descended over the American scene. Instead, feminists all too frequently seek only to alter the rules so women too can gain entry into the careerist trap.

One senses that Lasch may have invested intellectually in feminism, hoping it would be the crucible for a revivified Jeffersonian agrarianism, but was subsequently let down. Perhaps because of this, feminism suffers the same excoriation as most other stripes of liberalism throughout Lasch's work. In any event, he has feminists dead to rights when he points out that a truly feminist, truly radical critique of American civilization would have sought to undermine, for the good of women, men and children, the gluttonous and heedless consumerism which so characterizes it. Far from missing the critical insights of feminism, Lasch eloquently argues that it is the feminists, particularly Friedan, who have forgotten their own insights, content to sacrifice their integrity on the altar of materialist fixation. In this tome, Lasch's reputation for erudition remains secure, and even tumesces in the ingenuity of its application through critical intelligence, and, notably, in a subtlety of argument not always present in previous work.

This book is crucial reading to those who find themselves inexorably compelled by feminist ideals, but who find it impossible to discover those ideals inhabiting any portion of the contemporary feminist landscape.

Christopher Lasch was a magnificent cultural commentator who I, and many others far brighter than me, refer to as the American Orwell. He had a scholars eye for inconsistency and a serious regard for the truth--so much so that it continually put him at odds with the political left of which he was a part. Frankly, I saw a couple of the reviews below and laughed out loud as this work is not something one would expect your average feminist to have ever heard of let alone view as a threat to their hegemony. It's too sober and erudite for them to even process so I'm surprised that any members of the womyn's studies crowd found their way to this link in the first place. Women and the Common Life is a posthumous collection of essays which were mostly previously published in places like New Republic, Commonweal, and The New York Review of Books. If the reader is even remotely familiar with these publications, he or she will know that they would not be the places in which scathing assaults on feminism can be found. Part history, part philosophy, and part literary review, Women and the Common Life fixes Lasch's high-brow upon marriage, attraction, and the economic relations between the sexes; although, my favorite chapter was the only one in which he came close to giving out a thrashing, and that was in his dissection of professor, and political operator, Carol Gilligan. Her absurd book, In a Different Voice, unwittingly demeaned women under the pretense of saying that they could not think in the same manner as men because they think differently. Lash skillfully, and subtlety refutes the prevailing nonsense of our day, and it is unfortunate that so few will be exposed to this final work.

Sorry feminism failed, and Lasch tells some of the reasons why. Feminism, which was supposed to be critical of "patriarchical" values, merely turns out that women want to be men, and when given men's power, just act like men. Carly Fiorina, the CEO of HP is a good example. She fought the male heirs of HP for control over HP, and a proxy fight for a merger with Compaq. And the result? Another pointless corporate merger, massive layoffs in a family oriented company, falling stock prices, and Ms. Fiorina walking out with MILLIONS for basically being a failure. The culture, like HP, would have been way better off to stay with it's "patriarchical" values, then the <snicker> feminism of Carly Fiorina and her ilk. The previous women who posted didn't read the book, nor do they even understand what Lasch was talking about. Mere men-haters, like that don't offer much to other women, or our society.

I am a little shocked that Lasch is given so much credit for his "learning" when he leaves out so much of the glories of contemporary feminist discourse. He is fairly accurate on the past oppression of women, but he seems to miss the continuity into our own time. I suppose, when one considers the fact that he is a white male who uses the languages of patriarchy, that this is not such a bad effort, but it really only demonstrates the huge gap between male writing about the place of feminism in society, and the heroic efforts of feminists to make a place in society for women.

I just can't see how anyone could mistake this for an 'important' book. While incredibly courageous women like Jane Marcus and Mary Daly have demonstrated the patriarchal agenda of hatred which threatens the freedom of all Women, white male authors such as this one crazily accuse women of material greed! So while women don't earn as much money as males, it is a sign of big bad feminism that women wish to be paid for their efforts??? This is a worthless book by a priviledged white male writer, an enemy of women and thus an enemy of minorities.