Customer Reviews

Women's Room (Virago Modern Classics)

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I'm not sure I could (or would want to) put aside the feminist message of this book. Even though I'm in my 20s and come from a different generation, I was able to empathize Mira's struggles of trying to be a good wife in the 50s and 60s, and then rebelling in the 70s to reclaim her identity and role. At the time this was published, these ideas were probably more revolutionary than they are today, but I still think they are just as important. There were many moments in this book that were happy, many more that were sad, and it was always touching. I recommend this book to many of my women friends of all ages, and always consider it to be one of the best books to read if you're frustrated with your life and need to think about going in a new direction.

Putting aside the anti-male aspects of the book (I didn't know it was an "important feminist work" when I started), I'd sooner describe it as an epic novel, a story of intelligent people encountering different stages, events, structures in their lives--perhaps a bit of a soap opera. The book went surprisingly quickly; the narrator's voice drew me in, and the plot stayed interesting throughout, since each section brought radical changes in Mira's life and cast of friends. It starts with her growing up in the 40's, getting married, having kids and becoming a (miserable) suburban housewife, but is punctuated with passages of the narrator philosophizing, and framed by a group of thoughtful, "modern" women sitting around in 1968, interrupting with "but how could you have lived like that?"--"well, my house wasn't so different really"--"it had its good points too"--"aren't you glad all our relationships are more equal than those?" [heh]. Plenty of reflection, along with close up individual perspectives. The high points glowed, parts forced me to put down the book for feeling sick or depressed, and there was no lack of wit and strong characters. A compelling story.

Then there's the recurring theme of how women keep getting screwed over. The author's got a point, and it's actually a little hard not to hate men while reading the book, but she takes it too far. Somehow despite characters being round and believable, men always turn out to be insensitive, to put it mildly, and women a classic "oppressed people". Real life is (I hope!) more fair. (These days, anyway. I'm also immeasurably grateful for the almost 50(!) years of societal change separating her birth and mine.)

The evolution of the group of grad student friends struck a particular chord with me, as a recent college graduate. People change unexpectedly, relationships change, friends come together and fall apart, and when you look back there's no real pattern or meaning. As she put it, "No, it's the little things that matter. But when you're dealing with a lot of insignificant lives, how do you put things together?" It's trite at parts, and with an axe to grind, yes, but this book's got life.

The story of Mira and her group of friends at two very different periods in the character's life is informative, especially from the standpoint of the 2000's. The first half of the novel dealt with Mira's life as a young suburban doctor's wife and mother of two young sons. It describes many of the women she truly bonds with and how women were definitely at the mercy of their husband's career choices, level of fidelity, even their spending habits. Lack of communication between the couples highlights these desperate housewives and their working husbands. The second half of the novel is of Mira, newly divorced, living on her own and pursuing a post-graduate degree at Harvard. From a fish-out-of-water she begins to form friendships with a diverse group of feminist women and their male admirers. Mira begins to find purpose intellectually, passionately and socially.
Women's Room is excellently written and although it is steeped in sterotypes; the miserable housewives and the hard line angry feminists, I still found it enjoyable at every level. In the end, had it not been for the feminist women of the 1960's/1970's we would not have the opportunities we have today. The choices and the fact that our worth fails to expire at age thirty is very apparent by reading this book. I highly recommend it.

French's work is a maddening, beautiful, horrific, and eloquent work of artistry that truthfully tells of women's lives. I recently read it at college (yes, I am Feminist, we'll get that out of the way) and this novel allowed me to find the words to connect the thoughts that had been floating in my own head for years. The point of this novel is not even in its compelling, wonderful plot, it is in the ideas expressed and the intelligence of French's work. I am certainly not a 1950's suburban wife with two children, yet I found pieces of my life in every one of the characters of "The Women's Room." If you can get past the insipid idea that French is claiming all men are oppressive, all women meek or radical, and relationships between the genders are doomed, you'll be a different person, emotionally and intellectually by the time you turn the final page. Read it slowly, savour the language, get angry, cry, laugh, become empowered, and find your own voice with the help of this remarkable novel.

Simply, this book changed my life completely. With the first page, I was curious and naive; with the last, empowered, excited, embittered. I have been unable to look at men, women, and relationships the same since. The author/protagonist's insight about the way in which women make the very words from mens' mouths into "golden nuggets" hit me like a mack truck. Why is what men have to say always revered so much more than a woman's insight or opinion? Why do the female peers in my classes dress their intellectual contributions with disclaimers such as, "well, this might not be right but...."? Because of this book, I refuse to mindlessly accept any long-standing institution for the sake of tradition. As a young woman, I gained tremendous insight into a decade of women to whom I had previously been unable to relate. I do acknowledge the extremes of gender representation in French's novel, but believe the melodrama and brutality of honest experience lends to its credibility as every woman's story--one which will continue to evolve into something far more beautiful.

The book The Women's Room by Marilyn French, is the most poingnant of all the "Women's Liberation" books written during the era of the 1970's in the U.S., when housewives were getting together in Consciousness Raising Groups and finding that they had all been brainwashed, so to speak. This book recounts the experience of one such young housewife and her struggle to reconcile the good things in her society with the bad effects of servitude, demeaning position and abuse placed upon her (and all her women friends) by the men of her age.

This book was so real that when I began to read it in the 70's, I could not get beyond a certain point -- it was too real to me -- it was telling my life and I could not bear to read it, it was so painful. Now I can look back (after having experienced my own "liberation") with some objectivity, the objectivity that going through it and experiencing the process has given me.

I read it now with a wonder that French was so accurate. She is telling my story.

I am going to use this book for one of the required readings for my students, so they will know what others have gone through to reach this point in history.

I am a very fortunate human being. I'm a 32 year old woman engineer. My parents are from India - and they always encouraged me towards the maths and sciences. Now - I am in a happy marriage to a man 4 years my junior, and we enjoy a sense of equality. I also get that same sense of equality (equal pay, opportunity) in the workplace. And yet even for someone as young as I, this book has such powerful meaning. I think it is a must read for all women - especially those of us who were raised during a time where it was easy to feel 'equal' and easy to scornfully cast disparaging remarks at 'those feminists'. Many of my contemporaries make such comments, and scornfully respond to my observations as being outdated "feminist claptrap". We need to keep the memory of the way things were, in order to prevent them from ever getting that way again. We need to remember, and honor our foremothers, and those who continue the 'fight'. If we fail to do these things, it is easy to conceive of a future where we fall back into the old cycles of opression.

When my (female) friend sent this to me I was initially highly skeptical, and in fact the first time I picked it up I had to put it down after about ten pages because I couldn't get into it. However, I found that once I got into the story a little bit more I was sucked in and I just read and read. This was definately one of the most thought proviking novels I have ever read, and while it is very dense and thus not for the light reader, if you can make it forty pages in you'll be hooked. I can't promise it will change your life, but it may change your perspective on your mother, her mother, and the entire feminist revolution.

Having grown up in the seventies and eighties, my life has been, in many ways, vastly different than Mira Ward's, and that of her early friends. However, I still found myself in Marilyn French's characters, sometimes more than any woman would want to. While this novel is at times certainly radical in terms of a feminist perspective, it remains frighteningly real for many women of the nineties. The situations are different, the causes not immediately related, but nonetheless still somewhat familiar in a disturbing way. For any woman who has felt the outrage at being a second-class citizen, whether it be by birth or by circumstance, this is a novel that provides validation without compromise. French does her fair share of male bashing, but for a novel written in the era that it was, it is somewhat understandable, if not expected. For those not yet accustomed to such forthright honesty, have some patience, for the message is valid even if the delivery is difficult. A! ! must-read for every woman who has had the guts to call herself a feminist. Marilyn French personified "GIRL POWER" before it was cool.

This novel really opened my eyes. It was a mammoth and challenging read in the sense that it contained over 600 pages of unhappy marriages, unhappy lives, due to people who married out of tradition rather than love. Even the word love itself had a different meaning in this setting. Love between a man and woman apparently had nothing to do with respect or friendship. The relationships were degrading, unequal, unfair.

I had to keep reminding myself that this was published in 1977, because frankly (I know this may sound naive), I was shocked at the illustration of Mira's childhood/college years/married years, as well as those of her contemporaries. I was moved by her descriptions of the ignorant and sexist attitudes of the middle class, of men and how they viewed not only women at large, but even their own mothers, wives, and daughters. One of the issues I had while reading this book was dealing with the fact that my own experience was nothing like this, nor was my mother's, nor was even her mother's.

In any case, reading this made me feel so lucky to be a part of the present generation. It answered a lot of questions as to how the women's movement was born and evolved. However, it's so sad because you see this group of women: Mira, Val, Kyla, Clarissa, (not Iso--she knew she was different and therefore never expected to have a normal mainstream life, so she probably came out the least unscathed!), these women fought and clawed their way to a free independent life, only to find themselves hardened, wounded, bitter and in some cases, alone...because although they successfully changed their own lives for the better, society wasn't ready to accept this change in women, and wouldn't for another decade at least.

Of course this is a novel about the women's movement, so I guess it's no surprise that every single man in this book is completely one-dimensional and shallow (with perhaps the exception of Mira's sons and Chris's friend Bart). I have to assume that this was the writer's experience even though it seemed extreme, unfair, and inaccurate. Of course, it wasn't hard to hate men who basically believed that raping his wife was his right, and that lesbianism was not to be taken seriously, or that women who want to do something other than take care of the home and raise kids were selfish, ridiculous or even crazy. The author was a master at creating this feeling.

I think that Marilyn French also illustrates pretty clearly, that we all ultimately make our choices, and live with them. However, society plays such a huge role in how we decide. Society brainwashes from childbirth how one should live his/her life, and perhaps we need to think for ourselves a little more. It's our choice, do we do what society expects us to do? Or do we decide for ourselves, and deal with society's "raised eyebrows?" What's it worth?

The narration was great. I like the fact that the entire experience was told in the third person, causing the reader to wonder, "Who is this telling the story? Who is this speaking?" To some it's obvious. To me, I didn't figure it out until the end. Oh well! Either way, I think it was necessary for the story to be told in third person, to maintain that sense of honest objectivity.

Mira was a wonderful character: On a voyage of self-exploration, meeting all sorts of people who influenced her and taught her one aspect of life or another. Another strong character of course was Val, the ultimate martyr. She was almost too much to handle, but in a way her excessiveness forced people to see the corruption in the world. She had her classic flaws, but she was the true passionate voice of women, speaking only the truth, never accepting any less.

There's a LOT of philosophical discussions throughout the book (what else would a bunch of brandy-drinking Harvard grad students talk about in the 60s/70s?!) The writing could easily provoke feelings of exasperation at Val's hatred, for example, her passionate disdain at the social "norms." In addition, all the women, Mira, Kyla, Lily, Adele's blind acceptance of their religion, their parents' traditions, their husbands' behaviors, their passivity--is enough to appaul even the most understanding reader. But let's face it, I cared enough about these characters to keep trudging through the muck, and in the end, I'd say that this novel was profound. In 1977, it must've had a gigantic effect on our culture.