Amazon.com Review
We
have come a long way, baby. When a group of women were asked what the ideal relationship was,
none of them mentioned traditional marriage. Hmmm. Far from a collection of woeful tales of singledom,
The Improvised Woman thoroughly debunks the traditional perception of lonely single women. Author Marcelle Clements takes a journalistic view of her interviewees, who range in age from their 20s to their 90s, and her objectiveness is refreshingly telling. Says one woman about her lover, "I would never marry him. I think any woman who reaches a mature age would be foolish to. Why should I give up my independence? Why should I give up my privacy?"
The majority of women that Clements talked to certainly aren't afraid of single motherhood ("it's much easier to raise children by yourself than to handle children and be a wife at the same time"). Their lives are full of passion--but passion for anything but men. Most of the divorced and widowed women profiled in the book are much more self-actualized and content with their lives than they were when they were married. A frequent refrain heard from these women is that "the ones who aren't hopeless are married," and that it's better to be alone than to feel lonely while maintaining empty relationships, which one woman described as "unsatisfying limbos."
This hefty, illuminating book will not only make for empowering reading for single women, but it could also be a kick in the pants for those men who claim that women are inscrutable. The beliefs and self-perceptions of the women profiled in this book--on subjects such as sex, work, romance, and family--are powerful testimonies about what it means to be female at the turn of the century. Clements has compiled a lively chunk of sociological history here. --Erica Jorgensen
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
What could have shed light on changes in the lives of post-Cosmo girls instead gets mired down by a rather disjointed writing style. When Clements first began researching this book in the early 1990s, there were 38 million single women. Now there are nearly 43 million, making single womanhood one of the most significant social trends as America approaches the millennium. Its a trend that if better understood could dramatically impact our politics, economy, and, most importantly, our view of the sexes. Unfortunately, essayist and novelist Clements (The Dog Is Us, 1985; Rock Me, 1989) doesn't shed as much light on this subject as it deserves. True, Clements, herself a single mother, does interview scads of women on everything from their feelings on sex and creating a home for themselves to their fears of dying alone and their (possible) regrets about not having children. Her method of presenting her information, however, is off-putting and confusing at times. Shes at her best in the beginning of each chapter, where she puts forth her basic hypotheses in essay form. It's the following subsections where Clements's work falls apart, as she quotes from various women, using little descriptions that are too cute or, worse, make no sense at all. For example, Abigail, a 37-year-old architect, ``is an emotional see-saw adept.'' Evelyn B.'s introduction states: ``Despite the fact that she is a respected mathematician, Evelyn once had all the attributes needed to be a Class-A wife.'' This is then followed by Evelyn's short comment on how her friends' husbands hit on her after she got divorced. Huh? Though this work is generally frustrating to read, Clements's best work deals fruitfully with evolving new family patterns and her tracing of various historical contexts in which single women have found themselves. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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by E. Kay Trimberger
