The Women's Room in What's the Name of That Book???

Mar 12, 2016 El rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-centurylit-late, cultural-studies-and-other, anarchism-revolutions, hear-me-roar-and-gender, library-borrow

Occasionally I hear a misinformed person who says something along the lines of "Feminism is no longer needed in our society" and a piece of me dies each time I hear it. I read quite a bit, and it's when I read things like French's 1977 novel The Women's Room that makes me realize just how important feminism and the Women's Movement has been in America. Because it's not so much that I can read this book and say "Wow, it's so good this shit doesn't happen anymore" - it's because I can read this bo Occasionally I hear a misinformed person who says something along the lines of "Feminism is no longer needed in our society" and a piece of me dies each time I hear it. I read quite a bit, and it's when I read things like French's 1977 novel The Women's Room that makes me realize just how important feminism and the Women's Movement has been in America. Because it's not so much that I can read this book and say "Wow, it's so good this shit doesn't happen anymore" - it's because I can read this book and say "Wow, it's still horribly relevant today."

I can pick up this book that was published a year before I was born and read this story that starts in the 1950s and I can still relate to the experiences the women experience - if not directly in a personal sense, then because I know people who match the experiences in the book. That's messed up, right? Because it's 2016 and people want to think things are so much better than they used to me. This isn't to say things haven't been improved, but when we're still discussing a political candidate's stance on women's reproductive rights, then shit hasn't changed nearly as much as we like to pretend it has.

The narrator is possibly French herself, though it's hard to say. The narrator has a sort of omniscient presence throughout the story - she talks about herself as part of the "we" (as in the group of women), and then also talks about instances in individual women's lives that she could not have been privy to, so it's understood then she is retelling what her friend told her. I found this an interesting narration technique because it requires the reader to look at the story through their own eyes. But I also found it frustrating because I wanted to know about the narrator herself - we learned so much about the main character, Mira, throughout the years, and about the other women in the group, but the narrator is sort of a mystery because she doesn't talk about herself as an individual outside of the group. Again, I feel this was probably French's way of allowing the reader to have a position in the story, so each reader brings their own experiences to the table, but I'm not entirely certain it was completely successful.

This is not a short book, and it feels longer as one reads because there is so much time and ground covered here. Beginning in the 50s and ending some time in the 70s, the narrator and Mira encounter so many different people and opportunities. There are not a lot of moments of brightness or hope here, and that can be tedious to read. But that was also French's point - there's a lot of darkness and despair in the world, and more so for those who are a minority as there's also a level of distrust involved. Mira struggles to find her tribe, so to speak, and she finds it, and in that sense it's where this story is particularly interesting to me.

Women are constantly labeled as being catty, or manipulative, or untrustworthy, especially towards one another. We are frequently tearing each other down when we should be building each other up. Mira experiences a little of all of this, participates accordingly on occasion, and grows and evolves, which is required of every woman, even today. Her first strong female relationships are in connection to their husbands and children, so the women have very few of their own personalities outside of their marriages. They have discussions that revolve around their husbands and children. They come to realize in their own ways on their own time how detrimental that is to their own growth, and they each react differently to this realization.

As time progresses, Mira grows and meets new people in each new stage in her life. They help her learn the problems with a patriarchal society, something she has probably always had within her, but never had the confidence to evaluate on her own. It's encouraging to see the different female relationships over time grow from something rather superficial to deeper, warmer experiences.

These relationships are still not perfect, but truthfully there is never any perfect relationship. But they are still strong women and their ties are strong, and that is something I found especially appealing.

There are quite a lot of points that I'd like to make about this book, but I failed to write this review at the time of finishing it, and a lot of my original points are now missing in the shit-hole that is my memory. It's a powerful book, and I'm glad to have read it. It's frustrating that the men-folk in this book were one-dimensional in comparison to the women, but I understand that was probably French's intention as well - here finally was a novel that showcased women in their habitat, and not just women the way men view them. After a long history of novels involving women and their relationships to men, it was refreshing to read a novel about women first and foremost.

It's a shame that so much of this novel is still relevant, and that many of the experiences these women have are experiences so many women still experience now in 2016. I would love to see a change. I feel French's novel was a large step in the right direction, but then... I'm not sure what happened. It doesn't seem that this book is popular amongst readers anymore, and I think that's a shame. ...more

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Mar 11, 2008 Holly rated it liked it

Shelves: general-fiction

I thought this book was amazing and eye-opening when I read it in high school (college?) Young and idealistic and raised ina conservative home and all that.

Now it just smacks of a brand and era of feminism that I can't relate to anymore. ...more

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Jun 21, 2007 HeavyReader rated it really liked it

Shelves: feminist, fiction

This is basically the fiction version of The Feminist Mystique.

I believe I read The Feminist Mystique first, then picked up this book. I enjoyed the way the fiction reinforced the nonfiction I had recently read.

I remember reading this book at the very end of a semester in college. Finals were over, all my belongings were packed, and I was waiting for my parents to pick me up and bring me back to their house the next day. I lay in my bed in my barren dorm room, my roommate already gone, and read ...more

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Aug 15, 2007 Rosemarie Sugatan rated it really liked it

this is the first book by marilyn french i ever read. boy, was it long, but i was mesmerized by her feminist ideas. the whole story drew me in and i couldn't let go. this was also probably controversial in its time. ...more

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Jun 03, 2011 Ray rated it really liked it

Second wave!

The Women's Room is a powerful exploration of the time just before and after the advent of second-wave feminism. The part of the book that is spent "before" focuses on a group of housewives in suburban New York. Each woman lives in a world controlled and defined by their husbands.

The story then transitions to the impact of the sexual and political revolution of the 1960s and results in a lot of changes to many of the character's lives especially the main character Mira.

The prose was ...more

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