I was assigned to read TheWomen’s Room about five years ago in a Gender, Politics, and Law class. Istarted reading it and enjoyed it, but I never finished it. It was always muchharder for me to read a book because I was being assigned to read it, not justreading it because I wanted to. Over the last five years I’ve prettyconsistently been trying to read it all, and this summer I finally accomplishedit! The book itself is pretty heavy and dense, and even though the languageisn’t hard to understand, there are so many concepts that hit close to homethat it takes a while to work through it all. The parts I am going to highlightas the ones that stuck out to me the most are mainly towards the very beginningof the book. I think that is because the book starts out with her as a child,and then details some of her experiences in college and as a young woman. Iidentify with that part of her life the most because that’s where I’m at. Therest of the book is definitely thought provoking and made me think of otherwomen in my life – my mom, sister, grandma, older friends, etc. But for mepersonally, this is where The Women’s Room really hit home….
“She saw her choiceclearly as being between sex and independence, and she was paralyzed by that.Since she always risked pregnancy, which meant dependence, a sexual woman livedwith Damocles’ sword always over her head. Sex meant surrender to the male. IfMira wanted the independent life, she would have to give up being sexual. Thesituation was a terrible incarnation of her masochistic fantasies. Women wereindeed victims by nature.”
This part really stuck out to me because I’ve never thoughtabout sex in this capacity. In Mira’s situation, she is dating a guy namedLanny whom she will not have sex with. In the paragraphs before the abovequote, Lanny tells Mira that because of her he was forced to resort to datinganother girl described as “the campus prostitute.” Mira’s reasoning for nothaving sex with him is that she was too scared of sex to risk it with himwithout having a sense that he would be there for her. So that’s the capacityin which Mira sees sex and independence as being mutually exclusive: sex is a riskthat she will not take if it’s not with someone she can trust. That makesperfect sense to me. A little later in the book, Mira talks about herrelationship with her husband Norm after she finds out she’s pregnant:
“She thought she hadescaped, but all she had done was to let the enemy into her house, let him intoher body, he was growing there now. He thought in the same way they did; he,like them, believed he had innate rights over her because he was male and shewas female; he, like them, believed in things they called virginity and purity,or corruption and whoredom, in women.”
In the situation with Lanny, Mira was scared of dependenceon him if she got pregnant. Even if Lanny had stuck around if she got pregnant,she wouldn’t just be dependent on him, she would be dependent on others to helpget them through it. I wonder if Lanny thought about it that way, if he had anyfear of what would happen if he got Mira pregnant. Maybe because it didn’tphysically affect his own body he didn’t have to think about it. In Mira’srelationship with Ben at the end of the book, he tells her he wants to have achild, which is not really what she wants: “Thechild would still be hers, although he was the one who wanted it.” Itdoesn’t seem to matter to her who the man was: whether it was a boy shecasually dated in college, her husband, or a man whom she deeply loved. Herthoughts on pregnancy and dependence, and also the lack of independence, seemto always be with her.
I’m not completely sure what I think about this. In all ofthose relationships, Mira seemed to lack a sense of partnership. Her relationshipwith Ben was the closest to that, but it was still very much about what hewanted. What he wanted was a child, which Mira knew would mainly be herresponsibility. In many ways she had passed that point in her life, as a 39-year-oldwoman who already had two children. Initially I was a little bummed (spoileralert!) when Ben left without Mira and they never saw each other again.However, if Ben wanted kids and Mira did not, that’s definitely a deal breaker.Ben did assume that Mira would want to have kids, just like he assumed that shewould pick up and leave her life in order to go to Lianu with him. She respondsreally passionately to that. Perhaps the main reason for that is she thoughtBen was different; she didn’t think he was like all the other men in her lifethat had tried to control her. Then in some ways she blames herself for thathappening: “She felt smaller than he, sheflattered him, sincerely, because she found him more important, larger, betterthan herself. That was what he had been led to expect.” She is justifyinghim thinking that his plans are more important than hers by blaming it onherself. Why did she find him more important than she found herself?
When I think about having children, I think of it as anexciting time for my husband and me. I’ve never connected pregnancy withsurrendering myself to a man, or to just letting go of my dreams and goals.Maybe that’s because I’ve assumed the man I would want to have children withwould be my partner, that as much as possible we would be equally responsiblefor our children. Why did Mira not have that expectation? I’m not willing tosay it was just because of the generation she grew up in, because I thinkthat’s crap. Was it her upbringing? Was it just chance that the men she was inrelationships with were not true partners? I don’t think so; it seems to bemore widespread than that. Maybe I have unrealistic expectations, but I don’tthink that’s the case either. Perhaps Mira had internalized through herupbringing, her experiences, and what she heard from other women that she waslargely responsible for raising children on her own. And perhaps some of thatwas the generation. But how much of that is present in our time now? How manywomen are expected to be the ones who take care of the kids, becoming dependenton their husbands? What’s really missing here is a sense of interdependence.Why are the men not dependent on the women? And it seems like even though theyare dependent on the women in some ways, those ways don’t seem important, mainlybecause the women seem interchangeable to them. They are dependant on the womenfor taking care of the kids and household duties, but beyond that there’s noconcern over who the women actually are, their dreams, their thoughts… Thusmaking them interchangeable.
Hmmmmm. What do you guys or gals think?
