Books like Composing a Life

Wow. I am really surprised by this book. I suppose the kindest thing to say is that it was written by a woman of a certain generation, and I feel that a lot of the compromises she accepts as "progress" are (happily) outdated thinking today. Her suggestions seem to point toward submission, I found. The women she discusses are all highly educated and ambitious, but time after time, they deal with so much sexism at work (and at home) that she suggests it's better to quitely withdraw and pursue your passion in a quiet corner than insist on center stage, where you'll inevitably be pushed off anyway. Ugh. And the relationships--gah! She talks about "balance" but somehow all the women in the book end up dropping their own interests and careers to support the men in their lives; the men are seen as remote geniuses and women are seen as wry, rueful handmaidens. I say that ANYONE who has read this book has GOT to read Marilyn French's "The Women's Room". (I have to say I was also surprised by the number of four- and five-star reviews this book got from other readers, especially younger women who say things like "should be read by all twentysomethings!" Please.)I underlined a lot of passages in this book but as the chapters went by, it was angry underlining, not engaged underlining. I circled three chapter titles in the front of the book and wrote "depressing, sexist, classist" in the margin. The women she uses as her "case studies" are all ridiculously well-educated and for the most part, quite wealthy; I just can't relate to the life of, say, a university president. Sorry, but I'm pretty sure we don't have the same problems, whether we're both women or not. Because Bateson deals solely with this class of people, she sometimes seems bizarrely out of touch with reality. For example, one of the "case studies", her friend Alice, begins an affair with a married man. They start a company together, and buy a mansion in the suburbs of Boston. SHOCKINGLY, he somehow forgets to divorce his wife, Jean, in the midst of all this, and when he suddenly drops dead, Jean legally gets the mansion and a huge share of the company. Bateson actually puzzles over why Jean just wasn't more open and tolerant of Alice! Both Alice and Bateson are "disturbed", they say, by Jean's "hostilitiy" and "hatred"; Jean was "uncool", says Alice. Well, geez! And where is the man's role in all of this? Doesn't he bear some contempt for not taking care of his own paperwork? Bateson acts as if he's, you know, just one of those eccentric men who can't be troubled by silly things like divorce papers or wills. He's happy to have Alice help shape his company, but he can't possibly be bothered to make sure she gets credit for all her work. Of course I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for Alice, either; she's the one who put up with it all. But Bateson lays the blame at JEAN'S feet because she just wasn't, you know, open enough. Give me a break. Bateson says some interesting things about shaping a life as a member of a group that has been traditionally silenced/marginalized/trivialized, but can't quite seem to turn the lens on herself (or her friends); she describes a time in another friend's life where the husband went off to the American West to continue his research while she stayed behind to tend to a series of illnesses their children suffer over the course of several years. Bateson insists women have the right to a life of their own, a career of their own, passions of their own, but never seems to think at some point that, say, the husband could stay home and take care of the family while the wife continues her research. It's as if that idea is so completely out of the realm of possibility that it's not worth considering. Bateson even talks with some affection about how her "poor husband" was "left to fend for himself" when she was away on business--because you know those silly men, they can't cook themselves dinner once in a while! Tee hee, it's lucky he didn't burn their Cambridge home down to the ground while trying in his masculine, fumbling way to do something as feminine, and therefore alien, as make some freaking soup for himself. When he's away on business, she doesn't "fend for herself", because the home is the other half of a woman's life, and therefore, a completely familiar environment whose routines are intrinsically understood by women. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.Anyway. As I said, this book was very disappointing to me. I mentioned "The Women's Room" earlier and I think it would be the perfect companion piece to this book. French, in a way, pursues Bateson's line of thinking to its end. Bateson has these strange, gauzy filters where I French is completely clear-eyed. Some may find French's conclusions depressing, but I find her refreshing--it's Bateson's conclusions, to me, that are really depressing. And the fact that twenty- and thirty-somethings find Bateson relevant to their lives is also kind of depressing. I guess I'm just cranky in my old age.