About this title: A landmark in feminist literature, THE WOMEN'S ROOM is a biting social commentary of a world gone silently haywire. Written in the 1970s but with profound resonance today, this is a modern allegory that offers piercing insight into the social norms accepted blindly and revered so completely. 'Today's desperate housewives" eat your heart out! This is the original and still the best, a page-turner that makes you think. Essential reading' Kate Mosse 'They said this book would change lives - and it certainly changed mine' Jenni Murray 'Reading THE WOMEN'S ROOM was an intense and wonderful ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
"The writing is this book wasn't anything special and the story was a bit like a soap opera, but it had a great impact on me and I think it would on any one who read it, especially women. This is considered one of the quintessential books of the feminist movement and I can see why. It made me think and question how much things have actually changed since this book was published in 1977 and how these issues affect my own life. In all honesty, it was difficult to read because of these questions and the answers that came to me. Things haven't changed that much, although the changes made have been positive generally, and there is more pressure on women than ever. It's a book that has really stuck with me. If you read this book, I would really love to know what you think. It's worth discussing."
"A feminist classic, no doubt, and one that I really enjoyed for about 3/4 of the way through. The last 1/4 of the book I barely skimmed so it technically should go into my "tried but failed" pile, though that's usually where I consign books that I can't even get past page 20 of.
So, this wasn't like that, though I do think The Women's Room loses its thrust around halfway through. In following a character named "Mira" and the group of women who come in an out of her life (a mix of other housewives/mothers and, eventually, other women in the mid 60s who are trying to break into the academic and professional realms), the book expresses incredibly genuine sentiments about all aspects of female life in the mid-20th century; my one caveat to that would be that the black female experience is not unusually left out, as most feminists books didn't really have a place for minority female experiences until the early to mid '90s. Still, the book does such a good job of creating three dimensional women trapped in a place and time that I found it hard to get to sleep if I read it too close to bedtime.
And, to be honest, i really don't think it's one of those books that only intensely dedicated feminists can enjoy. French does a solid job of integrating the male experience in such a way that even the most heinous of male characters isn't 100% vilified, but rather seems just as sadly deprived of a full life as his female counterparts.
Even though I may not have made it to the last quarter of the book, I really feel like even only 50 pages of this novel is enough to take something away with you that's meaningful. It's worth picking up in between other books to challenge yourself and/or clear your head and make room for something frivolous again."
"When this book was current, late 1970's when I was just past college age, it seems every woman in my age group was carrying this book around. Who am I to say, but it most likely informed the early feminist thinking of many young women. Now that we all are solidly entrenched in middle age I though it might be interesting to read it and see how the philosophies and attitudes, worldviews, and conditions between the genders have progressed...or not. It's a novel and the characters are compelling and the accounts of the social mileau hold up pretty well, too."
"Other than the coincidence how "toilet booth" let me see our local kasilyas as a bifurcation-an answer to my homework, Marilyn French made a catchy start here; otherwise, I won't have checked out The Women's Room for two weeks. The main one she named Mira, a straight A's student, highly estimated by her teachers got married to Norm who's graded C's and found herself supporting him through medical school until she agreed to full-time domesticity when he earned his M.D. (half-way of a 686-page bk). Yes, she could've left Norm but she had to bear his children to be eventually suctioned into this "secret society" conceived of by French or else we wouldn't have met French's beautifully dressed "playdolls" that she paraded using reality as a backdrop. I was glad to once again meet so few of my friends or to have met people that I haven't or perhaps will never meet if at all. I was glad to read of the idiosyncrasies of Mira's friends as she rose up and down the economic strata. I just lost count remembering who to pair her fictional characters with who every now and then. Val, one of Mira's friends, shared her stand on Harvard (at that time the story was set), gays, love (and because I just borrowed The Women's Room I recorded myself (click here) reading an exerpt that I enjoyed with its "mockery and adoration" or communes, rape (near the denouement), men... The novel rippled back and forth in time. Marilyn shifted perspectives and at times conversed as to how her novel might have been written or what's going to happen next then it'd unfold after several pages like a TV soap. She would then ask her reader if she's a convincing misandrist. I swore at two or three of her dragging rationalizations and as if predicting the mind of her audience, she continued to recount. This one is definitely written by a woman with a gift of gab."
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