Author: Meg Wolitzer
Year: 2015 (2003)
Publisher: Wahlström & Widstrand
Language: Swedish (translator Peter Samuelsson)
“It is a
fundamental truth that man is incapable of remaining permanently on the
heights, of continuing to admire anything”, Sören Kierkegaard says in his critique
of Baroness Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd’s novel “Two Ages”, in which he for a moment
veers into the burdensome task of exploring the forces that move collective human
resentment. Kierkegaard observes that in all eras and ages, people have made
fun of their superiors. Villagers of patricians, commoners of the nobility,
students of professors, women of men. But more than that, what begins as true
and genuine admiration or even adoration, must inevitably turn to scepticism
and many a time even scorn. When this occurs, the time spent admiring a figure
that the person now despises, to that person may appear to be squandered. At
this point, embarrassment, bitterness, and hatred enter the scene and vengeance
is only a small step away.
Meg
Wolitzer’s most famous novel “Hustrun” (“The Wife”) can by all means be read
from this perspective. At least ostensibly so which no doubt is the author’s
intention. In the very first sentence, we meet a wife who has had enough. Joan
Castleman is the spouse of a celebrated novelist, Joe, who is on his way to
Helsinki to attend an award ceremony in which he is to collect a prestigious
literary prize. Joan, the narrator of the story, accompanies him. And right
there, in Finnair’s lavish first class-section 30,000 feet above the ground, she
decides that it is time to leave Joe.
The rest of
the novel is a string of flashbacks where Joan reminisces about her and Joe’s
life together interspersed with episodes connected with the ongoing procedures
in Finland. Jane recounts how Joe and she met, how she felt about him, how he
treated her, how their children grew up, how she gave up a promising writing
career to become a homemaker and to support Joe’s writing ambitions. This is a
conventional chain of events which is all too well-known to us and Wolitzer
carefully chisels the understructure for the woman’s bitterness, regret, and
chagrin to tick every box of the 21st century reader’s expectation
from a domineering man and his submissive but unsatisfied better half. Young Joan’s
infatuation with a handsome and sensitive literature teacher in college, her
sacrifices, and final disenchantment are easily mapped against Kierkegaard’s
observations to say nothing of the millions of female fates in the 20th
century.
And that would
have been all, if it weren’t for a delightful twist in the end.
Although
many readers will no doubt read “Hustrun” as a book about female emancipation
and the revolt against the patriarchy, which I have reason to believe may have
been Meg Wolitzer’s intention, it is difficult to shake the impression that first
and foremost, the book is about resentment and regret. The bitterness brewing
inside Joan, for reasons that are gradually revealed as the story unfolds, threatens
to consume her, and her choice of actions resemble revenge more than escape or
liberation. Joan seems to project her bitterness over her own choices and her
anger with herself onto the man to whom she dedicated her life to a point where
her emancipation becomes less about her and more about him. Even in her moment
of revolt, Joe remains the focal point of her attention. That makes Joan weak
and vindictive instead of strong and victorious.
Also,
Wolitzer’s characterisation of women in general throughout the novel are all
but feministic. For example, I was disgusted by how she made an over-sexualised
caricature of the flight attendant in the early chapters of the novel.
“Women in
uniforms carried baskets to and fro in the aisles, like a sexualised army of little
red riding hoods.
- Would you like a biscuit, Mr Castleman?, asked a brunette while leaning over
him with pliers in her hand and when her boobs slid forth a bit and then back
again, I could see the ancient machinery of excitement kickstart within him
like an automatic pencil sharpener.”*
“Even the brunette,
who had seemed so seductive to Joe only a while ago, now looked like a tired
hooker who can’t wait to get off her shift.”*
What kind
of feminist writes like that about a predominantly female yet highly qualified profession?
If “Hustrun”
is supposed to be a feministic piece of literature, in my view, it mostly
misses the mark. However, there are one or two tidbits of certain interest. One
of them is the character Elaine Mozell, a female writer whom Joe introduces to
Joan while she is his student at college. Elaine has attracted a modest amount
of attention for her writing and although she is considered a genius among
literary scholars, the publishers hesitate to market her books. She confides in
Joan during a cocktail party at the college and opens her eyes to the truth
about being a woman and a writer in patriarchal America. Years later, when Joan thinks back to this encounter, she realises that Elaine Mozell has disappeared
from the literary scene without leaving much of a trace. Together with Joan’s
later decision to give up her own writing career in favour of Joe’s, this is a
testimony to the talent lost to the world, sacrificed on the altar of gender
roles.
The exiguous
literary value of “Hustrun” offers little of aesthetical substance or poetic
import. The pace, however, is mostly moderate without ever becoming tedious or
lengthy and the chronological jumps are easy to follow. Despite some of its deficiencies,
the final twist is well presented and makes the whole story worthwhile. May it
serve as a warning to all who believe that their life choices are governed by
inescapable fate and whose inner pain risks turning outward into rancour and
revenge. And may you, dear reader, never lose the ability to experience the
thrill of childlike admiration.
*My own
translations from the Swedish copy for illustration purposes only, and not
necessarily identical to the English original.
