THE WIFE

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 21^st 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 20^th 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.