Fascinating Womanhood by Helen B. AndelinMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Not many positive things to say about this book.
For one, I picked it up kind of expecting it to be about femininity in general. It turned out to be more of a marriage advice book, which is fine, but not really relevant to me. I was more interested in femininity in relation to family, friends, etc.
For another, I felt like the tone of the book just made the ideas seem unappealing, and in some cases, had the opposite of the intended effect. Like, being a housewife sounds pretty fun in a lot of ways. I enjoy cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children. I find domestic and caring tasks pretty fulfilling. If you wrote a book that was like “hey here’s a cool hip subversive idea … have you ever thought about … being a housewife?” I would be all over it. “You should feel bad for having a job” … not so much. Maybe this is just a fact about my psychology.
But I think my main objection is really that … okay, this is a marriage advice book that is anti-divorce and doesn’t really say anything about the kind of crucial step of picking a husband. So it ends up coming off as a collection of cheat codes, accompanied by testimonials from women along the lines of “my husband was unemployed/alcoholic/abusive/just kind of a dick, and I tried these cheat codes, and now he is super nice and randomly buys me jewelry!” And like I guess it’s interesting to know that if I find some random loser on the street and promise to never question his judgment and obey him in all things, he will be really nice to me and always remember my birthday. But I don’t actually feel any motivation to do that.
Here are some anecdotes from this book, just because they’re fun.
- A woman wanted her husband to join her religion, so she invited some missionaries over for dinner. This caused her husband to become so upset that he went to the bathroom, climbed out the window, and disappeared for three days (??). She promised to never mention religion again. This led him to secretly convert to said religion and surprise his wife by showing up to church one day (?).
- A woman was married to a man who smoked, which she insisted she do outside to avoid exposing her to secondhand smoke. After learning from FW that she should accept him as he is, she apologized and asked forgiveness. Her husband told her that he loved her for the first time in two years (??).
- A woman was married to a man who spent all the money he earned on himself and always said he wanted nothing left over for her when he died (??). After she started following the principles of FW, he paid off their mortgage and started saving money for her.
- A woman’s husband continually made comments to his bachelor friends about how marriage was a trap and they should avoid it. This made her upset, so she invoked the FW principle of “childlike anger,” stomping her foot and yelling at him. He apologized to her (his first apology in eight years of marriage(?)) and remembered her birthday for the first time a couple months later (?), even getting her a card. He is now a model husband, including staying by her side during an emergency C-section despite not being able to stand sickness.
Anyway, you get the point. There is a steelman version of this book about, like, sexual dimorphism and the role that power differentials play in many people’s psychology and the ways that social changes over the past several decades have fucked with that and the value of introspecting about one’s preferences w.r.t. all this. But I think to most smart women in 2018, the idea that you should reset the power balance in your relationship by unilaterally giving up your power is not going to seem that appealing.
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