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The Bitch in the House by Cathi Hanauer This is what I love about women. And also sometimes hate about being a woman.  These essays are written by angry women. Self-proclaimed bitches. And they have a lot to be angry about. Conflicting desires, double standards, oppressive responsibility (not shared by the men in their lives), confusion, disillusionment, unrealistic expectations, all the usual stuff that make women crazy in modern times. (Read Where the Girls Are and The Way We Really Are for more information about why women are pissed off.)
And yet, in spite of their valid reasons for being angry, every last one of these women apologizes after venting about it all. After all, they point out, we really don’t have it that bad. I mean, look at our mothers, at least we’re not like them. We have choices. We can have a career, independence and family. It’s just that….men have and always have had those choices without ever seeming to be beat down by it all. Somehow men find time for career, family, hobbies and friends. And we hate them for it.
Women have lots of reasons for being a bitch. These essays cover everything from open marriages to multiple divorces, being overweight to being childless, having a husband who doesn’t do enough to having one who does too much.
I read these 26 essays consciously as though I were reading my own thoughts. Indeed every writer was talented enough to make me wish I had written every essay myself. Although I have never been overweight, I shared the experience of the woman who described it and I cheered her decision to put down that struggle and just live. I have put down such struggles in my own life. Although I chose to marry and have children at a young age, I related to the woman who had never done so—her pride in her accomplishments tempered by the tugging of her heartstrings when a child looked at her a certain way. Her story demonstrated for me the fact that women may have choices today (thank you, Gloria Steinem) but those choices require sacrifice in ways that men’s choices do not.
Women are in a state of flux today, a crossroads. Our mothers were a different sort of woman than we are and our daughters will be another sort again. I hope that our daughters’ choices will not be accompanied by quite so much sacrifice and anger and their husbands’ choices will be accompanied by a little more. In the homes of the future, may both partners enjoy the privilege of being the Bitch in the House.
Review by Tess
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