One thing that stood out to me in this book was the plethora of references to a traditional family model where the wife is in charge of the domestic realm and the husband is in charge of finances. In many ways, this model makes the wife dependant on her husband. I can’t tell if Bushnell is defending this way of life, or simply acknowledging that a working father/ stay-home mother family is still the norm in our society (I hope it is the latter).
This idea presents itself at one point in the first half of the book, when Wendy wonders why she had kids. She knows that the kids are the only reason she has stayed married, but also knows she had children for another reason as well. “She’d had children simply because it was the most natural thing to do- she’d never even questioned the possibility.” To me, this unquestioning belief in raising a family represents Wendy following the traditional female gender role in our society, without thinking of what she would actually like out of her life. I see that this complacency, or lack of thought was not the best path, resulting in Wendy’s unhappiness, but I wonder why it took her so many years to become aware of her life decisions and realize that she is not happy.
Another section worth quoting on this topic appears a little later in the story.
“Everyone always said that women had choices, but it wasn’t exactly true. Women didn’t really have the grab bag of options everyone said they did- and itchy reality Wendy began to understand in college. By her sophomore year, she had decided that there were basically two types of women in the world: women for whom men went crazy, fell in love with, and eventually would marry and pay for; and women who, for whatever reason, didn’t inspire much ardor in men- at least not the kind of grand passions that would cause a man to ‘provide.’”
First of all, I do not think women can be separated in to these two groups. Also, I think it is terrible to divide women in to these two groups regardless of its possibilities. It is completely devaluing to categorize women according to how men will “provide” for them. Doing this only promotes women to see themselves in relation to how men will take care of them.
Although Lipstick Jungle is about women in powerful careers, it contains a lot of jargon about female dependance on men, witch the book would do much better without.
