I'm really bothered by book plots that feature a long-time married woman (usually with grown/teenage kids) who feels like she is in a rut and then either has a crush on or an affair with a man and it somehow suddenly makes them feel desireable and awesome again. (No - I don't read THAT kind of book- I'm talking Maeve Binchy, the Memory Keepers Daughter, or "The Mermaid Chair" by Sue Monk Kidd (my current read)).
I realize that the "Who am I aside from Mom/Wife" is an understandable and common dilemma. However, I think these women bring it upon themselves. They are so dependent on the "love of a man" to make them feel exciting and like they are an independent person so when their life gets mundane and their husband isn't providing that, they have to seek it elsewhere.
I suppose it is the literary extension to the problem with Young Adult (YA) fiction that my friend and YA author Kim recently blogged about here and in a follow up here. She talks about how it is annoying that in books like Twilight and other romantic YA books, it is portrayed as all-consuming and exciting all the time and the concept of "real", comfortable, love is non-existant. If you start your relationship with expectations of eternal fireworks and all-consuming excitement, then you are bound to be disappointed at some point.
2 comments:
You lie! I will have firework forever and flowers will spring forth from the sidewalk whenever I walk by them! If it doesn't, then I'm done.
Thanks for the heads up on Mermaid Chair. I wanted to read that, but I'm bugged by same things as you are. (Obviously, since I ranted about it for two posts)
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