If you liked "Committed" by Elizabeth Gilbert, you'll love...
The Next Chapter columnist Ing Wong-Ward says if you liked Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert, you'll love The Meaning of Wife by Anne Kingston. Here's why:
ON THE SHIFTING IDENTITY OF "WIFE"
I'm a big fan of Anne Kingston's work. She's a fabulous writer and I think in a lot of ways this book was ahead of its time. Now we're in an era where there are many books about marriage, there are many books about being single, there are many books about divorce. But at that point there wasn't a great deal of meditation on what it meant to be a wife. And "wife," for a lot of people, is a loaded term. What is a wife nowadays in the modern era? In a previous generation, the idea of a wife was fairly clear cut: she was someone who supported her husband's ambitions, she was someone who looked after the house, she was someone who looked after her children. That was her role. It was basically a career.
But now we're in an era where women have made gains in the workplace. The majority of the women who are married and have children do work. So what does that notion of "wife" mean and how has it changed?
ON THE PORTRAYAL OF "THE WIFE" IN MEDIA
The book is broken up into several different chapters and it's the identity of wife that Kingston looks at. For example, she looks at Princess Diana as the wife who shifts from the virgin bride to the placid princess bride to the supportive role, and then all of a sudden it goes wrong and she's the wronged wife. Towards the end of her life, after she divorces Prince Charles, she is the independent ex-wife. And so, through that, as a starting point, she looks at different ways women are represented through wifedom. For example, she has an entire chapter on the abused wife and how that plays out in popular culture and what that looks like. There's no real definition at the end of it as to what a wife is, but I think that makes sense, because it's something that's constantly evolving.
Ing Wong-Ward's comments have been edited and condensed.