Birth Of A New Woman

Last night I finished reading Wifey by Judy Blume. The story takes place in suburban New York in 1970 and Sandy is tired of being a traditional, submissive wife. She married Norman and had two children mostly because she was expected to. She joined "The Club" and began taking tennis and golf lessons at her husband's insistence. She takes care of the cooking and gives Norm "a little something" on Saturday nights, but she is haunted by the feeling that there should be more to life.

During the course of the story Sandy is sexually awakened and ends up sleeping with her brother-in-law, her best friend's husband and an old flame. She believes that the old flame will leave his wife and marry her and is sorely disappointed when he suggests an arrangement rather than eternal love. Somewhere among this infidelity she contracts gonnorhea which precipitates a confrontation between her and her husband.

In the end Sandy is beginning to make assertive decisions and lines of communication are being opened between her and her husband. She is hopeful. I, however, am skeptical. I don't believe that Norman bringing home a pizza instead of expecting Sandy to cook the day after he hit her and called her a whore is really much of a step forward. Sandy offering to shave her pubic hair to make oral sex more pleasurable to her husband just doesn't seem like much to me. I didn't feel like things had been sufficiently resolved in the end of the book. Even though things seemed to be pointed in the right direction it just didn't seem to me that there was a good enough start.

This being said, I still enjoyed the book very much and was pleased to find that it made me think a bit about my own stances on marriage and monogamy.