In Three Women follows Maggie, Lina and Sloane.
Maggie’s experience – the telling I found most significant – takes us through the trauma of being statutorily sexually abused, first on holiday and then repeatedly by her high school teacher. What is poignant about this telling is how Maggie, an adolescent, feels she is in love. In her mind, what is objectively wrong, feels oh so right. We are transported from Maggie’s own retelling to the second person point of view of the legal battle against her teacher. We’re there, in court. We are Maggie.
We follow Lina through her loveless marriage, the reconnection with a high school flame and ultimate adultery for the sake of desire. Pertinent to this woman’s life is the search for emotional connection and how her husband, the one who should ‘love’ and ‘cherish’ and does not.
Sloane sleeps with other men to please her husband. It is not her desire, rather her love and lust for her husband, that creates the sexual experiences. Dotted with eating disorders, the idea of women’s attractiveness – as a thin creature of desire – Sloane embodies the male gaze as a beautiful, sexual object.
The book is objectively excellent. With prose that draws you in and stories that for many white, educated women will be relatable. Taddeo is not the editor of these women’s stories but rather the passive vessel through which these stories are told. The book is not about her near decade journey in search of extraordinary lives in ordinary places, but rather the women themselves. This hands-off approach she does well.
The book aims to add to literature an honest account of women’s experiences of desire. Traditionally a muted group, further recording of women’s perspectives of the social is a positive thing.
In Maggie’s story we are privy to her own language; ‘fearquick’, ‘shamehot’ and ‘driftlove’ perhaps words plucked from her girlish diary. Little portmanteaus that help Maggie explain her experience of statutory rape and the legal ramifications that come of it.
Maggie’s story is not unlike the many legal battles in Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee, a narrative of institutionalised misogyny.
In Lina’s s she tries to explain her actions of adultery to a group therapy session to other women. The social world as it exists has no mean to articulate Lina’s experience, but she sees that by talking about it she might be able to understand it.
“Her desire to talk about the man she loves is stronger than her understanding that talking about it can hurt the relationship. She realizes in some part of herself that talking about it will make her more receptive to its potency.”
One of the perks of patriarchal hegemony is women’s lack of articulation of their experiences. Three Women attempts to share those stories of women’s trauma of the emotional.
It’s a good start.
What is so conflicting about this anthology is the fact that these women are almost carbon copies of each other; white, privileged, reasonably attractive, cis and (mostly) hetero. While the book hopes to champion the telling and listening to women’s stories it glosses over – as frequently done – the lives and experiences of ‘other’ women. Women of colour, trans-women, poor women, homeless women, gay women get no mention in the pages.
For a book about showcasing women’s stories it certainly works to further silence the voices of further oppressed and marginalized groups of women. Three Women reinforces the idea that the only women’s voice worth listening to are those that are white, privileged, attractive and heterosexual.
On the note of heterosexuality, Taddeo has made the stories of the three women about the toxicity of the men in their lives. Like men need more air time!
Maggie’s high school teacher. Lina’s unlovable husband and ambivalent affair. Sloane’s husband who sees her as a sexual object. For a story about women it certainly has a lot of men in it. This is problem of choosing a focal point of desire. For the writer, desire exists between a man and a women, and this glosses over many facets of women’s desire. In my opinion a sign of ignorance.
The book barely passes the Bechdel test.
Even Liane Moriarty, glorified mummy-writer, manages to at least develop a narrative in Big Little Lies between three women on something other than men.
In the epilogue, Taddeo justifies her conflicting feminism with reference to The Handmaids Tale and self-criticising lines like:
“Even when women are being heard, it is often only the right types of women who are actively heard. White ones. Rich ones. Pretty ones. Young ones.”
We also get a paragraph about a women of colour that the author had talked to early on in the project, but was afraid to speak because she fell in love and thought that talking about it would make it go away. A reasonable explanation on the women’s part but a failing on the authors. Taddeo could have actively addressed this fear by incorporating diverse voices into her work. Instead of addressing an issue that fell into her lap she continues with those who are willing to talk – white, rich, pretty, young women.
While a noble pursuit, Taddeo’s book has a variety pitfalls and features a conflicting feminist approach to research and longform journalism. I’m never going to say it’s a bad thing to have more women featured in literature, but we need a critical assessment of who are constantly speaking and then searching for those who are not. That is true feminism.
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