Are there women out there who actually enjoy reading books that target Christian women living cookie-cutter lifestyles where men are hopeless and helpless, and women must tend the family and keep the home fires burning? What about books like Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, where a mind is challenged, lives are deep, dynamic and multi-faceted, and not everything has a happy ending? Even for those who like their fiction “lite,” surely there are plenty of worthy novels out there to entertain.
Although some characters playfully criticize the most outdated, patriarchal comments, I was still left wondering if this lifestyle was being promoted or put down. One of my favourite passages is this one from SAHM I Am explaining how to welcome home “our dearest hardworking husbands who sacrifice so much to provide for our families.
“In our home, we spend from four to five every afternoon in preparation activities. These include the following:
1) I make sure my hair is done, and I put on makeup and change into fresher clothes.
2) My children make sure their clothes are clean, their hair is neat and their rooms are sparkling.
3) We tidy up the house.
4) Dinner is always nearly ready and the table is set.
Sometimes, we literally “roll out the red carpet”…and give him a paper crown the children coloured. But my children's favourite is the “Daddy's Home” song. I wrote the lyrics a few years ago, and set them to the tune of 'Oklahoma!'”
Enter the market for Christian chick-lit, perhaps the worst idea ever devised. These poorly written, unoriginal, clichéd novels with ooey-gooey white-washed problems of bland families and their dull, predictable lives, must actually be written for children, as the dialogue found inside is so simplistic, so trite, so sickeningly goody-two-shoes and so exceedingly obvious, that I can't believe any adult would actually have other adults in mind when penning these tales. These three are published by Steeple Hill as part of their Café series — a set of books written by Christian women, for Christian women, generally targeting (and portraying) stay-at-home moms in traditional, conservative families. Some of the books even include discussion questions at the back — as though there would actually be anything to discuss about these books other than how terrible they are.
The funny part is that this type of thinking sounds oddly familiar. I read it in an October 1965 article of the Record, about what a woman should do to ensure her family is at church on time. With five small children and an “absent-minded” husband whose only tasks are to put the offering into the envelope and make sure he knows where the car keys are, the author offers up the following tips for punctuality: “I make sure cuff-links have been returned in pairs to their proper boxes. I also search the closets for Sunday clothes that may need dry-cleaning … I choose a simple hair-do for myself, preventing any lengthy combing-out sessions. I check everyone's shoes for frayed laces or loose buckles. Either can be disastrous when you're in a hurry.” The list goes on.
I have nothing against more traditional marriages; so long as they're based on respect and mutual understanding, and feature a husband who can cook dinner, scrub the toilet and carry on an intelligent conversation. My faith does not — and should not — relegate me to being cook, housekeeper, sock-darner, mother and wife, and does not exclude me from being writer, reporter and traveler. Unfortunately, these books lead me to believe otherwise.
