The Meaning of Wife

Naomi Brun is a freelance writer and a book reviewer for The Hamilton
Spectator.

For the last hundred years, our society has been in a process of
defining and redefining what it means to be married. Historical
definitions no longer fit men who long for greater attachment to their
families, or women who wish to make their mark in the professional
world. Gone are the days when “husband” automatically signified
“breadwinner,” and when “wife” indicated “stay-at-home
caregiver.” In the dawn of the 21st century, marital roles are open to
wider interpretation.

In The Meaning of Wife, journalist Anne Kingston takes a look at what
“wife” means in our current social climate.

Her book, at first glance, bears some similarity to the works of
feminist icons Gloria Steinem and Germaine Greer. After all, she
categorizes her chapters according to social phenomena (e.g., “Sex and
the Married Woman”) and invents catch phrases to pin down trends
(e.g., “unwife” to describe single women who would rather be
married). Like her feminist predecessors, she, too, supports her views
with the strong combination of statistical and anecdotal evidence.
However, all comparisons to Steinem and Greer end with the structure and
stylistics of her work.

When Kingston moves into the realm of analysis, she lacks depth and
insight. It appears that Kingston did not ask many everyday wives about
their experiences when collecting research data. Instead, she drew
general conclusions about the role of wives from Hollywood films of the
1980s and 1990s, and from women whose rocky marriages filled newspapers,
such as Princess Diana, Lorena Bobbit, and Nicole Brown Simpson. While
the lives of these women are certainly interesting, they could hardly be
called typical of the average North American married woman, and should
not constitute the basis of research for this topic.

In Kingston’s view, most wives are unhappy drones, most single women
are desperate playgirls, and most men are redundant in marriage. Such a
uniformly negative view, when combined with her tabloid treatment of the
subject, does not make for an enlightening read.

The Meaning of Wife is an engaging portrayal of wives in 20th-century
media, but nothing more.