Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth about Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage

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In 1931, Virginia Woolf wrote "Killing The Angel in the House," a stunning attack on the Victorian ideal of the constantly dutiful, perpetually self-sacrificing wife. In The Bitch in the House, Cathi Hanauer takes Woolf's act of demolition a step further, offering a podium to more than two dozen independent-minded women, who write about frustration and anger in their everyday lives. Touching on issues ranging from obesity to the overrated joys of motherhood, the contributors retain their articulateness without losing their rage.

Elizabeth Strout

“What a book, for men and women both. There is no bitterness here, only the eloquence of honesty.”

Cynthia Kaplan

“THE BITCH IN THE HOUSE is… smart, funny, wise, honest, and very probably…the story of your life.”

Elinor Lipman

“I devoured these essays, and took great guilty pleasure in trespassing into these private lives.”

Booklist

“The writing is superb: smart, sassy and honest-oh, are they honest-in this must-read for every woman.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Starkly revealing …Here is unvarnished truth and more than a smidgen of anger about marriage, motherhood, solitude, and sex.”

O magazine

“The great thing about The Bitch in the House is knowing how many of us there are out there.”

Hartford Courant

“A rollicking, free-flowing, double-barreled think piece.”

O Magazine

"The great thing about The Bitch in the House is knowing how many of us there are out there."

Booklist

“The writing is superb: smart, sassy and honest-oh, are they honest-in this must-read for every woman.”

Hartford Courant

“A rollicking, free-flowing, double-barreled think piece.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Starkly revealing …Here is unvarnished truth and more than a smidgen of anger about marriage, motherhood, solitude, and sex.”

O magazine

“The great thing about The Bitch in the House is knowing how many of us there are out there.”

Publishers Weekly

In the spirit of Virginia Woolf, who wrote of killing the "Angel in the House," these 26 women mostly professional writers focus on the inner "bitch": the frustration, anger and rage that's never far from the surface of many women's lives. They sound off on the difficult decisions of living with lovers, marrying, staying single and having children. Those who haven't chosen the single life are almost always frustrated by their mates' incompetence or their toddlers' neediness. (They reserve special scorn for overly laid-back live-in lovers content to live off a hardworking woman's checkbook.) While a handful of entries touch other sources of anger being criticized for one's weight, simultaneously caring for ailing parents and a young family, coping with a husband who's out to win his baby daughter's loyalty most focus on the love vs. work problem. For many of these women, this means a struggle over the right to be a bitch and inflict unpleasantness on others for the sake of a higher goal (one's work) versus the feminine imperative to "make nice." While unbridled rage is terribly cathartic even in print it's the quieter moments that provide more food for thought. Daphne Merkin's observation that she's "more equipped to handle the risks of loneliness than those of intimacy" and thus better off divorced, or Nancy Wartik's thought that "some compromises might actually be healthy," will ring true for many readers. Others may find it comforting to know that even smart, articulate, successful women can have deeply unsettled inner lives. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Despite the flippant title, the 26 very good writers gathered here offer thoughtful personal accounts that address important questions: Which life objectives should one pursue? Which are attainable, negotiable, or wise? When do we know we are the person we are meant to become? These are honest voices, recognizing that, whatever we might wish, a great deal of what happens to us is beyond our control. Among the contributors are such familiar names as Ellen Gilchrist, Chitra Divakaruni, Natalie Angier, and Hope Edelman, all of whom have written original pieces for this collection. Most of the writers take on some basic feminist precepts, particularly those concerning relationships between men and women, and if the picture they paint is accurate and sometimes a little bitter, it is also often wickedly funny. The writing spans three generations of women, and the younger the women the more surprised they are with how little the script has changed in the melodrama of romance. Edited by Hanauer (My Sister's Bones), a former book columnist at Glamour and Mademoiselle, this essay anthology will offer comfort to real women living real lives. Morrow plans much publicity, so public libraries should stock up. Cynthia Harrison, George Washington Univ., Washington, DC Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.