Would we like a fiction Book Club?

[Unrulysun]

So that we could do some feminist analysis of fiction I mean? I was thinking maybe some classics but possibly we all know that Rochester has to be emasculated before Jane blah blah and we'd prefer to do others?

Would anyone be up for it? Would it work? What would we read? Other questions I haven't thought of?

I thought we weren't meant to be reading feminist fiction, per se, but any fiction and analysing it with a feminist eye?

FB, yes I agree that we are doing any fiction not just feminist fiction. I was just interested in the idea of TBC being seen as feminist, but I shall not discuss it until the potential day of the discussion!

I've just finished reading ROOM by Emma Donaghue. I can't find the webchat, but really felt as though it could be a radical feminist novel as it touched on themes that are always ignored.

I though it gave a voice to the women who have been brutalized by men. I thought the idea of a mother and child's love transcending a rapist's evil got right to the heart of what radical feminism is about. For all their talk of "equal stake in child-rearing" women will never be equal to men in a rape culture that exonerates male violence. BUt never have I read a book that spelled out so clearly that the baby comes from the mother .

I can't stop thinking about it SaF. WHen I began reading the first few pages I thought it was a bit simplistic, but now I find myself revisiting the scenes in my head and I find it to be a source of real comfort. I think it could be a masterpiece, I'm having difficulty unpacking it all.
ABsolutely, it was a child, that was significant.

I also thought the idea of the second baby actually being the first baby reborn was an oriental concept that I can relate to, and that this was a female-friendly type of spirituality, the kind we were trying to define on the chat thread. I linked this book Liquid LIfe there.

Also the fact that this was one of the only books I've read where the mother and daughter liked and loved each other in adulthood

And the slight hint that the father saw her as damaged goods and it might have been better for him if she had been killed because then his "property" wouldn't have been sullied

And I thought she might be using breastfeeding as contraception

And then the patriarchal media redefining their brave, life-risking escape as a Rescue . God it was all in there, I'll shut up now

yes it didn't, that was the beauty of it. It wasn't a man writing it was it. It wasn't voyeuristic. They escaped pretty soon into the novel. NOt like the Hollywood style plot where the escape is The End

yes, and the way the child intuitively knew that the only thing his mother needed to feel better was to be reunited with him, although she may not have realised it herself. But the psychologists and drug-pushers wouldn't leave her alone until they'd found the correct "dosage" for her, when what had in fact pushed her over the edge was the 'vultures' taking photos of her child. It wasn't irrational, was it, it was perfectly rational.
That interview with the press was brilliant, the way they were fixated on the breastfeeding rather than on what she'd been through as a person, which is exactly how the media is.

I don't think you're far wrong there SaF.

I once saw a thread on here where someone's health visitor told her that she ought to be thinking about sex now that her baby was 3 weeks old. Classic "handmaiden of the patriarchy" behaviour.

What saddens me is that in cases where a father abuses the mother in the nuclear family unit, the children will identify with the abuser in most cases. I just find that so sad.

What about the bit when the boy asked the driver to take him somewhere then was a bit baffled that the man hadn't "heard" him. Children are completely ignored aren't they. They're not treated as rational, sentient beings. And then we wonder why they go off the rails when they hit puberty.

There's a coincidence--I'm also on chapter 24, or XXIV as Ms Bronte would have it (Paulina has just reappeared). And reader, there are XLI chapters. But I am enjoying it. Definitely worth the time.

I should have said last night's reading featured the word "thereanent". I called the dp over to share that one.

I came here to confess to not having finished. I apparently forgot that I have a child.

I think we should postpone? I think it's more likely to be a success if we're all through it. What do we think? And if we vote to postpone then just by a week or so or postpone til next month?