Good Woman: A Reckoning

Essayist Nolan’s fervid follow-up to Don’t Let It Get You Down channels the author’s fury at the idea of letting her daughter become trapped by the same stultifying strictures of womanhood that have ensnared Nolan herself. Asserting that a lifetime of attempts at being a “good woman” haven’t led to any of womanhood’s promised payoffs, Nolan refutes the idea that there can be any sort of healthy, fulfilling acquiescence to stereotypically womanly aspirations within the patriarchal system. “All my life I have tried to be a good woman.... I’ve tried, in other words, to capitulate.... I wish I had refused, because compliance... did not work, which is to say, compliance did not make me happy, or accepted, or whole.” Becoming a mother, in particular, Nolan represents as being “sold a bill of goods,” as she found that men, and male-dominated society at large, relegate mothers to the status of helpmeets and nonpersons, while simultaneously denying the genuinely sacred nature of motherhood. Nolan finds similar issues attendant to sexuality, due to an inescapable, overarching system of violence against women. And all these inequities, she notes, are compounded by race (“To be a... woman who is self-possessed and self-actualized... is to be a villain. Double that for... women of color”). It adds up to a blistering assertion that there can be no true equality for women under patriarchy. (Mar.)