Two Boston Brahmins In Goethe's Germany Book

To coin a genre, I'd call this a Feminist-Midlife-Marriage-Nature Memoir. I recommend it to readers of May Sarton because of the solitude theme, which often has an almost spiritual aspect to it. There is a sense that the author is on a pilgrimage or retreat, and the natural setting is in some way the key to healing.

When her husband moved for work, Joan Anderson decided not to go with him but instead to retreat to their Cape Cod cottage for a year and work on figuring out what she really wanted from life now that she had reached middle age. "Boy, have I ever allowed too many days to go dull and permitted too many parts of me to go unused." Yet money was a serious problem, forcing her into the world of menial labor. She worked at a fish market, went clamming, and even cooked for her nephew's entire film crew - all things she never would have considered earlier in life. As much as she relished her new freedom, she had a pang of guilt whenever she thought about her husband:
I feel naughty, even bad. The one who leaves is always wrong, while the other partner, who passively goes along, gets all the sympathy. Most men, I've noticed, are reluctant to walk out. They may want out of their marriage, but set it up so the wife actually does the walking.
Each month of this transformative year gets its own chapter. Throughout water and tide metaphors are used to connect with the seasons as well as with female sexuality. Anderson passed a surprisingly pleasant Christmas with her husband and two adult sons. She also made a friend who ended up being more like a guru: Joan Erikson, octogenarian widow of Erik Erikson (a famous psychoanalyst). "Every woman should have a mentor," Anderson believes, "not her mother, but someone who doesn't have a stake in how she turns out, who encourages her to risk, who picks her up when she falls flat on her face."

It's a powerful vision of female solidarity, and I appreciated the womb-like atmosphere Anderson creates: a haven outside of time where she can stay while she repairs her psyche. As a Jungian analyst taught her, "Many of us would just as soon have our choices made for us, but the heroine, when at a juncture, makes her own choice'the nonheroine lets others make it for her."

At the end of the year, Anderson's husband retired and joined her at the cottage. This was published in 1999 and followed by a sequel, An Unfinished Marriage, in 2002, which will tell what happened next and whether their reunion worked. I need to get hold of it soon.

My free copy came from The Book Thing of Baltimore.