Reviews for Pink And White Tyranny

The average rating for Pink And White Tyranny based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-07-14 00:00:00 Renea Delhafen I found this book surprisingly complicated, as Stowe's stated agenda for her work -- a demonstration that easily acquired divorce would be disastrous for women rather than liberating -- doesn't actually match up with what the book is saying. It's a straightforward story she tells: an upright, noble New England man (John) marries a "lovely little bit of pink and white," (Lillie) expecting her to be the angel in the house that both her appearance and his ideals dictate. She's actually manipulative, deceitful, materialistic, and intensely passive-aggressive. The novel chronicles the slow disintegration of John's ideals as Lillie's selfishness undermines his beliefs about women and his ability to live up to his own moral code. Not much happens in terms of events -- this is no sensation novel, there are no exciting chase scenes or surprise twists -- but John's continued inability to cope with the reality of his marriage creates a train-wreck that I was watching with pained interest. What made the book fascinating to me, however, was the tension between Stowe's argument that John was a good man unfairly victimised by a bad woman, and her simultaneous argument that Lillie was exactly what the male society of the time wanted a beautiful woman to be. For every moment of sympathy for John and her plight, there's a voice pointing out that Lillie's frivolity fulfills male desire, and that the men have no right to expect better from their creations so long as they create so badly. Yet Lillie is still framed as the tyrant, John as the victim... and Stowe can't seem to reconcile these two views. She both espouses and condemns Victorian ideologies of womanhood, and this creates a book that is confusing, complex, and absolutely worth further study. Someday I would like to write a paper on it, perhaps using some of what I learned about realism from my recent reading of In the Court of the Pear King.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-02-05 00:00:00 Francis Landry Stowe does it again: preachy and righteous, and, unlike "Uncle Tom's Cabin", there was very little going on in the plot of this book. The moral of the story is that divorce shouldn't be got so easily, and the book is structured in such a way that for every bit of action, there is tons of moral commentary from Stowe. Why wasn't she just honest about what she was doing? Call it a book of sermons and save it for Sundays. At points, I was writhing on the couch because it was such agony to read. I skimmed the last 50 pages because I simply could no longer take it seriously. She comments toward the end that readers might be out of patience with the amount of patience the suffering husband had for his selfish and unloving wife or for the wife herself. No...I was out of patience with Stowe's sermonizing and oversimplification of "bad" and "good." Do not waste your time on this piece of 19th-century tripe!