A Review of: “Wolitzer, Meg. The Ten-Year Nap.”

Wolitzer, Meg. The Ten- Year Nap. New York, NY: Riverhead Books, 2008. 1 + 351 pp. $24.95 (hardcover). ISBN-10:1615 59 4884. Within the cultural framework of the "opt-out revolution" and "mommy war" debates, Wolitzer's novel explores the lives of women who have opted out of paid work to stay home with their children. Although the author never overtly defines her characters in terms of feminist waves, she describes them in terms that fit second and third wave descriptors. The tensions that develop from the third wave, stay-athome mothers and their own second wave mothers provide opportunities for discussion of feminist waves and their differing perspectives on issues such as class privilege, choice, and feminist unity. Although the novel was written for a general audience, its representation of feminist issues is academically accurate. This accessible novel presents an opportunity for students of gender to explore tensions and critiques of second and third wave feminisms within a creative medium. Throughout each of the 19 chapters, readers follow the main character, Amy Lamb, a former attorney who has "opted out" of her career to raise her son, and the lives of her fellow stay-at-home-mother friends, and their mothers. As the narrative develops, the chapters weave the present day with flashbacks from the characters' pasts. Amy represents a third wave feminist, who views staying at home with her son to be as viable an option as paid work. She and her friends cannot relate to what they see as the "angry, old-style" (p. 202) second wave feminism of their mothers' generations. While the younger women acknowledge that these feminists "accomplished a lot" (p. 203), they identify with the feminist descriptor only "theoretically" (p. 203). As a foil to the younger women's version of feminism, Amy's mother, Antonia, represents second wave, radical feminism. Antonia had been a stay-at-home mother but became a radical feminist and writer. She fears her daughter "already was the totality of what she would ever become" (p. 6). Within the tensions of this mother daughter relationship, Wolitzer demonstrates concerns of second wave feminists that their movement did not reach its full potential. Like her real-life radical counterparts, Antonia's dream for her daughter is one in which she will reap the full bounty of second wave feminists' efforts. In this utopian vision, Antonia's "daughters ... wouldn't need to be tough and complaining and groundbreaking, as Antonia and her friends now were .... Everyone would work, everyone would have power, everyone would help out at home" (p. 47). As readers see feminism through Antonia's eyes, they recognize how aspects of second wave feminism are not realized in Amy. In addition to the tensions of second and third wave feminisms, the tenuous position of class privilege is present throughout the novel. This class privilege is consistent with a major critique of mothers "opting out": women who choose to stay home can do so because of their class standing. Staying home with children is not a universal choice available to all mothers. Wolitzer does not spare her characters from this critique. While Amy recognizes that she is lucky to have the financial means to leave paid work, she feels the financial burden that staying at home places upon her husband. At the close of the novel, she learns that he has secretly been forging business expenses to supplement his income. When Amy confronts him, he accuses her of wanting to be a child and not an equal partner. …