Also, the “opposite gender friendship” (alas, for this spayed and/or neutered phrase!) is just the steeple on this funny temple of fertility (heh heh). I’m waiting for the end, so my opinion isn’t fully formed, of course. But IMO to this point, that Becky doesn’tfeelthemuchanticipated/sleepwithFelix/marryFelix doesn’t mean life isn’t engendered in a big way, and all around.

A CORDED PHONE. I can’t believe any woman with small kids could actually succeed at carrying on a (perhaps more meaningful than either party knows) conversation with ANYBODY on a corded phone, especially a significant other of any hue. If we were talking a woman fully aware and able to carpe diem with any style, she’d so need a cordless phone.

Or an iPhone.

Something.

believe once was where garments would come in to play and another was related to the temple, I think.

Yes, and I was LOOKING for her to address that because it would have been so EASY.

(I’ll be doing that in MAGDALENE, though, never fear.)

Or something else?

The Mormonism that pervades the novel is pretty surface level, insofar as I recall.

Wm, I’m perplexed. You said you think Hale pulls punches regarding explicitness, particularly regarding “unique Mormon content.” I feel Mormonism permeating this novel on every level. So I was wondering if you could explain more what you mean so I can see if I’m missing something.

On her website for example,

http://www.squeetus.com/stage/books_housewife.html

even prior to publication, there was some interesting stuff about whether people of the opposite sex could be friends. I was really excited and looking forward to the book, thinking it might be good for my husband to read, to help explain why I have friends who happen to be of the opposite gender.

Well, no, it turned out that it WAS not friendship, but rather was a sexual thing. So a great disappointment.

Hale’s women characters have always struck me as important because any chemistry–including fire–that they generate isn’t just tied up in getting the guy and achieving sexual fulfillment. Its potency is also part of how they restore the balance of power and unseat tyranny, the tyrant often being the guy who will never ever get the empowered girl (and in Goose Girl the girl who will never ever get the powerful guy) because he or she is, well, just plain chemistry-less or has turned his and her gifts in the wrong direction–toward self-advancement. These characters rely on deception and manipulation to exert influence and acquire control.

In Hero With a Thousand Faces (which advances essentially an ego-bound male narrative take on the world but nonetheless offers useful insights), Joseph Campbell distinguishes between the fairy tale and myth this way:

Typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, microcosmic triumph, and the hero of myth a world-historical, macrocosmic triumph. Whereas the former–the youngest or despised child who becomes the master of extraordinary powers–prevails over his personal oppressors, the latter brings back from his adventure the means for the regeneration of his society as a whole.

While I can’t contribute in a specific, meaningful way to this discussion because I haven’t yet read the book, I can suggest that in the Mormon mythos, the Joseph Smith story lays down this potent pattern for regeneration as opposed to the fairy tale triumph over personal oppressors, which in some important ways Joseph Smith failed to accomplish.

Where is the female counterpart? It must be established through literature, which I think Hale approaches credibly in other work. I would expect to find some inkling of that energy in The Actor and the Housewife. Is it not there?

Guess I better just get the book and find out for myself.