Female Mid-Life Crisis and the Memoir

The vogue for middle-aged women finding themselves – and then writing tell-all books about it – has become big business. But it makes their journeys of discovery as predictable as the daily commute, says Charlotte Raven for the Independent.

From the article...

Modern self-discovery narratives are "journeys" in the X Factor or Big Brother sense. Before she made it, Julie Powell was working as a secretary for the government agency responsible for 9/11. To evade mediocrity, she sets herself the "challenge" of cooking her way through the 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days.

The constructed jeopardy – "risking her marriage, her job and her cat's well-being" – will be familiar to fans of reality formats.

The highs and lows of the "experience" were recorded on a blog, The Julie and Julia Project, which became a book and a film.

Julie Powell namechecks her pets in her author profile at the front of the book. I'd expected the film version of The Julie and Julia Project to be twee. Watching the obligatory "couple wrestling with live lobster" scene, modelled on Annie Hall, I felt indignant the lobster's behalf. The scene would have been justified if it had served the protagonists' supposed goal of self-development. By her own admission, Powell learns nothing from the encounter. That wrestling wasn't an analogy. She wasn't wrestling with her conscience or with the meaning of love. When she's done with the wrestling, she giggles inanely, reminding us that we're watching a bathetic re-enactment of earlier self-discovery tropes.

The feminist self-discovery narratives of the Seventies were real journeys. The married heroine of Fear of Flying didn't conjure adversity from thin air. In the first chapter, Isabella dumps her analyst for peddling misogynist clichés like "the power behind the throne". She notes sadly that clever and stupid women were brainwashed "all the same" by the myth of romantic love. Her A-starred head is full of "soupy longing", but dumping her husband sets her on a path towards self-determination, not romantic optimisation.

The lobster scene in Julie and Julia made me think, oddly, of the murder scenes in Thelma and Louise. The protagonists of this feminist road movie are forced into some difficult corners. Their dilemmas are more weighty than whether to do mayonnaise in the Magimix. When they kill, they respond appropriately, acting as if something important has happened.

Their seriousness of purpose is evident, even when they're acting irresponsibly. Their modern counterparts are frivolous, even when they're acting responsibly.