The Female Persuasion

The Women’s Network

Meg Wolitzer’s new novel The Female Persuasion—her eleventh-- goes into a story of two generations of feminism, that is particularly apt in these times. Rules of ‘fourth wave’ feminism are being rewritten by the #MeToo movement, perhaps without giving adequate credit to the women who fought for the rights the millennial generation takes for granted. 

Greer Kadetsky is a shy, studious girl with stoner parents who pay no attention to her. She sees education and an Ivy League college as a way out of her misery. She shares her academic brilliance and ambition with a poor Latino boy, Cory Pinto, whose family is warm and loving.

Greer and Cory gravitate towards each other with a passionate intensity, and are only separated by her parents’ failure to follow up with a college of her choice. He goes to Yale, while she ends up in the not-so-desirable local college Ryland, keeping in touch over the computer and brief weekend visits, dreaming of a life together. In college, Greer befriends the firebrand gay activist Zee Eisenstat, who is of a totally opposite temperament to the reserved Greer. When a creepy collegemate gropes her at a party, Greer is enraged enough to take action, and this indirectly leads to an encounter with leading feminist writer Faith Frank, who is described as “a couple of steps down from Gloria Steinem in fame,” and has been invited for a guest lecture at Ryland.

Faith has written a seminal book The Female Persuasion and edits a feminist magazine, Bloomer. She is as generous towards women as she is influential in a cause that is clearly losing its sheen. In her youth, Faith had issues like sexual liberation and the right to abortion to fight about, which are no longer at the top of the feminist agenda, and her voice is being somewhat drowned by the shrill rhetoric of the younger magazines and websites like Fem Fatale. Still, Greer and Zee are dazzled by Faith and dream of working with her.

Bloomer shuts down suddenly, when Greer is due to be interviewed by Faith, but the older woman remembers the brief meeting with the earnest student, and hires her for a new initiative called Loci that she is starting, as a means to give women a platform to be heard and be helped. Loci is funded by the shadowy venture capitalist, Emmett Shrader, who has a history with Faith. For reasons she cannot quite justify even to herself, Greer prevents Zee from also working with Loci, mainly because she does not want to share Faith even with her best friend. She sees Faith as a mother figure, as a harbinger of change in a world that needs a healing touch. Faith gives Greer’s life direction and purpose.

While the novel is essentially a coming of age story that sweeps through a history of feminism in the US, Wolitzer also  satirises the ‘rich white female’ idea of feminism, where women pay large sums of money to be seen as supporting the right causes, go back with manicure and a goodie bag. Of course, the ones who attract the attention of the media are donors are celebrities. As Greer immerses herself in her work, Cory’s life goes spectacularly off the rails, and he has to give up a boring but well-paid finance career and make choices about which Greer’s mother in a moment of lucidity says, look a lot like feminism.

The bitterness between the two, leads to a split neither really wants or is able to get through without much heartburn. But the book focuses more on the disillusionment Greer goes through when her idol turns out to be superficial and opportunistic.  It is only when she is forced to confront her own mistakes and misconceptions that Greer’s life finally comes together.

The Female Persuasion is written with warmth and affection for the characters, and has something significant to say, if the reader wishes to engage with the politics of the book as well as the emotions.

The Female Persuasion

By Meg Wolitzer

Publisher: Riverhead

Pages: 464