Word: husbanding
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...These days, marital ambivalence rules the literary scene. December brought Julie Powell's new memoir, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession (Little, Brown; 307 pages), in which the Julie & Julia author tells the sad, sordid tale of the recent years she spent butchering pigs, cows and her husband's heart. Meanwhile, in a New York Times Magazine story, writer Elizabeth Weil detailed her efforts to subject her "perfect union" to every kind of therapeutic scrutiny available in Northern California. Her goal of complete marital introspection - needed or otherwise - inspired heated holiday-party conversations and terror at the thought...
...Butcher a Marriage It would be much harder to hang up on Powell. She makes no apologies and no effort to be likable in Cleaving, a ghastly work of revelation without enough self-reflection. Soon after wrapping up Julie & Julia, Powell began cheating on the kindly Eric, that husband who dutifully ate her butter-soaked Julia Child meals for a year. Her lover and S&M partner was Damian, a former college fling with "Mick Jagger lips, and a weak chin." I am saddened that I have a clearer vision of Damian's masturbatory methods than of his actual appeal...
...amply demonstrated lack of humility suggests she was happier to comply than Gilbert. But when she runs out of story - the Fleisher's internship complete - she copies earlier Gilbert, setting forth on a haphazard journey around the world. Her "Eat, Sulk, Stew" wraps up with a return to the husband she belittled and betrayed. Now here is a marriage to be debated. Maybe one of Weil's therapists could lend a hand...
...asked Ella what she thought was going on. "Finally, the story comes out," he says. "She had been molested as a child, both within her family and outside it. She tried to escape by marrying at 15, at her mother's urging. It was a disastrous marriage - her husband was crazy jealous. They divorced in two years. She remarried. Her new husband was also jealous. He was convinced that when she was out hanging the laundry, she was sexually posturing to attract the neighbors...
When Ella was overweight, Felitti learned, her husband was less suspicious. And her fear of his rage - perhaps he saw her new slimmer weight as a provocation? - was probably spurring her anxiety. (See a special report on the science of appetite...