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The Improvised Woman: Single Women Reinventing Single Life

What is is like being a single woman today? A groundbreaking work of scope, wit and exceptional empathy, "The Improvised Woman" answers that complex question, while in the process capturing — and celebrating — the real lives of single American women.Over the past decade, journalist and essayist Marcelle Clements asked over 100 women from across the country — young and old, never married, divorced and widowed, the childless and single mothers — to talk about being single. How did they get there? Were they sorry or glad? What is the texture of their experience?

The heart of this book is the individual voices of the women answering these questions, heard in all their tenacity and humor. They speak with stunning frankness and eloquence on subjects such as power, status, money, class, family, work, sense of home, romance, love sex, fears of old age and death, loneliness, spirituality, and the future of gender. The result is a powerful portrait, in their own words and in the probing essays by Clements that introduce each chapter, of women whose ever-changing lives defy easy categorization, even as they shatter the crude stereotypes of the past.

Delayed marriages, high divorce rates, low remarriage rates, and longer life spans have created a world in which most women can expect to be married only half of their adult lives. The resulting change in the status and psyche of single women from "Cosmo" icon to powerful socio-cultural player is one of the most significant trends of the end of the century. It is a crucial factor in our emerging politics and economy and it is transforming our cultural ideals, forcing us all to reconceptualize relations between the sexes. Moving,funny, immensely readable, "The Improvised Woman" is the first book to take the measure of this development and women everywhere are certain to say, 'It's about time.'

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 351
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780393046434
  • Genres
  • feminism, womens
  • Release date
  • 1998