Bibliotherapy The Girl's Guide to Books for Every Phase of Our Lives

Chapter 1 When You're Ready to Embrace Your Inner Bitch: Bad Girl Books There's a reason good girls finish last. Because a lot of times, doing what we think we're supposed to do means throwing the race. Good girls are so busy paying the bills, getting dinner on the table, and maintaining the image of the archetypal mother, symbolizing unconditional love, selfless patience, and the compelling need for a refillable prescription for anti-anxiety medication, that they never even make it to the starting gate. With a job description like that, it gets pretty hard to imagine a walk around the block, let alone a race to the summit of our highest personal peak. But what if we good girls started to give them all a taste of their own medicine? What if we found the courage to misbehave? What if we slipped into a pair of scuffed stilettos and stretch capris two sizes too small and, just for once, got really out of line? The bad girl books in this chapter are about unmanageable women who pushed the limits and stood their ground. They're brash, bawdy, foul-mouthed, unladylike, and often on the wrong side of tipsy. But their misbehavior teaches us that if you want to be good and we mean really, really good you've got to be willing to be a little horrid. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(1962) by Edward Albee George and Martha, sad, sad, sad. Martha, the heroine of Edward Albee'sWho's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is a blowzy, obnoxious, disappointed, desperate, and sadistic alcoholic, who is, despite her shortcomings, one of the most vicariously thrilling bitches in the history of the American theater. What woman doesn't long to experience Martha's primitive abandon, if only for a moment to be able to get drunk, and we mean really drunk to loll about barking orders at our husband with a martini in our hand, gin trickling down our chin, stuffed into a catsuit two sizes too small stretched over our aging but profuse seductiveness? Okay, so maybe most of us would stop short of doing the hootchy-koo with the history professor who is married and twenty years our junior. But which one of us wouldn't love to be able to toss off a line like "if you existed I'd divorce you" without batting a false eyelash? Martha's not just a bitch, she is the bitch goddess a plump, fickle, spoiled, foul-mouthed, and irresistible Circe, randomly bestowing her favors or turning men into pigs, according to her whim. So while Martha is a pathetic, desperate, and drunken grotesque who brutalizes her husband because he has committed the unforgivable sin of loving her, Martha is heroic too. Her sheer unmanageability her willingness to not only speak her mind but to slur it at full volume from the front porch in a sleepy suburb at midnight is the act of defiance that liberates us all. Read this one when you're feeling the need to perform a group exorcism.Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf'chases all the demons into the light of day. Points to Ponder 1. Discuss the use of flowers inWho's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?For example, what is the significance of snapdragons and strolling Mexican flower-sellers in this play? (Hint: They are not just thrown in for set dressing and multicultural appeal.) 2. Putting the inevitable hangovers aside, do you think thatWho's Afraid of Virginia Woolf'has a happy ending or an unhappy ending? Why? Bad Girls We'd Like to Have Over for Girls' Night The Wife of Bath Chaucer's classic bad girl taught us that things would be much better for everybody if husbands the world over just shut up and did what their wives told them for a change. She has a standing invitation to any of our get-togethers. Lady Macbeth Shakespeare's legendary powerPeske, Nancy is the author of 'Bibliotherapy The Girl's Guide to Books for Every Phase of Our Lives' with ISBN 9780440508977 and ISBN 0440508975.