A matter of control

Alex Coolman

In 1963, the feminist movement inched slightly forward with the

publication of Betty Friedan’s classic study, “The Feminine Mystique.”

Now, 36 years later, Costa Mesa author Laura Doyle is hoping to take the

women’s movement in another direction with a book that might as well be

called “The Feminine Mistake.”

In fact, the title of Doyle’s book, which will be released Monday, is

“The Surrendered Wife.” But its essential argument -- and the reason

Doyle thinks wives need to do some surrendering -- is that women make the

mistake of trying to control the behavior of their husbands. If anything,

Doyle argues, women in the home need to let themselves be led to a

certain degree.

“Women need to relinquish inappropriate control over their husbands,”

Doyle argues in the book, which she has published herself. She suggests

that wives should “defer to the thinking” of their husbands.

The argument looks like one that would make any self-respecting feminist

cringe, but Doyle insists that “The Surrendered Wife” aims to make women

happier in their relationships with men.

The key, she argues, is realizing that personal intimacy and control

don’t mix particularly well, and that women can have more fulfilling

relationships if they are willing to give up one in favor of the other.

“Control and intimacy are opposites,” Doyle said. And the party in a

marriage she thinks should relinquish control is the wife.

The implication would seem to be that women should be controlled by their

husbands, but Doyle suggests this is not so.

“I’m not saying that they would be in control of me,” she said. “I’m just

saying that I wouldn’t be in control of them.”

Sticky and potentially controversial as the position may be, Doyle says

she actually arrived at it in the process of working through difficulties

in her own marriage.

“The marriage was in trouble and we were going to therapy,” Doyle said.

She sat through session after session anticipating the moment when the

therapist would tell her husband that he needed to change his behavior.

But the therapist had a different message.

“You know,” she told Doyle, “You seem to have a control issue.”

To test the hypothesis, the therapist proposed an exercise. Doyle and her

husband were to go on a “date,” during which the husband was to make all

the decisions.

“We weren’t even out of the driveway yet before I figured out where he

was taking me and I was telling him how to get there,” Doyle said.

The experience led Doyle to reconsider the way she interacted with her

husband -- and eventually to change her own behavior.

“I tried experimenting and just sort of noted what was working and what

wasn’t working in my own marriage,” she said.

“Next thing you know, I was starting a support group.”For a

self-published book, “The Surrendered Wife,” has generated a tremendous

amount of advance publicity, including coverage in The Los Angeles Times,

The Chicago Tribune and Marie Claire. Doyle says a television show based

on the book is also in the works for the fall of 2000.

The book is only the latest in a series of high-profile works that have

cast a critical eye on the accomplishments of feminism.

“The Rules,” a 1996 book that argued for a more traditional approach to

courtship, and books like Wendy Shalit’s “A Return to Modesty:

Discovering the Lost Virtue” and Danielle Crittenden’s “What Our Mothers

Didn’t Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman,” both published

this year, suggest the pervasiveness of cultural unease about changes in

gender relations in contemporary society.

In Doyle’s view, the relevance of her work derives from the difficulty

women have in making a distinction between the way they behave at work

and the way they behave at home.

“We go to jobs where we’re quite capable, and then we come home and maybe

we don’t know how to shut that off,” Doyle said. While the controlling

attitude is appropriate for the career track, Doyle suggests that it is

counterproductive in private life.

“At home, I want to be adored and cherished and treasured and vulnerable

and loved,” she said. “That was something I felt like I never heard out

of feminism.”

In the view of some of Doyle’s readers, her message is hopelessly

reactionary. She says she has received a couple unpleasant electronic

messages on her Web site.

Doyle doesn’t regard her position as particularly traditional, however.

She noted that her book takes for granted many of the freedoms -- such as

a woman’s ability to get a divorce and earn a living -- that are fruits

of the feminist movement.

“I think feminism had to come first before my message,” she said.

FYI

WHAT: Laura Doyle, author of “The Surrendered Wife”

WHERE: Barnes & Noble Metro Pointe, 901B South Coast Drive, Suite 150,

Costa Mesa

WHEN: 7 p.m. Nov. 19

TELEPHONE: (714) 444-0226