By the time I was three-quarters of the way through The Thing She Loves it took about 45 minutes to talk me down. The problem I had was that until the last chapter, in which Greenwood sums up the book and offers some strategies, the book reads like a catalogue of insurmountable difficulties. Women have had it tough in the past. Women still do, some more than others. And women will continue to have it tough as long as they (we) lap up all the bullshit advertisers and relatives and society general tells us makes us 'lovable' or proves that we are 'loved'.

But I know women who do it. I guess the question is, how much can a woman take in the name of love and marriage without getting out her trusty kitchen knife and fixing the whole family right up? And why don't more women take arms against their troubles?

Studies are, of course, just opinion. How well informed they are depends on the researcher, how well written and presented depends on the editor and publishers. (AGAIN I beg for a few minutes with a blunt object and the layout artist. It'd be nice if I could have read the author's names at the head of each essay, but sadly design won out over communication.)

When Barbara Creed in her essay on female killers in film states that in Black Widow the character kills "because she wants to possess them totally. Through their deaths they will return to the earth/womb". In the film the killer says, "I loved them all - deeply." But, she continues, "rich is hard." You never, apparently, have quite enough.

This is not a deep psychological reason for killing, it's material. So, with such a radical misreading of that film, I had extreme difficulty giving credence to any of that author's other judgements.

by Ali Kayn

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