Eat! Pray! Love!

Eat! Pray! Love! I just finished this book after starting it almost a year ago. I had left off during her second phase of her journey in India to Indonesia.

This book is really cute, very easy read and quite frankly it is just real. I really like how honest the author is about what she is thinking and feeling. She doesn't undermine what she believes, feels, thinks - instead she's very open to so many different ways of interpreting what it is that she believes, feels, thinks.

"I married young and quick, from a palce of love and hope, but without a lot of discussion over what the realities of marriage would mean. Nobody advised me on my marriage. I had been raised by my parents to be independent, self-providing, self-deciding. By the time I reached the age of twenty-four, it was assumed by everyone that I could make all my own choices, autonomously. Of course the world was not always like this. If I'd been born during any other century of Western patriarchy, I would've been considered the property of my father, until which time he passed me over to my husband, to become marital property. I would've had precious little say in the major matters of my own life. At one time in history, if a man had been my suitor, my father might have sat that man down with a long list of questions to establish whether this would be an appropriate match. He would have watned to know, 'How will you provide for my daughter? What is your reputation in this community? How is your health? Where will you take her to live? What are you debts and your assets? What are the strengths of your character?' My father would not have just given me away in marriage to anybody for the mere fact that I was in love with the fellow. But in modern life, when I made the decision to marry, my modern father didn't become involved at all. He would have no more interefered with that decision than he would have told me how to style my hair.

I have no nostalgia for the patriarchy, please believe me. But what I have come to realize is that, when that patriarchic system was (rightfully) dismantled, it was not necessarily replaced by another form of protection. What I mean is - I never thought to ask a suitor the same challenging questions my father might have asked him, in a different age. I have given myself away in love many times, merely for the sake of love ... If I am to truly become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian."

It is just so crystal clear!

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