![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Purity by Jonathan Franzen
Apr. 24th, 2025 10:03 pmI first tried to read this book awhile back following my positive reading experience of The Corrections. I thought the way Franzen writes is engaging and he has a way of really showing the dirty side of people. So I was disappointed when I first tried to read Purity and found how poorly he treated his female characters (from sexual abuse to straight up rape). I know that you cannot fault a book for tackling themes that you may find heavy or unpleasant but there was something off about the casualness of how Franzen wrote it. I dropped the book then, convinced that I will never find it in me to try again.
Now here I am, having finished the book just to prove to myself that my dislike for it justified (and also because I am trying to get through any unread books in my shelf because I can't afford to buy new ones at the moment. What else is new?). I must say this book isn't all bad. The last 50 or so pages of the book was quite heartwarming and it is undeniably an engaging read. However, it is very distinctly a "white, male author" book.
Writers aren't obliged to write good (that is to say, nice) female characters. The mark of a good female character is not in her likeability. It is in her complexity, as all humans are. The female characters that Franzen writes are rife with stereotypes. It felt like he had a checklist of female stereotypes and based his female characters on that. This review from The Guardian sums up it up pretty well.
There was a scene where Anabel, Tom's crazy wife, cried 'torrentialy' during an argument with Tom about sitting down while peeing. I know Franzen really wanted to drive home the idea that Anabel is crazy and emotional but it made me feel as if Franzen was on a frenzy writing a caricature of a woman (maybe he had the same, milder argument with his wife?) and was trying to say, using his male characters as proxy, "See how unreasonable and emotional women are?" Sure, we aren't supposed to treat a writer's characters as a reflection of their thoughts but it does feel a little hard to discount the possibility of him being a misogynist because there is no moment of reprieve in this book. Every few pages you are assaulted by this undeniable whiff of hatred for women.
There are few good sections in this book (Clelia's final days back in Germany, Pip falling in love) and overall it was written engagingly. However, despite that, I would never recommend this to anyone. It's not worth going through 500+ pages for whatever little you gain from it.
Now here I am, having finished the book just to prove to myself that my dislike for it justified (and also because I am trying to get through any unread books in my shelf because I can't afford to buy new ones at the moment. What else is new?). I must say this book isn't all bad. The last 50 or so pages of the book was quite heartwarming and it is undeniably an engaging read. However, it is very distinctly a "white, male author" book.
Writers aren't obliged to write good (that is to say, nice) female characters. The mark of a good female character is not in her likeability. It is in her complexity, as all humans are. The female characters that Franzen writes are rife with stereotypes. It felt like he had a checklist of female stereotypes and based his female characters on that. This review from The Guardian sums up it up pretty well.
Less provocative but more disappointing were the tedious stereotypes embodied by the female characters: crazy mothers, middle-aged women tormented about whether or not to have kids, girlfriends and wives who would rather endlessly discuss their feelings and the state of their relationship than have sex.
There was a scene where Anabel, Tom's crazy wife, cried 'torrentialy' during an argument with Tom about sitting down while peeing. I know Franzen really wanted to drive home the idea that Anabel is crazy and emotional but it made me feel as if Franzen was on a frenzy writing a caricature of a woman (maybe he had the same, milder argument with his wife?) and was trying to say, using his male characters as proxy, "See how unreasonable and emotional women are?" Sure, we aren't supposed to treat a writer's characters as a reflection of their thoughts but it does feel a little hard to discount the possibility of him being a misogynist because there is no moment of reprieve in this book. Every few pages you are assaulted by this undeniable whiff of hatred for women.
There are few good sections in this book (Clelia's final days back in Germany, Pip falling in love) and overall it was written engagingly. However, despite that, I would never recommend this to anyone. It's not worth going through 500+ pages for whatever little you gain from it.
