In my last post, I said the women fared better than the men in Charlotte Rogan’s book The Lifeboat.
Once the survivors are back on land, though, it’s still a man’s world.
Narrator Grace Winter is on trial for murder. In 1914, all the lawyers for the prosecution and the defense are men. The judge is a man. All the laws were written by men. The psychiatrist appointed to appraise Grace’s sanity and her true motives is, of course, a man.
Reading The Lifeboat and trying to imagine what the characters and the times were like, I recalled scenes from Titanic, the movie. I thought about Rose (Kate Winslet) being pressured by her mother to marry the wealthy son of a steel magnate to save her family from financial ruin.
Then there is Downton Abbey’s Mary Crawley of the same time period, disinherited from the family fortune by a distant male cousin.
In fact, Grace is on the lifeboat in the first place because she was on her honeymoon voyage, having pulled off marrying the already-engaged banker Henry Winter to save herself from having to be a governess.
A seismic male-female battle occurs in The Lifeboat, but it is never really acknowledged or spoken of aloud. Some of the most revealing dialogue occurs in whispers among the desperate survivors.
We can see where the conversation about gender issues is at a century later by reading the provocative piece published in The Atlantic this past week. Written by Anne-Marie Slaughter, it’s called “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” (not my first choice for a title.)
Slaughter quotes Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg: “Women are not making it to the top. A hundred and ninety heads of state; nine are women. Of all the people in the world, 13 percent are women. In the corporate sector, [the share of] women at the top….tops out at 15, 16 percent.”
Quote: Slaughter, Anne-Marie. “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” The Atlantic, July/August. 2012.
Books Can Save A Life 
It does feel as if the country is sliding back in time. I don’t understand it, to be honest. Annoys me to see the changes are not for the good and why men think they have the right to decide what is best for us, our bodies, our rights. Strong post.
Thank you for commenting Brenda!
It’s been like this since the history of time. Greatest philosophers and scientists in the early history were all men, and this did not change until great women like Simone de Beavouir and Virginia Woolf emerged to the top of society through their works. But our present days need more than mere advocacy on feminism.
I am a man, but I suppose there is still a significant portion of men who don’t want women to prevail and win the race, despite their political rhetoric on women’s emancipation. I believe stronger efforts need to be made to ensure greater equalities between men and women, especially in the Third World. As most of the societies in the Third World are religious, perhaps we could start by giving a feminine attribute to the Supreme Being, God?
Subhan Zein
It seems like in this country we’ve been going backward a bit in recent years, and there is a long way to go in many other countries. Thank you for reading and contributing, Subhan.