The film adaptation of The Girl On The Train will be released in October. I’m reading the book: it’s an effective thriller, a good page-turner, and it has an unconventional – and infertile – protagonist.
Basically, Rachel descends into batty alcoholism when she can’t conceive with her new husband, whilst all their glossy friends are falling pregnant around them. It gets so bad that they split up, and the husband moves a shiny new woman in and rapidly impregnates her.
Rachel even breaks into their home one day and ‘steals’ the baby for a few minutes, for no good reason. She can’t hold down a job: pretending that she is taking the train to work every day so she won’t be evicted. She leaves piss-soaked clothes at the bottom of the stairs and has major booze blackouts, returning covered in blood. Toddlers playing in the park destroy her – too painful. She is the proverbial sad, wizened, vengeful husk, yet she’s only in her early thirties.
All the tropes of the crazy barren woman are present, neatly juxtaposed with Anna, the ex-husband’s new partner. Anna sails along in a ‘bubble of happiness‘ engendered just by looking at her beautiful family; she secretly revels in the fact that her joyful fecundity is causing such misery in Rachel, her sterile nemesis.
It’s mere fiction, just a quality airport thriller, but I wonder how rooted in reality these themes are, and do women identify with Rachel at all, or Anna?
I know that in my darkest days, even though I was perpetually ambivalent about having kids, the prospect of my partner leaving to impregnate someone else was the apex of all my fears, harbinger of cold sweats in the early hours. My anxieties about ending up a lone spinster would spiral catastrophically, irrationally. I even broached the subject of him having a vasectomy, to render it less possible.
I have mellowed now: you can’t sustain that kind of nuttiness. But what if it had happened? Is Rachel ever a possibility, in your average woman?
And when they arise, where do such thoughts come from: are they something instinctive, primeval in women? Do unequivocally childfree woman ever have them, too? Do any mothers secretly identify with Anna: is a bit of smugness irresistible when faced with a horror story like Rachel?
Book’s got me wondering.
I had no idea what this book was about. Well, how would I since I haven’t read it? And what does it matter? And why I am sharing this nugget of non-information with you? Is this too many questions? Personally, though I’m a parent, I identify more with Rachel. Perhaps it had something to do with having one child at the age of 40. Prior to this, the waves of despair and nuttiness ran the gamut of the rational to the extreme, which morphed into another form once the I had her. The quest for meaning and panic never really left. I don’t doubt the smugness. But what I could never – and still never – fathom, is/was the blanket of silence my nuttiness was met with by friends who had at some stage prior to having children experienced (or feared) to various degrees themselves. A strange form of amnesia took root. I see it happening still, and it always gets me more than the smugness. I’m probably not answering the question asked. Or explaining myself very well. Bad habit of mine, I’m afraid.
LikeLiked by 1 person
No, I love questions… Your waves of despair sound a lot like my waves of despair… I can also imagine very clearly that they do morph into other forms of madness once you have a child, and my rational brain knows that parents have the same quests for meaning as non-parents do (I probably confuse the busyness of parenting with being ‘fulfilled’, anyway). No one could deal with my nuttiness either, only fellow nuts. There is definitely a very real phenomenon of ‘infertility amnesia’ out there, for e.g.; and related types to do with everything surrounding having kids, where parents who were suffering all kinds of anguish beforehand then become the type of parent they hated when they were nuts, and lose all empathy for anyone in the boat they were in. It’s weird alright. You explain yourself handsomely; not sure I do..
LikeLiked by 1 person
Indeed’n’ you do. So very well. There’s an assumption that women talk openly about everything but fertility is one of those unturned taboos. I know what you mean about the busyness, and of course the headstaggers pervade though life regardless, but there’s a profound silence around this, and silencing of women. And a corresponding sense of grief of many that doesn’t fit the media narrative and that is not comparable to inherent search of meaning we all share independent of children. But you don’t need me to point out the obvious, and I suppose the fact we’re all different, and cope differently, and square things uniquely, makes it more difficult (and dangerous) to generalise. I suppose I’ll always have an interest in this. I wrote this a few years back which might make my own point a bit clearer, if you ever take a notion to read https://tendernessontheblock.com/2014/10/19/ova-simplifying-things/ I think your voice is rare in the blogosphere. And I know you’re not obliged to provide a public service, but I’m sure it’ll provoke a lot of thought. There are enough platforms and fora for mothers to congregate. The mainstream and online worlds are disproportionately mother-centric. It gets on my tits if I’m honest. You can put that with the other information I have needlessly shared!
LikeLike
That’s a bloody amazing piece, just read it..
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well here’s a super long response. I hope it’s a helpful perspective…
I’ve never read the book or seen the movie, but I absolutely believe it’s possible for women unable to have the children we so desperately desire to become seriously depressed, suicidal, alcoholic, and off the rails. Not everyone will go there. The experience is so different for every woman. I have a friend who became alcoholic after her hysterectomy due to endo. She later for sober and found an alternative path for happiness in life although the loss is always there. I could have gone that route myself, but my liver enzymes tested out really high earlier this year so I quit drinking instead of drinking more (which is what I felt like doing when my feelings were overwhelming). I was very depressed this last year as I realized I’d never be able to have the children I’d hoped for with my husband. My love for those closest to me kept me going when I felt like I just wanted to die. It was awful, the worst experience of my life. I hope I’m past it now and that the worst of the depression is over.
I worried my husband would be disappointed in me and that it would hurt our marriage (which infertility often does for people). Instead, we have come through stronger and planning for adoption or another plan B. Other relationships sometimes end when faced with this kind of problem. My friend who became alcoholic, her marriage ended partly because of this.
The one thing I don’t see happening often is the smugness of the fertile woman. It probably happens though.
I know there’s a lot of support to be happily child free but I don’t know if I ever could be happy without children. I’ll adopt, find another way with a surrogate or something, or even foster. We’ll find a way because we’re meant to be parents somehow.
So that’s my perspective today. We’ll see what happens next… I’m doing everything i can to get through this with my marriage and sanity intact!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Snowdroplets I love your response it’s amazingly insightful. I also felt like a disappointment, like old, damaged goods in my 30s, to my husband. It’s a horrible feeling. Even though I told myself kids weren’t the be-all-and-end-all, I ended up in front of a doctor telling her I was worried about the increasingly dark thoughts I was having – at 42, with a meaningless mundane job surrounded by moms; no kids to distract me; and friends & family in a different country, I’d started wanting to go to bed and not wake up again. I just felt I would never be happy, and to me, parents just looked happier. It was a few issues jumbled up, and some of it was hormonal; reducing my work days helped, and identifying when it got worse. Now writing about it all is a revolution in how I feel, but I’m always aware it might creep back in. Let’s all of us try & stave it off together!
LikeLike
❤❤❤
LikeLiked by 1 person
I read the book for my book club. Most of the other women in the group were saying that they didn’t like Rachel at all as she was weak and not a nice person. I think I was the only one who felt sorry for her and it was probably because I could relate to how crappy it is going through infertility and a failed IVF cycle. I didn’t like how she became so bitter though towards her friend who had kids. The book certainly doesn’t paint a flattering picture of women dealing with infertility.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m only three-quarters of the way through, but I find Rachel a bit endearing with all her bad luck and drunken shenanigans, we’ve all been there (er, maybe just me…not the piss-soaked clothes though…joking here). It does make me uneasy reading it, though, having kind of been in those shoes – it paints an absolutely awful picture of women struggling to conceive which really got me thinking about it, and about whether I’d have given up on it when I was actually going through all that stuff….
LikeLike
So, I picked this book for my book club shortly after it came out, and it was recommended to me by a friend who said, “So, just so you know, there’s an infertility subplot, but I feel like the things she says about how it felt to be infertile really echo things you’ve said to me, so I think it will be okay.” And so I read it, at the end of my IVF journey, and I didn’t throw it across the room. While Rachel is completely off the rails, I did identify with her. The way this separation comes with friends who do have children while you’re left without, the wanting at the playground, I actually felt those things myself. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have your husband leave and then get someone else pregnant. Well, I could imagine it through Rachel’s eyes. It would probably make me drink a whole bunch of G&Ts in a can (where can I get those) on my way home from work on the train. I tried not to be horrified when my book club buddies told me, “You know, Rachel really reminded me of you.” I’m hoping it’s the dealing-with-infertility part and not the pissing-my-jeans-and-waking-up-crusted-in-vomit part. 🙂 I enjoyed her bitterness, because I think too often there’s a “happy ending” for infertile characters and it’s looked upon as an adversity to meet and come through stronger, and she doesn’t deal so well and I think that’s more realistic. Personally. I probably will see the movie, and I’ll be interested to see how they work with the material that way, and hope that they don’t over-Hollywood-ize it. I was supposed to NOT like Rachel and instead I felt like she knew the ugly inner me when it came to my thoughts on infertility, all the bitter ones. And I could totally see how you could sink into that dark pit of despair. I don’t think she’s every infertile woman, but she’s one of them, and I did think it was an honest portrayal of one woman’s pain in the book.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi thanks for your interesting comment! Yeah those little handbag cans of G&T do sound handy…I have to say I liked Rachel: she’s honest and the most endearing character in the book. I also enjoyed her bitterness and lack of ‘rejoicing’ for others: very realistic, I thought. It did cross my mind that she’d get the happy ending by being pregnant in the last scene (after having that one night stand). I would have thrown the book out the window – imagine if Hollywood do that in the film, I bloody hope not but I wouldn’t put it past the filmmakers.
LikeLike
Oh no, that would be awful. I hope they keep it true to the book.
LikeLike