Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’m one of four sisters, and at this moment in time, one is in the midst of wedding preparations and one is en route to divorce. As the (unmarried)youngest of the bunch, I am in the blessed and privileged position of still being at liberty to observe, fantasize and make sweeping declarations about the future at my leisure. As I alternately peruse wedding dresses and condemn the institution of marriage (depending on my ovulation cycle and the phases of the moon), it seemed timely and fortuitous to pick up Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, of “Eat Pray Love” fame, is infinitely more “listenable” than she is readable for me. She’s got a clever, charmingly conversational style that, for me, works better on audio than it does on paper. So I’m glad I opted for the audio book, since there are times when slight annoyances (like her tendency to make neat, simplistic little wise-isms like, “Sometimes life is messy, and we do the best we can…”) could have been deal-breakers for me, had I been investing in reading the book rather than listening to it on my commute to and from work.
As it was, I got fully engaged in her story. She weaves the account of her urgent necessity to marry her Brazilian sweetheart, Felipe (introduced in Eat Pray love), after he’s essentially deported from the U.S. and they’re told that marriage is the easiest way to secure him a permanent visa. To reconcile her judgments and fears about marriage, she digs up its medieval roots, examines the Church’s contradictory relationship with it (if you can’t ban it, co-opt and control it), and explores some fascinating marriage rituals from small villages in Southeast Asia and Italy. Along the way, she sprinkles some personal reflections on her hopeless first marriage and subsequent divorce (which apparently was hell on earth, though I never gather why, except that she was young and ignorant), and some romantic tidbits about her current relationship with a man who apparently calls her “Darling” before every sentence.
Gilbert’s undeniable gift is her curiosity. Whereas some of us (like me) might see something interesting, say, while we’re traveling, and make up some story of what it’s about or wonder lazily and fruitlessly about its origins, she actually talks to people and gets the story. And then she relates it, in painstaking detail. Her other amazing gift, as far as I’m concerned, is her faith in her own creative process. As with “Eat Pray Love,” I found myself musing about how exactly she set out to write these books. I picture it something like this: “I have a kernel of an idea (e.g. making peace with marriage by submerging myself in academic, historical and personal references on the subject, while traveling with my honey and waiting for news on his visa), but I have no idea if what I find will be interesting or of value, or whether this story will turn out resolved and happy. I’m just going to trust that a book will reveal itself as I move along, and my job is to record what I see and feel and encounter.”
And a book DOES reveal itself – she’s so good at connecting all the dots and unearthing personal history and reference points to illustrate more abstract and erudite concepts. Sometimes she wanders and could probably use an editor. Sometimes she seems to indulge in sentimentality and the cuteness of her own character. Sometimes she uses the “excuse me, dear reader” device a bit (or a lot) excessively. But the truth is, after nearly every commute session with her voice in my car, I came away with some new insight or awareness about myself. Once I even shocked myself by bursting into tears when Felipe professed his yearning to take care of her – to have a home for her, a place to care for and provide for her. (Sidenote: It’s not just me who secretly thrills at the idea of a man “taking care” of me – my fellow Cancerian Mindy Kaling confesses this in the current issue of Bust Magazine. Must be a Cancer woman thing.)
By the end of the book, I’d grown quite attached to Gilbert’s companionship. I had grown fond of her witty asides and intellectual-feminist musings and historical excavations. I liked putting myself in her place for a while – the childless-by-choice creative woman who is devoted to her work and her self and her man, delights in the role of auntie to her niece and nephew, travels insatiably, and now has settled down in an old church with a husband and a coffee pot and a garden. I liked entertaining the notion that I too could find myself un-defining and remolding the idea of marriage someday, fashioning for myself a structure that promotes freedom rather than confinement, healthy boundaries rather than limitations, autonomous connection rather than co-dependence, and continuous growth rather than security.
Gilbert ends her story with a touching and sincere scene of exchanging vows in their new home, surrounded by a handful of loved ones. I kind of can’t help loving her and wishing her the best, because I’m dearly ready to let go of my own cynicism. I’m also ready to disillusioned of my romantic fantasies about love, and see clearly what it is that I most truly want. While I see much of her approach to love and life as shortsighted (I can’t imagine, for instance, how I could ever thrive in relationship without understanding that the only thing I’m really seeing, ever, is my own projections), I also appreciate her hard-earned wisdom and tenderness. Gilbert is a Cancer as well, so maybe it was especially easy for me, in some cases, to identify with her. By now she truly feels like a friend and, to some degree, a mentor.
For more gems from Gilbert on creativity and inspiration, check out her TED talk here and her contribution to Radiolab here.
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