Unfinished Business Pressure Points in the Lives of Women

by SCARF, MAGGIE

• ISBN13: 9780345471734
• ISBN10: 0345471733
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-03-01
• Publisher: Ballantine Books

Summary

“An extraordinary panorama of women’s lives today.”—The New York Times Book Review

In detailed, revealing portraits of women from their teens through their sixties, Maggie Scarf explores the core experiences of women’s lives and discovers what can happen when the days and years scurry by, leaving unfinished the tasks that transform us from child to girl to woman.

Praise for Unfinished Business

“Real-life problems are thoughtfully and sympathetically analyzed in Unfinished Business. . . . Love and loss, deprivation and fulfillment, the pangs of growing up and, worse, the plight of those who never do—these are Scarf’s subjects, and she gives them the attention and respect rightly due such integral threads in the fabric of our lives.”—Cosmopolitan

“No woman or man will be untouhed by Maggie Scarf’s brilliant research. There is a gift for all of us in these pages—that freeing, exhilarating emotion: thank God I read this book—I thought I was the only one.”—Nancy Friday

Author Biography

Maggie Scarf is a former visiting fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, and a current fellow of Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University. She was for many years a contributing editor to the New Republic and a member of the advisory board of the American Psychiatric Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Foreword	xv
Prologue	1	(11)
IN THE TEENS
Chapter 1 Departing Time: Anne	12	(31)
Chapter 2 Getting Back Home: Debra	43	(32)
Chapter 3 Of Love and Loss	75	(35)
IN THE TWENTIES
Chapter 4 The Winner: Marie	110	(39)
Chapter 5 On Promiscuity and Depression: Sandy	149	(37)
Chapter 6 Body and Mind	186	(20)
IN THE THIRTIES
Chapter 7 Turning Thirty: Kath	206	(44)
Chapter 8 Mood and Medicine: Judith (1)	250	(18)
Chapter 9 Elation and Despair: Judith (2)	268	(31)
Chapter 10 Postpartum Problems: Laurie (1)	299	(19)
Chapter 11 Great Mother/Bad Wife: Laurie (2)	318	(40)
IN THE FORTIES
Chapter 12 The Facts of a Life: Diana (1)	358	(26)
Chapter 13 Femininity as Symptom	384	(13)
Chapter 14 Does Anybody Want Diana to Live? Diana (2)	397	(29)
IN THE FIFTIES
Chapter 15 The Time of Menopause: Doris (1)	426	(28)
Chapter 16 Happily Ever After: Doris (2)	454	(30)
Chapter 17 A Marital Crisis: Doris (3)	484	(36)
IN THE SIXTIES
Chapter 18 Alone: Margaret Garvey,	520	(32)
Letters	552	(14)
Surviving	566	(19)
Appendix I Signs That You May Be Suffering from Depression	585	(9)
Appendix II Do Numbers Lie?	594	(8)
Appendix III Critical Periods	602	(3)
Selected Bibliography	605	(10)
Index	615