The “trad wife” lifestyle has become a popular trend online, so much so that it’s been credited with driving some young women to the Republican party in the last election. Ironically, these trad wives make a lot of money pushing content around the idea that women should not work. With gorgeous babies on their hips, these wives bake bread, feed chickens, and look over wheat fields. Their fans complain of having to work real jobs and want to spend their days barefoot, in the kitchen, caring for a toddler and pregnant. They complain about feminism and long to go back to the 1950s.
These girls need a swift kick in the rear. Maybe Laura Anthony’s new book, The Women on Platform Two, will provide it for them. Taking place mostly in Ireland in the late 1960s-early 1970s, it provides a close-up look at what life is like for women trapped in a patriarchal system that insists their only purpose is wife and mother. For women who do not or cannot fall easily into those roles, there is no way out.
In 2023 Dublin, nurse Saoirse is fighting with her fiancé over her lack of desire to have children, when she finds a dropped photo in the train station. Running after its owner, Saoirse finds herself on the train to Belfast with Maura, an older woman who is eager to tell Saoirse the story behind the photo.
When Maura married Dr. Christy Davenport in 1969, she thought she’d found Prince Charming. Instead, he quickly turned into a controlling abuser, beating Maura for sins such as wearing trousers and expecting her to wait on him hand and foot. But everyone in Dublin thinks Christy is wonderful, and Maura knows that even her own parents expect her to stay in her marriage no matter what. After a beating from Christy causes a miscarriage, Maura realizes she cannot bring a child into the world with a father like Christy.
Maura’s best friend, Bernie, also has a reason to fear conception. After giving birth to three girls, Bernie’s fourth pregnancy ended early when she developed pre-eclampsia. Warned never to become pregnant again, Bernie’s marriage suffers as her husband Dan fears to touch her. When the women learn that contraception is legal in Northern Ireland, they join a women’s liberation group to bring condoms and birth control pills to the women of Dublin.
Reading The Women on Platform Two felt like watching an episode of Call the Midwife. The influence of the church, class issues, sexism, domestic violence, and pregnancy all play a part in the book and in the series. The characters in Midwife, however, are more dimensional than the characters in Women. Saoirse seems to exist merely to provide a modern audience for Maura’s story; Christy is a mustache-twirling villain with an unlikely ending. The train ride at the climax of Maura’s story seems to be the raison d’etre for the entire novel, and the characters suffer because of it.
Still, the issues at the heart of The Women on Platform Two are important enough that the book deserves promotion. As the United States turns back the clock on women’s rights, these kinds of stories serve as an important reminder that women who don’t have control of their own bodies can’t control their own lives. Something to think about as TikTok pushes another video from a woman on a farm with eight kids.
Thanks to Gallery for the book in exchange for an honest review.
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