The Calamity of Being Female
A review of Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls by Nina Renata Aron
Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls by Nina Renata Aron
"So inclined was I toward empathy and understanding that I didn't even know how I really felt about anything, whatever that even meant. I saw everything from everyone else's perspective and I felt bad and sad for us all."
Aron, a middle child, spends much of her life taking care of her siblings, thrust into the role of caregiver at an early age. As her eldest sister's battle with heroin addiction intensifies and her parents' tumultuous divorce unfolds, she is violently forced to assume the responsibilities of parenthood.
Aron's early childhood experiences of having to mature ahead of everyone else have in turn manifested in her adulthood as an intense need to people please and the sickness that is codependency.
This was a total page-turner; Aron has a gift for words. She covers addiction not only through the lens of an addict but explores how an illness of this sort affects the dynamics of everyone around one. She reinvigorates the conversation of addiction as a "family disease" to one that is so often a marginalized women's struggle.
What I particularly love about Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls, aside from it being extremely personal, is that Aron references a multitude of psychologists to illuminate the plight of codependents. She quotes clinical psychologist Janice Haaken and explains that codependence originates in a tendency, particularly common among daughters in dysfunctional families, to overcompensate for parental inadequacies by becoming parentified and by developing an excessive sensitivity to the needs of others. She even cites the renowned Karen Horney arguing that women were socialized to overvalue men in their lives, contrary to Freudian theory.
Aron perfectly articulates the looming power held by men in women's lives, at home and in society. She recognizes that the patriarchy was not only a thing that was being enacted upon us but a throbbing, oozing, living system in which we were complexly complicit.
She even acknowledges her non-specific jealousy toward men; "just that they were men, that their voices weren't lilting and full of question marks, that they seemed to move through space with so much more ease."
This memoir is layered with personhood — intimacy, illness, love, the patriarchy, and much more. Ultimately, Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls is a story on the calamity of being female.
Aron, a middle child, spends much of her life taking care of her siblings, thrust into the role of caregiver at an early age. As her eldest sister's battle with heroin addiction intensifies and her parents' tumultuous divorce unfolds, she is violently forced to assume the responsibilities of parenthood.
Aron's early childhood experiences of having to mature ahead of everyone else have in turn manifested in her adulthood as an intense need to people please and the sickness that is codependency.
This was a total page-turner; Aron has a gift for words. She covers addiction not only through the lens of an addict but explores how an illness of this sort affects the dynamics of everyone around one. She reinvigorates the conversation of addiction as a "family disease" to one that is so often a marginalized women's struggle.
What I particularly love about Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls, aside from it being extremely personal, is that Aron references a multitude of psychologists to illuminate the plight of codependents. She quotes clinical psychologist Janice Haaken and explains that codependence originates in a tendency, particularly common among daughters in dysfunctional families, to overcompensate for parental inadequacies by becoming parentified and by developing an excessive sensitivity to the needs of others. She even cites the renowned Karen Horney arguing that women were socialized to overvalue men in their lives, contrary to Freudian theory.
Aron perfectly articulates the looming power held by men in women's lives, at home and in society. She recognizes that the patriarchy was not only a thing that was being enacted upon us but a throbbing, oozing, living system in which we were complexly complicit.
She even acknowledges her non-specific jealousy toward men; "just that they were men, that their voices weren't lilting and full of question marks, that they seemed to move through space with so much more ease."
This memoir is layered with personhood — intimacy, illness, love, the patriarchy, and much more. Ultimately, Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls is a story on the calamity of being female.