Reading Charlotte Mendelson’s novel Wife
With a spoiler alert: family law is still a work in progress
I am a little late to Mendelson’s novel Wife, which was released in paperback last year to richly deserved praise. Late or not, this novel deserves to be on every family practitioner’s radar.
It tells the story of Zoe, trapped in a long and controlling same-sex relationship with her narcissistic partner, Penny, who berates Zoe at every turn, especially when daring to leave. The story vividly describes Zoe’s last day in the relationship in what can only be described as her diem horribilis, culminating in a disastrous visit to the mediator’s office to discuss arrangements for their two daughters, Matty and Rose.
There have been plenty of unflattering and, we like to believe, highly fictionalised portraits of divorce lawyers over the years. Look away now mediators!
The mediator abdicates all control as Penny, with the help of the sperm donor father, Robin, unleashes threats and invective on Zoe. The mediation is a masterclass of errors and deserves to be read for its tragicomic content. Even
Zoe can’t quite believe what’s happening as Penny hilariously snaps in mediation that Matty is “my spaniel” when Zoe makes the obvious point that children can’t be dragged along for contact like a spaniel.
Smouldering alongside Penny in mediation, Robin demands his fair and equal rights as per the original parenting agreement, as if this is the holy grail. His pious obsession with timetables and demanding his biological rights is particularly potent, especially vis-à-vis daughter Rose, for whom Zoe is not the biological mother.
The novel portrays how contact schedules/agreements can be weaponised and how, for modern families, there is the added twist of biological warfare as parentage is deconstructed and dissected on separation. Wife movingly describes Zoe’s struggle to exit this toxic relationship when it is barricaded with entrenched emotional, parental, economic and legal obstacles, while piercingly exposing how effective and sticky, imbalances of power and parental anxiety can be in glueing people to the spot. It also effectively throws shade on the legal system and how its proxies can contribute to emotional and legal whiplash.
It makes for difficult reading just how anaemic the child professionals and mediator in the novel come across. The original parenting agreement is treated as a sacrificial cross for the children to bear and professional salvation is nowhere to be found. Heartfelt insight is expressed by daughter Matty, who speaks out in fear of “nutty timetables” and being treated as pass-the-parcel. She is expected to move between her two mothers and spend one-third of her time with her father. Robin’s parental status has clearly been extorted in return for sperm, yet the professionals do not seem perturbed or curious about this or the suitability of the arrangements for the children. Zoe at least knows this is “shit for the kids”, but her voice is effectively drowned out by the angrier voices. She is relegated to a one-third parental stakeholder who ends up being democratically out-voted by the clever and collusive Penny and Robin, who effectively surround her in a pincer movement. Matty’s voice as a child is also ignored because she is considered to have been brainwashed by birth mother Zoe. Mendelson very beautifully elucidates the madness of it all, and how modern families and mediation can boil over.
Thankfully, in real life, many family practitioners have a much better understanding of the importance of mediation safeguards and also appreciate that discussion, along with careful planning and advice, is essential for same-sex couples contemplating a family. Failure to do so is a price most keenly felt by the non-biological parent if separation ensues and formalities have not been dealt with. Unwitting Zoe does not know better, and endures Penny’s abuse way too long rather than risk the trauma of potentially losing the children if she leaves. This remains an invidious choice faced by many unhappy couples, and practitioners would do well to understand how horrible v horrible is a common conundrum faced by clients. Often the “least worst” is all that clients can hope to achieve, and only if they have pockets deep enough to pay advisers for this still-less-than-appealing outcome.
An interesting plot twist in the novel comes from Justine (Robin’s sister), who it emerges has been having an affair with Penny and who also exerts her influence over the child arrangements by aligning with Robin and Penny. Many family cases in practice have a “Justine”-type individual in the fray and, in Mendelson’s novel, this misshapen parenting quadrangle creates a tinderbox for what are already complicated child arrangements.
I should flag that I do not know if Mendelson is telling a semi-autobiographical story or not, but she perceptively chronicles: “There are unreliable narrators in real life, not only in fiction”. This should be at the forefront of every family practitioner’s mind when working with clients. Reading between the lines and some critical distance are essential skills in family practice, since the truth is almost impossible to find.
Mendelson’s novel also serves to remind us of some of our other legal shortcomings and how, until recently, there was not even a concept of legal same-sex relationships. The Civil Partnership Act only came into force in 2005 and the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act in 2014. It took until 2009 for joint birth certificates to be issued for female same-sex couples in civil partnerships/marriages, or those who conceived using a licensed UK fertility clinic. Without either, only birth mothers have legal status and parental responsibility even today.
It’s worth noting that many lesbians still prefer to use unlicensed sperm donors (people they know) outside of an expensive fertility clinic setting which they cannot afford. And like many others, they may well choose to cohabit rather than marry or enter into a civil partnership, which can result in a perfect storm on both a parenting and financial front if separation occurs (which it often does when research shows same-sex female couples are prone to higher rates of relationship breakdown). We know well that cohabitation, whether same or opposite sex, is growing in popularity (the fastest growing family type), which itself has engendered a plethora of problems which the recently announced government consultation on cohabitation and “A fairer end to relationships” hopes to tackle to meet the challenges of today’s modern world.
Mendelson’s Wife does a magnificent job of holding up a mirror to family life and modern struggles, and there’s plenty for family practitioners to reflect upon. The world is moving at pace and issues such as parenting, whether in modern family settings or not; coercive control; economic and domestic abuse; access to justice; privatisation of processes through mediation and its many dispute resolution variants; cohabitation; statutory recognition of nuptial agreements; proper handling of vulnerability, including neurodiversity and menopause… all these issues remind us that we have a way to go before we can consider ourselves a truly forward-looking profession.