Thoreau was only half right when he said that “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.” He left out the other half of the gender spectrum—but then he was living it up in the woods when he wrote that. If he’d been around to read books like Molly Patterson’s Rebellion, I’m sure he’d issue a revised statement. This novel contains the stories of a series of women over the course of a century, in two countries, who rebel against their social expectations and end up paying the price for it.
There are four main characters in Rebellion—two who live in rural Illinois on their family farms and two in rural China, in Shanxi and Sichuan. Louisa and Addie, at the turn of the twentieth century, take diverging paths after they get married. Louisa moves to a one room cabin on a farm in southern Illinois. Addie heads off to Shanxi province with her missionary husband to try and bring the Chinese to Christianity. In the mid-twentieth century, Louisa’s daughter Hazel tries to keep her head above financial water after her husband dies. Half a century later, Juanlan is pulled back to her family’s hotel in a small Sichuan town after her father has a stroke.
Unlike most novels with multiple protagonists, the connections between the for women are tenuous. Rather, Rebellion is a portrait of women in isolation, who feel invisible as long as the house is kept up and the children are presentable. All of the women except Louisa later have affairs. All of those affairs lead to emotional pain and disaster. Hazel in particular feels the need to atone for her actions. And yet, for all the pain that comes later, each of these women’s affairs makes them feel seen for the first time in their lives. Hazel and Juanlan feel worshiped by their lovers. Addie feels like, wither her lover, she can actually make a difference with her missionary work.
At 560 pages, however, Rebellion is too long. I never did figure out how Juanlan was connected to the other three women apart from a sketchy Chinese connection. There are prologues and epilogues that feature even more women who are trapped by circumstance and make choices for love that they later regret that do nothing more than hammer home a thesis that reads as though women should not rebel against unhappiness. At the end of the novel, I felt like all of the stories were trying to advocate for lives of quiet desperation because they’re safer in the long run, as though one miserable person is better than disrupting the status quo. I think Rebellion is a book that will make readers sad and frustrated, especially if they are women.
I received a free copy of this book from Edelweiss for review consideration. It will be released 8 August 2017.