If you want a book about the pressure of being a modern woman in modern times, I would suggest reading Gone Girl. A lot of people thought The Girl on the Train was a suitable heir to Gone Girl, although I was not one of those people. It was interesting to read a story told (partially) from the point of a view of unreliable narrator, an alcoholic who blacked out on so many key points of her life. The fact that kind of character is so rare in literature and film says something about modern women, for sure. But I wouldn’t say that the book said as much as Gone Girl. Anyway, as Emily Blunt promotes the film, she was asked about her character (obviously), the alcoholic who struggled with fertility. Blunt ended up talking about the huge pressures society puts on mothers:

“I think there is a huge societal pressure on women when it comes to motherhood, this sort of mummy cult that goes on. And I think it sort of makes women feel that they have to be a bit defensive about the choices that they make, whether they want to be a mother, whether they don’t, whether they want to breastfeed, whether they don’t. I could go on and on. In the domestic world, I think it’s when women can be a bit cruel about each other, more so than any other environment. And I think this film really captures that.”

[From The Guardian]

The mummy cult is real, so she’s right on that count. You get a group of judgy moms together and just say the words “Breastfeeding. C-section. Drug-free birth. Eating donuts while pregnant. Attachment parenting.” And there will be a frenzy. Everybody has opinions about all of it and every mom thinks she’s got the answer. Still, I don’t actually think that the book or the movie is really about that? Blunt’s character isn’t being judged because she’s not a mother, really. She’s being judged because she’s a fall-down, black-out alcoholic.

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