The Married Feminist last week: Of Amelia Earhart and pre-nups

Among the things that intrigued me the most, amongst all that I read about her was the little-known fact that Earhart and her fiancé, George Putnam had what we might term in the modern world, a pre-nup. Putnam, a publisher, who was divorced, had proposed marriage to Earhart six times before she consented. Earhart married late. She was 33 as a bride in an era when the average age of a new bride was 21.

She was worried that marriage would clip her wings, metaphorically as well as practically. She told a friend in a letter,

“I am still unsold on marriage . . . I may not ever be able to see [it] except as a cage until I am unfit to work or fly or be active.”

She wrote a worried little note to Putnam, in which she laid down the parameters within which she would agree to be part of this marriage. These included an open marriage, and an escape clause. The letter was discovered years later in the Purdue University where, Earhart was a professor, which had a number of her papers.

She wrote, ‘I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself, now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage.’ She would not under any circumstances give up flying and wrote, “Please let us not interfere with the others’ work or play.” A statement that was generous of the other, and demanded the same generosity of spirit back.

Read the entire article here

Among the top 7 horror writers from India according to Desi Blitz UK

Kiran Manral

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The Face at the Window may be Kiran’s fifth novel, but it is her first attempt at penning horror fiction.

The former journalist is known for her romance novels like The Reluctant Detective and Once Upon a Crush. But the shift in creative direction is not as drastic as it seems, as she tells DESIblitz:

“I’ve always been a great fan of good horror writing in fiction and film. My preference has always been towards the paranormal rather than the slasher zombie variant of horror. It is only natural that someday I would write one of my own.

“I think the inexplicable is always something that has interested me. We live in a world where we experience just one of the dimensions. There are so many more levels of consciousness lying unexplored.”

When Kiran is not writing fiction, the Mumbai-based author is championing feminism in her columns and promoting creative writing.

Read the entire article here

The Married Feminist this week: The strong case for the sleep divorce

Should husband and wife have separate bedrooms? I weigh in on this in my column in SheThePeople.tv.

I remember reading, a long, long while ago, about an intruder entering Buckingham Palace reaching the Queen’s bedroom, and having a good chat with her for quite a few minutes before he decided to ask for a ciggie, and that’s when she coaxed him out to the pantry and had him turned over the palace guards.

What struck me, then all of 11, was the fact that the Queen and Prince Philip had separate bedrooms. Having cut my reading teeth on a steady diet of Princess stories as a child to a steady diet of tooth decay inducing mushy romances as a pre-pubertal girl, the idea of a separate bedroom was quite flummoxing to me. And this was much before carnal thoughts had even entered my head, the max I thought men and women got up to were kisses and those were what put babies into stomachs. But then, I am a Mumbai girl and multiple bedrooms were an indulgence given the abominable costs of Mumbai real estate back then and still are today.

More recently, I read that Donald and Melania Trump have separate bedrooms and that Kanye West and Kim Kardashian too slept separately when she was pregnant. Then there was Helena Bonham Carter and her partner, Tim Burton who lived in adjoining houses, fiercely protective of their personal space.

Katherine Hepburn probably got the equation between the sexes right when she famously said, “Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.” But that would be an ideal world.

Read the rest of the article: http://shethepeople.tv/the-strong-case-for-the-sleep-divorce-kiran-manral-in-the-married-feminist/