When I think of book clubs, I think of two things: women and wine.
The movie poster of Book Club, the 2018 film starring Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, Jane Fonda, and Mary Steenburgen, features the four women against a clean, white background, their equally white table populated by bowls filled with salad and glasses filled with equally white wine. David Sims with The Atlantic even calls it a “delightful, white wine-soaked romp.”
A quick search of the words “book club” on Pinterest produces a myriad of images depicting women sipping wine. The same search on Etsy yields wine glasses, and even candles (fashioned from the bottoms of recycled wine bottles, natch), emblazoned with the slogan: “My book club can out drink your book club.”
There’s no shortage of Internet articles celebrating the conflation of book clubs with wine drinking, like this one from Bustle, entitled, “9 Book and Wine Pairings That Are Perfect For A Boozy Book Club.” A different Bustle article asks, “What’s a book club without a glass of wine or three?” Even Better Homes & Gardens proclaims, “There’s nothing better than having a book club discussion over a few glasses of wine with your closest friends.”
Since when have book clubs been so obsessed with drinking? Well, basically since their invention, according to Charles Shillito’s 18th century poem “The country book-club.” He said clubs are “scenes…with minds less polished, but with lungs more loud” where men were able to “taste the sweets of literature—and wine.” The emphasis there is Shillito’s.
And wine, even in 2018, is still at the center of these (supposedly) literary gatherings. Not that I have a problem with wine. I don’t. The trouble for me, though, is that we’re not calling it a wine night. We’re calling it a book club.
In our society, a woman is shamed for taking time for herself. That is changing, with the ever-present mantra of “self care” popping up all over the place, in which women are advised to take personal time to care for their own physical and mental well-being. With that in mind, what’s so wrong with women getting together for an hour a week to relax and have a few glass of chardonnay with the gals? Nothing. But I fear that, because a woman is allowed so little time for herself, she may feel the need to make the most of it during her book club time. She spends the week waking up at dawn, getting the kids ready for school or daycare, working 9 to 5, picking the kids up, making dinner, cleaning the house, emotionally fulfilling her husband, going to sleep much later than she’d intended, and then doing it all over again. This may look like a crude snapshot of life for women from decades past, but it’s still the reality for many women in 2018. And even if a woman doesn’t have children, the snapshot doesn’t especially change.
In short, the woman is responsible for the emotional labor of a relationship, and that’s exhausting. So, when she gets a night off, she wants to loosen up by drinking and socializing with friends (which she hardly ever gets to do).
But that’s not the purpose of a book club. A book club is for education, for discussion of intellectual ideas. Which, of course, isn’t as fun or as relaxing. And after the full-time job she’s worked at all week (where she most likely isn’t paid as much as her male coworkers for equal work), not to mention the emotional labor she’s performed all week by managing her husband and household, she doesn’t want to perform yet another chore of exercising her mind. In fact, she wants to put her mind on mute.
This isn’t fair to women. It isn’t fair that they barely have the time to read a book, let alone get together once a week to discuss it. It isn’t fair that women feel like they can’t create intellectual spaces for themselves, simply because they are too exhausted. Because women don’t want to call it a wine night or a ladies’ night. That sounds trivial. That sounds like a reason to neglect their husbands. But a book club? That’s intellectual. That’s education. That is a woman improving herself, which isn’t really “wasted” time, the way a bubble bath or a Girls’ Night Out would be.
What women need are both: a place to relax with wine, and a place to discuss intellectual ideas. There’s no reason that these two things can’t exist together; it’s just that they seldom do. It’s not an uncommon opinion that the best book clubs have a no drinking policy. Personally, I don’t think that that’s necessarily true. However, I do think that the best book clubs have a structure, and probably a discussion leader. Therefore, a book club is just one more thing on a woman’s to do list, after picking dirty laundry up off the floor, planning meal nights for the week, and reminding her husband for the fourth time to call his mother because today is her birthday.
It shouldn’t be like that. Women shouldn’t be in charge of 99% of the household management. It’s not fair. And that’s what we need to work on: making sure that women aren’t so tired from all that B.S. described above, that they are unable—or unwilling—to sit down for an hour to attend a book club discussion. And THEN maybe go out for a glass (or three) of wine.
What do you think? Why are book clubs so wine-y? What makes a good book club? Comment your thoughts below!
Elizabeth May 