The Surrendered Wife
Author LAURA DOYLE
Publisher TOUCHSTONE
ISBN 0743204441
This particular book was the first written by Laura Doyle and it, in time became a New York Times best seller. Several others have followed along with seminars, workshops and the like and with these, the testimonies of many women who have been helped by following the authors’ exhortations and counsels and some women who found no help here at all. Laura Doyle continues to write and the website dedicated to her ideals is known as www.superwomansolution.com. I have gone through a second and more recent book entitled Things will Get as Good as you can Stand.’ So, what to say about these writings. Firstly the author regards herself as a feminist. Although she has a faith, it is not that of a committed Christian. Her writings are rather repetitive and could be classed as under the ‘pop-psychology’ heading and found in the self help shelves of bookstores. As with many of such writings, there are always elements that are helpful. Perhaps we could sum up her first book “The Surrendered Wife” by saying, “if you are a controlling wife, stop it, and your relationship with your husband will improve and he will too!” She does qualify the kind of husband you should not surrender to, such as the husband addicted to drugs or alcohol or in the habit of physical battery and it is a good thing she does. She strikes a significant chord of truth throughout but gets a bit laborious as she does so, turning over the same stone a myriad of ways. Remember, this is a lady from California USA writing and this means much illustration is soaked in the American way of life, but still that central chord is struck and it is a vital one to incorporate into the music of life so as to make marriage and family tuneful and and harmonious and remove much discord from it. Her thesis is that if the woman relinquishes willingly and steadily her inveterate tendency to attempt control her husband will inevitably, though sometimes gradually, take up the reins as he really should do. He may not do things so efficiently as she would have done but, he will become fulfilled as a man and this will result in her becoming more fulfilled as a woman. In one of her other writings she deals with the surrendered single person and then the way a woman will become a far better woman and person if she learns to truly receive rather than give. Again there is so much that is repetitive but we can hear something of a Christian sound in the background all the time mingled with other notes of the kind that make everything ‘feel good’. Because these kind of books face issues in a somewhat unabashed way, issues that sometimes Christians avoid looking at squarely, perhaps there will be some gain from scanning one or two of them.
