She appears to be an awful person. At least, as depicted, she does hurtful things without remorse or reflection. Plus, woo.
Worse, she did awful things then bragged about them and became Rich and famous doing so. She profited by being a horrible person.
Excellent point. In reality, the story is banal. There are lots of selfish assholes out there who are indifferent to the pain they cause others. Celebrating it as a journey of self-discovery is a big part of the problem. From my perspective, the discovery that should happen is “Wow, I was a callous piece of shit. I should make amends.”
I haven’t read the book or seen the movie, but I did read this incredibly hilarious review of the movie. If that one clip is indicative of the tone of the movie . . . wow.
How much reflection do you want? You think she should write a freaking novel about it? Oh, wait.
I still don’t see what is “awful” about ending a loveless marriage with a massive irreconcilable difference. What else should she do? Drag it out for a few more years until everyone is miserable? Suck it up and live a lie? Sulk around miserably until he decides to end it? I suppose some marriage counseling would be a nice gesture, but once you hit “he wants kids and I just don’t,” there just isn’t much to do.
Eat Pray Love actually follows a pretty standard rom-com plot by reversing the genders…
The story begins with the man dissatisfied with the state of the marriage. His occupation will be shown as all-consuming and will take the form of something frivolous (a writer, say) or more evil (lawyer, corporate executive, etc). He leaves his once-upon-a-time true love and begins to shack up with a vacuous slut. A joke will likely be made about the poor girl’s IQ in relation to her bra size. If it’s a movie with a crass streak, a joke will also be made about the man’s small stature in the Mr. Winky department and/or his performance using said instrument.
At this point in the story, the man exits, never to be seen again.
The woman then goes on a spiritual quest to find herself again after losing the man she thought of as her true partner. She will bond with old friends. She will try new things. She will meet new people. She will eventually meet a man who provides her with the love and caring that her first husband now never did. Even if the beginning of the story shows the woman as content, by the end the husband will have been revealed to have always been a monster.
Wedding bells. A REAL kiss is shared. Roll credits.
Eat Pray Love is infuriating because it casts the woman in the male role without changing anything else. The woman uses her frivolous job as an excuse to shack up with a pretty young thing, dumping the husband she thought of as her partner. Eventually it comes out that the husband is a slob and an unemployed loser who needs to grow up and he was never actually her partner at all.
At this point in the story, instead of following the man on a spiritual journey to better himself in the face of this betrayal, we still follow the woman. The husband is never seen again except to be dumped on by the woman, who travels the world experiencing wine, [del]wo[/del]men, and song.
In the end, wedding bells (because The Government made her), roll credits.
Even more angering is the real events Gilbert excised from her book. Her husband wasn’t an unemployed layabout, he was a Human Rights lawyer. When a publisher asked him to write the “He Said” half of their “She Said, He Said” tale, he declined because he didn’t feel it was right to air their dirty laundry in public. And instead of embracing a mid-life crisis with some college-age chickadee, he traveled the world helping victims of genocide and terrorism. Oh, and then he got married and started the family he always wanted.
If anything, the men in this thread who have been castigating Gilbert have been going too easy on her.
Here’s a couple for starters:
- Not go around insinuating that it’s his fault.
- Not talk some poor Indian woman into a worse marriage situation than the one that wasn’t good enough for you, and then not even have the decency to give her a marriage gift.
How about any? Any self-reflection at all? The movie shows none. And writing a book about it would be worthwhile if it was self-reflective, not self-justifying or self-indulgent.
For one, it wasn’t loveless. First, she “fell out of” love, and he still loved her. Secondly, the “massive” irreconcilable difference, by which I am assuming you mean that he wanted to have children, seems largely like post-hoc bullshit justification. Did she fall out of love or not? Did she fall out of love because he wanted children? Did she discuss with him this desire and work to come to some understanding from him whether the relationship with her was more important than his desire for children? He might be more like a normal person, who is able to decide between indulging personal desires or balancing and negotiating among various desires. Perhaps he would have readily chosen their relationship.
Again, not everyone demands that things go exactly their way. But in fact, if she really did not love him, I don’t actually have any problems with her leaving the relationship. She should not stay if she does not love the guy. However, she ought not to justify it for other reasons (e.g. children, he needs to grow up), she ought to recognize that she is causing him pain and to feel bad about that fact, and it isn’t something to celebrate. The fact that she can go and fuck other people and eat food in vacation spots is not remarkable or noteworthy. It’s not a transformative journey if she doesn’t transform into something.
It isn’t all men. Many women found the movie to be embarrassingly celebratory of callous selfishness. My wife couldn’t make it through the movie either.
I had a hard time.
She would have been more empathetic if she had started the memoir AFTER her divorce. “Here I am, having screwed up one marriage, in a relationship with a boy toy actor and feeling like I don’t know who I am or what I want. I will travel around the world on a journey of self indulgent reflection and navel gazing.”
Under the Tuscan Sun is the same story, where you don’t feel like the Diane Lane character was a self indulgent bitch.
I remember seeing the part where her friends send her money instead of birthday gifts and thinking “she has friends?”
Maybe he would have chosen to stay.
As it turned out, he’s apparently happily married, presumably with someone who adores their life together, and has the family he dreamed of. She has her freedom and a wildly successful career.
I’m really not seeing them staying together would be a better outcome.
So the end justifies the means?
No, the fact that it was the right decision justifies the means.
If a couple is fundamentally compatible, but the spark has died, by all means work together and try to reignite the flame. And if a couple has a huge issues, but are generally crazy about each other, that calls for counseling and compromise.
But when there is a fundamental incompatibility, and at least one party really doesn’t like the other (and there are no kids and both of you are young and healthy enough to have a shot at real happiness with someone else), what is the point of dragging things out? What is the value of that, when the alternative is both of you eventually being happy? In my opinion, it’s a lot worse to coast along in a dead relationship wasting everyone’s time
I’m not a fan of the book. I have a special distaste for travel memoirs that linger on the author’s sex life. But judging from the numbers, I’m guessing some people like that sort of thing.
even sven, did you watch the movie? I ask because you keep describing something that isn’t really what the movie showed. Are you thinking of a different story?
The movie Eat, Pray, Love depicts a woman who relatively spontaneously decides to end her marriage, showing little compassion for her husband in doing so.
The fact that he is able to wind up in another relationship has little to do with whether the “protagonist” of the movie is reprihensible or not. For my money he does end up better off because he is shed of a really horrible, shallow and callous person. But that’s the point of this thread.
And who trashes her husband and blames him for the end of the marriage (that she ended), then goes off on a self indulgent search for fulfillment.
I guess I don’t see what is so “sef-indugent” about a good long trip. Sure, it’s not saving orphans or raising foster puppies, but few of use are doing that at home. Would it be less “self-indulgent” if she had stayed home while she worked through her demons? You can’t even say she wasn’t productive- she wrote a best selling memoir that spoke to millions.
And used lies to paint her husband as a demon. You get two choices in a divorce when you’re at fault…
You can shit all over your ex-spouse and prove to everyone that you’re toxic and your ex-spouse is better off without you.
Or…
You can slink off into a corner until everyone forgives you.
Gilbert chose Option A, so everyone is rightfully jumping on her.
This may be a fundamental problem for you then, in your efforts to understand what others are trying to tell you.
When you pepper your arguments with silly extremes, it detracts from your point.
If she had acknowledged demons that would have been something. If she had worked on change, that would have been something. She dumped her husband to go shopping, fucking and eating. What about that should “speak to” anyone?
My wife moderates a book club, and when they did this book she seriously hated it. It wasn’t that Gilbert saw her marriage as loveless and left it…it was the fact that she buried her utter selfishness under the guise of a “spiritual quest” that left her somehow blameless and him at fault. My wife thought it was one of the most obliviously selfish things she’d ever read (and of course she had to finish it since she was moderating :)).
And yes, this references the book and not the movie…in order to fight ignorance, I feel the need to go to source material. 
evensven,what is your issue, in all honesty with the people who attack Elizabeth Gilbert choices?
My own issue with what has been written/portrayed is the self indulgent nature, selfishness, narcissism and immaturity of the protagonist. Not to mention the whole noble savage overtones in India and Indonesia.