A Critique of Colette Dowling?s excerpt of The Cinderella Complex: Wo

The battle of the sexes that rages on today is just as strong as it has always been. Although an ever-increasing number of opinions are being heard and made known, many people are still ignorant and hold on to traditional views that can sometimes be damaging. Even though there has been much progress in the ways of communication and understanding, much is still needed to be done and improved upon. Colette Dowling is a well-respected author on womens psychological issues who uses her personal experiences and insights to enlighten women about themselves. In Dowlings excerpt of The Cinderella Complex Womens Hidden Fear of Independence, she provides a clearly write and rational explanation on the psychological issues of dependency women exhibit, but lacks in supporting evidence and examples.One night she is lying miserable in bed, sick. She therefore becomes conscious of the fact that she is non despondent because she feels ill, but because there is no one there to comfort her. She realizes now that this is the way it has always been, she has known no other way. Throughout her childhood she was raised with the notion that someday somehow she would be whisked away by her prince charming and live happily ever after. She did not know what it was like to be truly nonparasitic. Nor was she raised to be comfortable with it. Boys were trained to be self-sufficient early on while her parents and society taught her that she did not need to be self-reliant that she only needed to hold on until her savior came. This person (or so she thought) appeared after she had been raising her children alone for the previous tetrad years. As their relationship grew, they reasoned that it would be good if they moved in together. Soon after moving in together, she prove herself sinking into the same routines that she had in her marriage. Slowly but surely she fell into the groove of being a good house wife and stopped feeling the need to pursue her career. She found this surprising ly easy and natural. To take the place of her writing she began doing household chores and started cooking again. Within no time she had gained weight and was starting to feel the inadequacies that go on with not having to support one self. She started to doubt her effectiveness as a writer and ability for self-sufficiency. Her loss of ambition also created an unwanted hardship on the relationship b... ... of the stress that accompanies self-sufficiency. Many women in the modern world simply do not have a father figure around. Without the man being the savior, the girls do not have that crutch to lean on and therefore come to not expect any help in the future. These are the truly independent women of today. They have no choice either rise up and take care of themselves or fade away. Throughout all of these concerns, one thing is unvarnished and cannot be disputed. Humans are truly creatures of environment and circumstance. What may apply to one may be totally foreign and irreleva nt to another. One cannot peradventure make a blanket statement and without even researching it, expect it to apply to everyone. This is what Dowling attempts to do. All that she has the authority to speak about is her own personal experiences. She cannot possibly get through all of the intricacies of human life and expect her personal views to be universal, nor can anyone else. No, she should not have had her book published by Ms. Magazine. Although her experiences may be sensible for some, they would not necessarily be beneficial for those who were not brought up as she was. How can one expect to know the mind of all?