The Husbands: A Novel

Nora is the protagonist of The Husbands, a mother and a lawyer. She juggles her professional ambition to become a partner and her personal desire to build a loving home for her family. Society’s expectations, illustrated by Hayden, Gary, and the male commenters on social media, compel women to maintain responsibility for the household and children despite their other obligations. When those responsibilities interfere with Nora’s ability to work long hours on short notice, they are seen as a reason to exclude women from high-powered positions. The weight of motherhood is often far heavier than that of fatherhood, demonstrated by Nora and Roman Jenkins’s shared inability to keep in touch with old schoolmates. Nora, doing the work typically associated with mothers, insists, “There’s so little time” (91), and Roman agrees. Roman has been programmed to perform the duties typically ascribed to moms, meaning his life experience is now more like Nora’s than Hayden’s. Nora and Roman’s agreement proves that it is precisely Nora’s domestic responsibilities, which ought to be shared equally with her husband, that prevent her from achieving her professional and personal goals. Only after Cornelia deprograms Hayden can Nora work the way Gary expects, and he finally tells her, “You do good work” (279).