Review by Catherine Hayes
In her latest novel, Foundations, Abigail Stewart tells the story of three unique, individualistic women living in three separate eras of history who find their stories connected not only through the Dallas ranch house they all inhabit at one point in time but also through their shared struggles of trying to reinvent their lives and and reconcile what it means to be imperfect in a society that expects perfection from women.
Stewart introduces her reader to three protagonists across the three segments of her novel: Bunny, a 1960s childless housewife who turns to spiritualism to find excitement and feel important in her mundane existence (grocery shopping and decorating her house); Jessica, an actress trying to escape from the spotlight of Hollywood who in her loneliness and isolation forges a connection with the teenager mowing her lawn; and Amanda, a home renovator in 2020 who is often unheard and misunderstood by everyone around her; in an effort to prove herself she agrees to flip the ranch house in order to secure a spot on a reality TV show.
Across all three segments of the novel, each of Stewart’s female protagonists focuses on trying to recreate their lives in some way, and find happiness and purpose in situations wrought with instability, insecurity, and other struggles.
Stewart manages to expertly utilize the socially constructed image of the suburban home and its association with feminine perfection through its idealized concept of the housewife and mother from post-World War II America, and she does so as a way to both heighten the entrapment some of her protagonists feel and also uses it as an element in their liberation.
For Bunny, the house represents the suffocation of her life, and its emptiness represents her failures as a woman in a time when being a wife and mother was considered for many at the time to be the most important career a woman could have. Without that, the suburban lifestyle she lives begins to feel like an imposter’s life and she attempts to try and fill the void in any way she can.
“Bunny was barren and the large house seemed filled with an unnecessary and false hope. Her solution was to get a bird, a parakeet in a cage that sat twittering in the window while she chain smoked on the chaise lounge and read Vogue in her floral day wrapper.”
For a woman like Bunny, breaking away from oppressive gender constructs that seek to force her into this mold of the “perfect” housewife and mother through her interest in spiritualism is the liberation that she needed. She was being suffocated by the idea of suburbia and its ideology for women, and by breaking away she was able to recapture her individualism and come into herself.
Yet Stewart does not completely diminish nor negate suburbia and its power, in relation to women and their individual power, after the conclusion of Bunny’s story. For Jessica and Amanda, the suburban setting is exactly what they needed in order to reclaim their power and individualism. Jessica’s desire for privacy and anonymity from the spotlight was what she needed to accept her past and grow into herself. While Bunny viewed the house as a prison that she tends to with dedication, Jessica allowed the space to overgrow and fall into disrepair, feeling no desire “to take ownership of the land,” and was able to get the space she needed to move forward by becoming detached from the space she occupies.
Amanda’s time in the suburban ranch house was exactly what she needed to break away from the negative impact of social media and the public’s view of the persona she presented to the world online in order to essentially rediscover herself and regain her confidence, especially when she encounters criticism and a lack of support from her partner and even her own family at times. She sees the house not as a prison nor as a place to neglect, but rather as a place of creativity and potential—a blank canvas and an opportunity to achieve happiness from her own making and from something that brings her genuine joy.
“She [Amanda] wanted to channel her empathic tendencies toward helping people achieve their dreams of finding a home…And I am going to manifest it, she told herself as she lit the corner of the paper on fire with the lavender candle, then watched it burn in the bottom of her new undermounted farmhouse style sink.”
Despite the obstacles that the three women faced in their lives, each one of them was able to overcome their personal barriers and rely on their inner strength to manifest the lives they wished to live.
What makes Stewart’s novel a truly meaningful read is that she makes it clear to her reader that the power does not lie in the setting or the space the women occupy. The power lies with the women themselves and in their strength and determination to claim what they need for themselves in order to grow as individuals–a lesson that women today continue to embody and implement as they create their own stories and forge their own paths.
Foundations by Abigail Stewart
Whisk(e)y Tit, 2023, $16.00 (paperback)
ISBN: 9781952600272
Catherine Hayes is a writer and book reviewer from Massachusetts and a recent graduate of the English master’s program at Bridgewater State University. Her work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming in Atticus Review, New Pages, Parhelion Literary Magazine, and Blood & Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine. She can be contacted on Twitter at @Catheri91642131