The Aviator's Wife

I started to read The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin and I became immediately frustrated with it. It was a moment where all I could think is, "Why am I so angry at this otherwise pretty forgettable novel?" When this happens, I like to take to reviews Goodreads to see if anyone else can name my frustrations for me. And there I found it. A list of books titled "The ______'s Wife."

I'm sick of historical fiction novels where the title is depicted as how the female main character is related to a male, usually a side character, in their life; The Aviator's Wife, The Painter's Daughter, The King's Mistress, The Doctor's Wife, The Emperor's Great-Grand Niece. Seriously, publishers, STOP.

And the Aviator-Painter-King-Doctor person is usually an ass. For example, in The Aviator's Wife, Charles is portrayed as an abusive cheater at the best of times and at the worst point it is implied that he might have had a hand in murdering their child. (This book is based on the events of Anne Marrow Lindbergh and I have done very little research on her life).

It also bothers me that there is a list of books on Goodreads titled "Famous People's Wives". Perhaps I'm reading into this title a little too far, but that sort of implies that the wives are neither famous nor people. Anne Marrow Lindbergh was the "it" girl of her time. It would be like writing a book about Angelina Jolie and titling it "The Actor's Ex-wife". That would be weird! It sounds like Jolie's one great accomplishment was that she was married to Brad Pitt. Same goes for Marrow Lindbergh. Was the best thing she ever did was get married to Charles Lindbergh, the ass hat aviator? No, it wasn't. So why do we allow titles to reduce women to a single event in their lives?