This is the first time I’ve heard about the novel Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder. However, from the excerpt that I’ve read so far, I really like it. Page 12 was one of my favorite pages, I really liked how the reader could feel the narrator’s anxiety building and how much pressure is put on mothers in the workplace. This is really shown with the sentence length which shows how frantic she’s getting. This page also shows how women are supposed to “do it all.” The previous pages described how the narrator was well-educated and had her “dream job,” while her husband had less education and was the one who continued to work after she gave birth. This especially shows how women are expected to give up their life and sacrifice their dreams for the baby, while men can continue going to work and let their wives take care of the house and child. This is shown in the scene where she wakes up in the middle of the night to take care of the crying baby while she describes her husband as an immovable rock. She’s clearly sleep deprived and is beyond exhausted and when she hears the baby cry she feels frustrated because all she wants to do is sleep. When she reacts negatively and her husband has to take care of the baby, he ends up calling her a bitch. This scene really stuck out to me because the minute he has to help out or do any work regarding the child he gets upset. Even though he called her this in a “joking” manner, this term has been used against women for a long time and runs deeper than just a simple joke.
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