The Third Choice

THE THIRD CHOICE
by Elizabeth Janeway

 Nomination: National Book Finalist 1960

 Date Read: November 30, 2019

The Third Choice starts incredibly slow and introduces two related women who seem to be living somewhat parallel lives. The younger, Lorraine, is the mother of two young children and trapped in a loveless marriage that continually causes her to question her sanity. The elder woman, Lorraine's aunt, is stuck in a hospital after breaking her leg and we watch her fight against her new limitations while struggling to come to terms with her past. Both women make choices in their lives that cause them to question how to move forward.

 The Third Choice, in Janeway's telling, refers to an option that opens up during the impossible, when you can't go forward but you can't go back, an impossible third choice is revealed that allows life to go on. At the novel's conclusion, readers aren't quite sure what the future will hold for either. Diana, the aunt, is settled back at her home and she comes to terms with her new physical reality and the reality that she has lost both her children forever. Her son, Jimmy, was lost to war and her daughter, Claire, lost to a convent after Diana turned her back on her during the war and Claire became prosecuted as a Nazi conspirator.

 Lorraine, on the other hand, still has her whole future ahead of her. She has ended her marriage to Herbert by telling him that she wanted to leave him and he tried to commit suicide in front of her. An affair that she recently engaged in has come to an expected end. And this, according to Janeway, is where a Third Choice will materialize for her to continue on in her life, as uncertain as it may be now.

 There are several aspects of this novel that I find disturbing and all of them have to do with the difference in modern life versus life back in the 60s. Women's choices were so limited back then that the most any of them could hope for was to make a good marriage. I am so relieved that women are the architects of their own lives now and exist as individual humans rather than in relationship to the men in their lives. The second disturbing feature is Lorraine's rationale of how much Herbert loves her because he was willing to end his life for her. In today's terms, we would call him a manipulator and abuser. 

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