Review: 'Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today' by Rachel Vorona Cote

It's hard to walk a fine line between having a personality and being "too much", especially if you're a woman. You're supposed to laugh at jokes, but if those laughs turn into snorts you're out. You should definitely enjoy cooking and baking and fine cuisine, but don't stuff your mouth. And please only let an elegant tear drop down your cheek, not the torrents of tears and snot that might show actual emotion. Since I feel this balance I knew Too Much would be the book for me. Also, how gorgeous is this cover! Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 2/25/2020
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Lacing cultural criticism, Victorian literature, and storytelling together, "TOO MUCH spills over: with intellect, with sparkling prose, and with the brainy arguments of Vorona Cote, who posits that women are all, in some way or another, still susceptible to being called too much." (Esmé Weijun Wang)

A weeping woman is a monster. So too is a fat woman, a horny woman, a woman shrieking with laughter. Women who are one or more of these things have heard, or perhaps simply intuited, that we are repugnantly excessive, that we have taken illicit liberties to feel or fuck or eat with abandon. After bellowing like a barn animal in orgasm, hoovering a plate of mashed potatoes, or spraying out spit in the heat of expostulation, we've flinched-ugh, that was so gross. I am so gross. On rare occasions, we might revel in our excess--belting out anthems with our friends over karaoke, perhaps--but in the company of less sympathetic souls, our uncertainty always returns. A woman who is Too Much is a woman who reacts to the world with ardent intensity is a woman familiar to lashes of shame and disapproval, from within as well as without.

Written in the tradition of Shrill, Dead Girls, Sex Object and other frank books about the female gaze, TOO MUCH encourages women to reconsider the beauty of their excesses-emotional, physical, and spiritual. Rachel Vorona Cote braids cultural criticism, theory, and storytelling together in her exploration of how culture grinds away our bodies, souls, and sexualities, forcing us into smaller lives than we desire. An erstwhile Victorian scholar, she sees many parallels between that era's fixation on women's "hysterical" behavior and our modern policing of the same; in the space of her writing, you're as likely to encounter Jane Eyre and Lizzie Bennet as you are Britney Spears and Lana Del Rey.This book will tell the story of how women, from then and now, have learned to draw power from their reservoirs of feeling, all that makes us "Too Much."

In many ways this book is a bit of an inspiration for someone like myself. I like to consider myself a bit of a pseudo-academic, especially since I'm currently nowhere near a university or academia in general. I love reading into texts, analyzing them, figuring out what role they play in our lives today and how they reflect our lives then. Too Much does a lot of that, looking into various Victorian texts, both literary and non-literary, to find out why we still seem to hold true to certain ideas and ideals that were popular then. Aside from this, it is also a blend of research and memoir/autobiography. Carmen Maria Machado released her masterful autobiography, In the Dream House, earlier this year, laying bare how we look at ourselves dependent on the stories we tell and have access to. Vorona Cote does this to a certain extent as well and although her story is perhaps more familiar to many than Machado's, Too Much only occasionally hits similar high notes.

Unfortunately, Too Much left me a little confused at times. The subtitle as well as the introduction heavily prioritize the book's link to Victorian constraints and literature specifically and yet much of the book focuses on different eras and sources, whether it is Jane Austen, pop idols from the 2000s or the movie Heavenly Creatures. Vorona Cote's idea of 'too muchness' never quite crystallized enough for me to take it beyond a hashtag. It's something all women will be able to identify with, but aside from celebrating it there doesn't seem to be a lot we can do with it. Similarly, a lot of the analysis in Too Much is recognizable because it is no longer outrageous. Britney Spears' breakdown in 2008 is no longer a punchline, Angel Clare is hated by everyone and Ramona beloved. Somehow I wish Too Much went further than it does, either dedicating completely to what its subtitle suggests or to being an autobiography.

Rachel Vorona Cote is very passionate and almost uncomfortably honest throughout Too Much. She shares ruthlessly from her past, whether it is her own infidelity or the horrors of being a teenager at a preppy school. Because of this honesty, a trigger warning does also need to accompany this book as one of the chapters, entitled 'Cut', deals with self-harming. It is one of the most autobiographical chapters in Too Much and at times I found myself cringing at what almost felt like the glorification of self-harming. Too Much can be read in such a way that it gives women the go-ahead to be as selfish and self-destructive as they desire. I do not believe this is what Vorona Cote intended. Rather she means to point out that the restrictions we face leave us constantly wondering who we are, second-guessing and repressing ourselves. This is a good message and something to be aware of, but it is also not new. On top of that, books like Too Much sometimes walk a fine line between celebrating women who stand out and are Othered and shaming women who are seen as more compliant. It is a difficult balance and I don't know whether it has been successfully struck by an author yet. At times Vorona Cote veers rather too much towards the latter.

I give this book...

3 Universes!

Overall, I was fascinated by Too Much until I ended up questioning it. I wish that it had gone further in truly assessing what lies behind the restricted behavior and the way it affects different women. Instead it left me with many questions that I'm sure I will be finding answers for over the years.