“The Crane Wife” by CJ Hauser is an essay published in The Paris Review on July 16th, 2019. The writer discussed her past when she was engaged and her present when she leaves for an expedition. The piece went viral because it portrayed a feeling many people share: the constant need to manage themselves appropriately to avoid seeming ‘needy,’ which society has defined as the ultimate killer of relationships. Hauser uses subtle hints of parallelism and symbolism to resonate with her female audience, thus garnering an immensely positive response emotionally.
The writer goes back and forth between discussing both aspects of her story, calling off the wedding and her study. She talks about them in parts, not finishing the whole story and transitions to the other aspect. Hauser discusses how she ditches her wedding ten days before it happens because she feels invisible in the relationship (Devastating writing on making your needs small, 2019). She had been contorting herself for too long to fain happiness, but cannot do it any longer. She leaves for a one-week expedition to study whooping cranes on the gulf coast of Texas.
Hauser describes her fiancé as oblivious to her needs. She gives a detailed account of how she settled for little, never asking for more. She often reasoned that there were more significant problems in the world than hers, hence justifying her stay in the toxic relationship. In the year leading up to her calling off the wedding, CJ often has to plead with her fiancé to notice her or treat her nicely. One example is when she put on a red dress and went to show him. His reaction is unwelcoming, as he does not even acknowledge how she looks in it. When she questions him, he states that he had complimented her the previous summer when she wore the dress and that it was reasonable for her to assume the same now. When proposing, he says he loves her because she is low maintenance, does not nag him, likes beer, and would make a good mother, but she knew better than to want more (Hauser, 2019). She also discusses how her mother in law to be had failed to respect her Christmas stocking character wish, claiming that the squirrel she had chosen did not represent CJ fully.
The relationship with her husband is filled with cheating and lies. He sleeps with a girl one week into seeing each other with CJ, but claims they had not been officially dating. He kisses another girl on New Year’s Eve a month later and justifies himself by saying they had not discussed monogamy. CJ later has suspicions on the nature of the relationship between her fiancé and one of his friends. When she expresses her concern, he makes her feel stupid for thinking something was going on. He would later confess that he had slept with the friend in question, but says it did not matter since it was in the past.
Before leaving for the trip, she considers canceling it because that was not the typical behavior of someone who has just canceled her wedding. She thinks that she should instead sit at home and do nothing but immediately realizes that she wants to go for the study. The essay then discusses her shopping for the expedition, background information on the people attending it, and what it would entail. The study was an attempt to save whooping cranes, one of the oldest living bird species, through data collection. Having no experience in field research, Hauser is nervous because she expects to meet birders and scientists who did ‘real science.’ Soon after they started the study, she quickly realizes that little of it has to do with the birds (Hauser, 2019). They instead looked at the things the bird needed for survival. Spending time with her teammates and getting dirty during the study made her happy.
During her trip, Hauser comes across The Crane Wife, a Japanese folktale, at a gift shop. In the book, a crane deceives a man into thinking she is a woman so he can marry her. The crane realizes that the man will not love her if he discovers that she is a bird possessing creature needs. Hence, she spends her nights plucking out all her feathers. Hauser compares herself to this crane because she also plucks out her feathers, distorting herself into the image of a ‘woman who does not need things.’ If she had wanted something from her fiancé, she had to act like she did not need it. She did not want to feel like the nagging women in sitcoms. She convinces herself that her desires are small things and that it was imprudent to feel disappointed by them. By her 30s, she believes that needing things from others is a sign of weakness.
In the end, she finally opens up to Lindsay (and Jeff, who might have been eavesdropping) about her life who calls her brave for doing something unexpected. Hauser concludes by talking about leaving her fiancé when it was almost too late. She tells people that it is because he cheated on her because it is hard to explain how she deprived herself of things she needed to survive. Like most people in relationships, she felt like her privation of needs made her worthy of love.