The internet is the worst. But, approximately three years ago – just for a bit – it was the best. Why? Because everyone was reading “The Crane Wife”. Then telling their friends to read “The Crane Wife”. Then… talking about “The Crane Wife”. New York novelist CJ Hauser’s elegant, bittersweet essay about why she cancelled her wedding was published by The Paris Review in July 2019 and promptly went viral. It was read by more than a million people, and won high-profile admirers from writer Roxane Gay to actor Busy Philipps (who simply tweeted “Yes. Yes. YES.”) Amid the fervour, Hauser enjoyed one tweet in particular: “Forget your zodiac sign, tell me which passages of ‘The Crane Wife’ you immediately screenshotted to show your therapist.”
The internet doesn’t usually spin out over artful literary essays. So what was going on? Well, to use online parlance: people felt seen. Women, in particular. In “The Crane Wife”, Hauser treks off to study the North American whooping crane as research for her novel, Family of Origin. She does this 10 days after calling off her engagement. In the field, she discovers a Japanese folklore tale about a crane who plucks out her own feathers every night to maintain the illusion, for a man who otherwise wouldn’t want to care for her, that she’s a woman. “To keep becoming a woman is such self-erasing work. She never sleeps. She plucks out all her feathers, one by one,” wrote Hauser.
