Chapter 5 Partnerships Summary and Analysis

Chapter 5, Partnerships, describes partnerships the five women have with their significant others and how they shape their creative lives. Among the five women, there is a spectrum of collaboration with husbands and lovers.

Alice and Jack become business partners as well as lovers; this at times threatens the balance of their relationship. Joan and her husband Erik have collaborated on projects throughout their partnership, but Joan takes a more traditional secondary role to her husband's work. Mary and her husband Barkev believe at first that they have nothing in common professionally, but they find that they complement each other when they spend time in foreign countries, working in tandem to understand new cultures. Johnnetta and her husband Robert end up dissolving their partnership when professional ambitions take them in different directions. And Ellen and her husband Steve have a...