Feminism in The Glass Castle

Feminism is defined as "comprising a number of social, cultural and political movements, theories and moral philosophies concerned with gender inequalities and equal rights for women." In the memoir The Glass Castle an aura of feminist pride seems to surround Jeanette's mother, however, her ideas of feminism are slightly warped interpretations. She claims she wants independence, that domesticity is not her thing, that she does not need to bend her values for a man, yet Rosemary Walls is forever taking her ideas to an extreme, or defining her laziness as feminism. I understand, the woman is bipolar, but I think it is wrong to cry feminist if your views of the philosophy are incorrect and reflect poorly on the cause. One instance in the novel that truly disgusted me was on page 56 :

Mom didn’t like cooking much— “Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour,” she’d ask us, “when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?”—so once a week or so, she’d fix a big cast-iron vat of something like fish and rice or, usually, beans. We’d all sort through the beans together, picking out the rocks, the Mom would soak them overnight, boil them the next day with an old ham bone to give them flavor, and for that entire week, we’d have beans for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If the beans started going bad, we’d just put extra spice in them, like the Mexicans at the LBJ Apartments always did. (Walls 56)

In the name of her independence, this mother defies many societal norms of the era in which this story takes place. The passage shows how the mother would rather be a self-absorbed person and let her children eat rotting food, as opposed to taking some time to make sure that the are eating healthy, balanced meals. Although this style of meal preparation is easy and food is always on hand, it is unsanitary, and completely lazy. As much as the mother disagrees with domesticity, she could approach feeding her family in an entirely different way, and still have time for herself and for her artwork.
The mother in this story also says many things that I find completely out of line for a mother to say. After attending a college seminar for a few days, Rosemary returns home and suddenly feels as though she is a new woman. Walls writes:

A few days later, Mom came home. She seemed different, too. She had lived in a dorm on the university campus, without four kids to take care of, and she had loved it. She’d attended lectures and she’d painted. She’d read stacks of self-help books, and they had made her realize she had been living her life for other people. She intended to quit her teaching job and devote herself to her art. “It’s time I did something for myself,” she said. “It’s time I started living my life for me.” (Walls 218)

Any person who decides that they are going to be a parent is making the decision to give up a part of their life for their children, and they just have to accept that. Although I do not feel a parent should live vicariously through their child, there has to be some level of involvement otherwise what was the point of having kids. Yes, the mother in this memoir wants independence, but I find it ironic that she of all people feels she has been living for other people. Throughout the memoir the mother is the one character who seems to not be living for someone else, and who appears to be the most independent, yet in this passage she claims to have been held back by her family. I find her striving for independence a joke, and if this woman were my mother, I would be pretty annoyed with her.
I think that the feminism in this novel was not actual feminism beliefs, but instead the way that these beliefs are warped and twisted by other people to defend their short-comings, neglect their families, and act downright ridiculous. If Jeannette's mother were truly an equality seeking, independent woman, she would have left her husband, cared for her children in a humane way, and made sure that she divided time between herself and her family equally.