Plot
Clothing designer Mary Haines lives in a beautiful suburban Connecticut home with her wealthy financier husband Steven and their 11-year-old daughter Molly. Her best friend since college, Sylvie Fowler, is the editor of a prominent fashion magazine that dictates the latest in taste and style for New York City fashionistas. When Sylvie learns Steven is involved with Crystal Allen, a perfume salesgirl in Saks Fifth Avenue, from chatty manicurist Tanya, she confides in the ever-pregnant Edie Cohen but hesitates to tell Mary, who discovers the news herself from the same woman after getting a manicure herself. Despite her mother Catherine's exhortation to keep quiet about what she knows and a holiday away, Mary confronts Crystal first, in a lingerie store, and then Steven, before asking for a divorce.
Sylvie, Edie, and writer Alex Fisher join forces to support their spurned friend, but complications arise when Sylvie, facing the loss of her job, conspires with local gossip columnist Bailey Smith by confirming Mary's marital woes in exchange for Bailey contributing a celebrity profile to the magazine. Mary is stunned by Sylvie's betrayal and ends their friendship. Mary's daughter begins to ditch school and confides in Sylvie because her mother, distracted by the upheavals in her once idyllic life, becomes more distant.
Mary is fired from her job by her father, has a makeover, and decides to open her own clothing design firm with some financial assistance from Catherine. As she begins to get her life in order, she makes an effort to bond with Molly, who reveals her father's relationship with Crystal is unraveling and reunites with Sylvie, who has quit her job. With this knowledge in hand, Mary sets out to repair her fractured marriage as she prepares to unveil her new line of womenswear in a fashion show attended not only by boutique owners but the buyer from Saks, as well. Sylvie tells Mary that she has met a guy and is thinking of giving him her real phone number. In the final scene, Edie's water breaks and she has a baby boy. Whilst Edie is in labour Mary receives a call from her husband and is encouraged by the others to answer it; she then arranges a date with him.
After the ending credits we see that a magazine titled Sylvie is published with the four friends on the cover and Alex's book is out. A hint is given about Crystal's possibly going out with Alex's ex-girlfriend Natasha. The women talk about the movie, the magazine, the book and the joys, heartaches and uniquely special triumphs of being a woman.
Read more about this topic: The Women (2008 Film)
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“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)