Description
We have had now ten years of so-called women’s liberation, ten years since what Germaine Greer called ‘the second feminist wave’ broke over Britain. The intervening decade has resounded to more analysis and apparent reassessment of women’s roles, more argument about their status and their relationship to men, than any time since the suffragettes.
The crux has been, of course, the domestic commitments of woman, the caring service they do for their children, husbands and lovers, and the growing demand for personal freedom and identity that seems to run counter to those traditional duties.
In this fascinating book, Suzanne Lowry attempts to discover how deep the feminist arguments have cut into the basic fabric of society, and to what extent they have touched the ‘ordinary’ housewives of Britain. And it is in the use of the term ‘housewife ‘ even more than ‘mother’ that women most mark their difference from men. The word has a ring of both privilege and subservience which explains why so many woman embrace it, while resenting and apologizing for it at the same time.
The author asks individual housewives, in a series of interviews, to say how they see themselves, and pits their views against the moulders of opinion – advertisers, journalists, politicians, lobbyists – who tell women what they ought to be, or court them for what they hope they are. What is revealed is that the gap between image – or even fantasy – is wide. How can it be that in a country where half the adult female population is in paid employment outside the home, the dream of the rose-coloured cottage with two-and-a-half children is still more potent than the spectre of grinding housework and loss of name and identity?
Hardcover, 224 pages. In very good pre-loved condition with the exception of a hand written inscription on the front page.