Desperate Housewives, Neuroses and the Domestic Environment, 1945–1970
Ali Haggett
Studies for the Society for the Social History of Medicine
978 1 84893 310 1: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
978 1 84893 311 8
The historical association between femininity and neurosis is well documented. Many recent studies have seen women’s mental health issues in the aftermath of the Second World War as being a direct consequence of a lack of opportunity and the banality of a domestic lifestyle. Although the figure of the ‘desperate housewife’ is familiar to us, Haggett suggests that many women in the 1950s and 1960s led satisfying lives and that gender roles, while very different, were often seen as equal.
Sample pages
Readership
Social History, History of Medicine and Gender Studies
Contents
Introduction
1 Reflections on the Desperate Housewife
2 The Art of Marriage: Marriage and Mothering during the Post-War Period
3 The Housewife's Day: Personal Accounts of Housewifery and Mothering
4 Lightening Troubled Minds: Mid-Twentieth Century Medical Understandings of Affective Disorder
5 Not Something You Talk About: Personal Accounts of Anxiety and Depression
6 For Ladies in Distress: Representations of Anxiety and Depression in the Medical and Popular Press
Conclusion
Reviews
'richly contextualized and rigorously researched, Haggett's book makes a unique contribution to our knowledge and understanding of women and gender roles in post-Second World War Britain, questioning feminist orthodoxies on domesticity and emotional well-being' Hilary Marland, University of Warwick
'The lesson from this scholarly and provocative book is clear: if we are to distinguish effectively between myth and reality, we desperately need more such nuanced and carefully evidenced historical accounts of the social determinants of mental illness.' Mark Jackson, University of Exeter
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