The Captive Wife: Conflicts Of Housebound Mothers
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
First published in 1966 and immediately hailed as a landmark work of feminist sociology, The Captive Wife: Conflicts of Housebound Mothers presents a searing and meticulously researched portrait of the invisible prison constructed around women by mid-twentieth-century domestic life. Drawing on extensive interviews with working-class and middle-class mothers in London, Hannah Gavron chronicles the profound tensions between the aspirations of educated women and the suffocating constraints of a society that expected them to find total fulfilment within the home, revealing a generation caught between the promises of post-war modernity and the unyielding demands of motherhood and marriage. Gavron writes with the precision of a trained sociologist and the moral urgency of an advocate, arguing that the isolation of housebound mothers is not a personal failing but a systemic contradiction embedded in modern capitalism and patriarchal culture. Her work anticipates the broader second-wave feminist movement and stands alongside Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique as one of the defining texts of its era. Tragically, Gavron did not live to see its full impact — published posthumously, the book carries an added weight that makes its quiet, searching questions about women's freedom feel all the more haunting. Who, the reader is left to ask, was truly captive — and are the bars still there?
Author: Hannah Gavron
Format: Paperback
Genre: Gender studies
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
First published in 1966 and immediately hailed as a landmark work of feminist sociology, The Captive Wife: Conflicts of Housebound Mothers presents a searing and meticulously researched portrait of the invisible prison constructed around women by mid-twentieth-century domestic life. Drawing on extensive interviews with working-class and middle-class mothers in London, Hannah Gavron chronicles the profound tensions between the aspirations of educated women and the suffocating constraints of a society that expected them to find total fulfilment within the home, revealing a generation caught between the promises of post-war modernity and the unyielding demands of motherhood and marriage. Gavron writes with the precision of a trained sociologist and the moral urgency of an advocate, arguing that the isolation of housebound mothers is not a personal failing but a systemic contradiction embedded in modern capitalism and patriarchal culture. Her work anticipates the broader second-wave feminist movement and stands alongside Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique as one of the defining texts of its era. Tragically, Gavron did not live to see its full impact — published posthumously, the book carries an added weight that makes its quiet, searching questions about women's freedom feel all the more haunting. Who, the reader is left to ask, was truly captive — and are the bars still there?