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Books

Sex, rebellion, ambition, prejudice: the story of 1950s women has it all

A review of Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes by Virginia Nicholson reveals that it wasn’t just men blocking female emancipation: women themselves were equally to blame

14 March 2015

9:00 AM

14 March 2015

9:00 AM

Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes: The Story of Women in the 1950s Virginia Nicholson

Penguin Viking, pp.526, £16.99

Although the young women of the 1950s hovered on the cusp of change, many did not know it. Valerie Gisborn was the exuberant 15-year-old daughter of ‘a sharp-tempered, anti-social’ mother riddled with ‘neurotic restrictiveness’. But Valerie had fallen in love. She had met Brian in 1949 at the local ballroom in Leicester, her sole permissible social excursion of the week.

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