Table of Contents
Preface ix
Part I The Symbolic Pantomime
1 'A Sort of Silence and Embarrassment' 3
2 The Dainty Life 13
3 'A Seat in the Hall' 25
4 Centralising the Egg Yolks 34
5 Popinjays and Mob Caps 41
6 The Desire for Perfection 50
7 'Some Poor Girl's Got To Go Up and Down, Up and Down…' 59
Part II The Sacred Trust
8 The Ideal Village 83
9 'Silent, Obsequious and Omnipresent' 100
10 'Bowing and Scraping' 113
Part III The Age of Ambivalence
11 'Out of a Cage' 141
12 'Don't Think Your Life Will Be Any Different to Mine' 149
13 'It Was Exploitation But It Worked' 161
14 'Tall, Strong, Healthy and Keen to Work' 170
15 The Mechanical Maid 180
Part IV Outer Show and Inner Life
16 'A Vast Machine That Has Forgotten How to Stop Working' 193
17 'Bachelor Establishments Are Notoriously Comfortable' 208
18 The Question of the Inner Life 218
19 'Do They Really Drink Out of Their Saucers?' 229
20 'Of Alien Origin' 236
Part V A New Jerusalem
21 'A New and Useful Life' 251
22 The Housewife Militant 265
23 'The Change: It Must Have Been Terrible for Them' 276
24 The Shape of Things to Come 286
Part VI 'We Don't Want Them Days Again'
25 'We've Moved to the Front' 299
26 'I'd Never Done What I Liked… Never in All My Life' 310
27 'We Like It Because the Past Is Not So Worrying as the News' 316
Notes 327
Bibliography 353
Acknowledgements 369
Index 371