A Woman's Place, 1910-1975

'A woman born at the turn of the century could have lived through two periods when it was her moral duty to devote herself, obsessively, to her children: three when it was her duty to society to neglect them; two when it was right to be seductively feminine and three when it was a pressing social obligation to be the reverse; three separate periods in which she was a bad wife, mother and citizen for wanting to go out and earn her own living, and three others when she was an even worse wife, mother and citizen for not being eager to do so.' Thus Ruth Adam describes the extraordinary story of women's emancipation from the time of the suffragettes to Women's Lib. Intelligent and humane, this very readable book draws on a wealth of source material to illustrate what life was like for women since Victorian times. Throughout, Ruth Adam describes aspects of our mothers' and grandmothers' lives in a cogent, mildly cynical, but delightful way. Her book combines the academic, the popular, the human, the rigorous and the witty into a work of history which is quite unlike any other.