Confession: I did not actually know what this book about when I was bought it. I just knew that it was discounted and the cover made it seem rather quirky. I may have missed the part that stated “the story of women in the 1950s”. It was only when I started reading it that I realised that this is actually quite a serious book on the lives of women in the UK during the 1950s.

Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes throws us straight into the 1950s, starting with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and following the lives of women both at home and in the workplace to understand what their lives were like. Where possible, the book quotes from various women directly, and this mix of discussion about the time period and the voices of the women made me feel like I was in a large group of women from the 1950s talking, while being led through it all by a lecturer.

The strength and weakness of this book lie in its choice to quote extensively from the lived experiences of women. The strength is, of course, that we get an intimate look at their lives and we get to actually hear their opinions instead of it being diluted into statistics or academic-ese. The weakness is that the book can feel a bit overwhelming at times. It’s a bit hard to keep track of who is who, especially since we do follow a few key women, and occasionally, I did wonder if I was missing the forest for the trees. If you’re looking for a high-level view of what it was like to be a woman in the 1950s, you may find this too messy and too close for comfort.

Personally, I loved that we heard so much from women who lived through the 1950s. It really brought the time period to life, and I appreciated that Nicholson took the time to look for women from all across the social strata, from girls born into privilege, those from the middle class, and those that had to work much harder for their tiny bits of freedom.

A lot of the strict gender roles that the book talks about probably still exist in some form of the other today – evangelical purity culture/messaging about femininity reminds me a lot of this. And perhaps a bit oddly, the book also made me think about the difference between sex and gender. Gender is very much determined by society, as this book makes clear. Sex is pretty much just biological, but it’s tied so closely to gender that I think we see it as one and the same. I don’t know if I’m putting it correctly, but while reading this, I had the thought that the reason it was so hard to opt out of these strict gendered roles without judgement from general society is because we cannot really opt out of our sex. Gender is pretty much made up, but it is imposed on us on the basis of our sex, basically. I hope I am making sense but either way, I am glad that gender expectations have greatly loosened since the 1950s – it is no longer as strange for a woman to climb the career ladder, for example, though we are still mostly expected to take on housewifely duties when it comes! It was truly sad to see how a pioneering diplomat didn’t even think to continue her career because she had just accepted the idea that women were meant to be housewives instead.

Overall, I found this to be a truly fascinating book! I think we have the tendency to idolise the past, especially since our present can seem so horrible at times, but Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes reminded me that for us women, at least, the past wasn’t always better.