The Women's Room by Marilyn French Sphere Books Ltd 1978, pbk £1.95 IT'S IN the graffiti-covered women's toilet that we first meet Mira, a 38 year old student. at University Mira's life, Marilyn French exposes the mainstream of experience middle-class American women, in the decades following the fifties.
transformed from an intelligent, independent adolescent without knowing how happened, A few years, a husband and two sons later, she was drowning upwardly-mobile suburbia. intelligence found expression devising a filing system of rotated cleaning chores.
Her friends fared similarly uptight American mothers of the fifties, endlessly service their husbands clean house, their demands for food, entertainment. Their conversations routines and cocktail nake boredora Divided fross bair suburban prisons oil dor ve we tich a bat of hep from their The women suffered: dectrified;
Fi test saster in dar= HEE: ite prison into are e ces I the young sudent:
She soon teamt the values casual clothes, interesting apartments with plants, bright colours and lots of different food. Mira studied English, had a lover, experienced orgasm. Her relationshin with her teenage sons improved. And, she developed enjoyable supportive friendships Harvard retracing for had Her working to mind and petulant dothing, sex and