The historical association between femininity and neurosis is well documented. Many recent studies have seen women’s mental health issues in the aftermath of the Second World War as being a direct consequence of a lack of opportunity and the banality of a domestic lifestyle. Although the figure of the ‘desperate housewife’ is familiar to us, Haggett suggests that many women in the 1950s and 1960s led satisfying lives and that gender roles, while very different, were often seen as equal.

"'The lesson from this scholarly and provocative book is clear: if we are to distinguish effectively between myth and reality, we desperately need more such nuanced and carefully evidenced historical accounts of the social determinants of mental illness.'"