Description
Book SynopsisThis book is about the reshaping of women's lives, loves and dreams. It tells the story of how expectations and emotional landscapes have shifted since 1950, when marriage was a major determinant of female life chances and teenage girls dreamed of Mr Right and happy endings.
Trade ReviewA fascinating journey through women's and men's sex lives from the 1950s to the present ... remarkably readable ... Highly recommended * R. A. Standish, CHOICE *
Enlightening. * Martin Chilton, The Independent *
[A] subtle, thoughtful book... Dyhouse gives a sense of narrative cohesion to this fitful, complex, uneven revolution... reading Love Lives, I was struck less by the speed of change than by how difficult women still find it to reconcile their professional, romantic, political and domestic lives. * Sophie McBain, New Statesman *
A witty cultural history of heterosexual courtship and sexual mores in the second half of the 20th century. * Emma Rees, Times Higher Education *
Pacey and wonderfully readable ... [Dyhouse] gallops sure-footedly through educational reforms, the Pill, second-wave feminism, widening opportunities for women in the workplace, growing rates of co-habitation and divorce, male attitudes towards housework and parenting, adultery, pornography, gay rights and the rise of internet dating. * Helen McCarthy, History Today *
An interesting and thorough exploration of the ways in which women's views of themselves and their function in the world has changed over the generations since WW2. * Shiny New Books *
This wonderful book shows us how the Cinderella fantasy of a 'happy ever after' has long framed women's lives - even as they have resisted and subverted it... [Love Lives] reveals the devastating power of cultural scripts but also their malleability in the face of material context, individual agency and political change. It is well argued, well evidenced and beautifully written - a real pleasure to read. * Claire Langhamer, author of The English in Love: The Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution *
Table of Contents1: Introduction: Lives, Loves and Fairy-tales 2: Cinderella Dreams: When Men Were an Ending 3: Married Love: Domesticity and its Discontents 4: Uncouplings: Transitions and Turning Points 5: Having it All: Identity, Work, Choice 6: Ugly Sisters? Folk Devils and Feminism 7: Singles Culture, Sex in the City and Further Waves of Feminism 8: Cinderella to Frozen Afterword and Acknowledgements Select Bibliography Index
