The Fifties Mystique

by Jessica Mann

Many young women 'long to put the clock back to the post-war years when life seemed prettier and nicer'. In this book Jessica Mann demolishes such preconceptions about their mothers' or grandmothers' young days, showing that in reality life was uglier and nastier.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Contemporary, Feminism

196 pages, Paperback

First published March 29, 2012

About the author

Crime-writer Jessica Mann was born in London, England in 1937. She studied archaeology at Cambridge University and Law at Leicester University.

She is the author of a non-fiction book, Deadlier Than the Male: An Investigation into Feminine Crime Writing, about female crime writers from Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers to Ngaio Marsh. She contributes reviews and feature articles to many newspapers and magazines, is a regular broadcaster on TV and radio and tours regularly promoting her books at events and festivals.

Jessica Mann lives with her husband, an archaeologist, in Cornwall. Her latest book is The Mystery Writer (2006).

Reviews

[Veronica · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book didn't do much for me. Too impersonal to be a memoir, not rigorous enough to be social history. Mann quotes people without saying who they are or even giving any context for the quote. She throws statistics around without giving a precise source. And, at least for anyone over 50, there's nothing new here. It's just depressing that every couple of generations, women have to discover what the point of feminism is all over again. Some of the "liberation" that's been achieved: hmm. Young women get to be as drunk and foul-mouthed as young men. As Mann says, "Freedom to do anything can mean compulsion to do anything. Women are still being forced into sexual behaviour that gratifies only the man." Yup, there's nothing liberated or empowering about pole-dancing, and it's not what feminists in the 1970s were fighting for.

If it's true that some young women want to go back to the 1950s because they were "pretty and nice", and if what Mann is saying here is mind-blowing and revolutionary to twenty- and thirty-something women, that's even more depressing.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, I urge every woman to read this, then follow it up with Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman. Mann tells us how it really was in the '50s and why we shouldn't hanker after 'good old days' that never existed. Being a woman in the '50s was hard work, repressive and quite frankly, stank. Just the description of the underwear alone is enough to make you realise how lucky you are!

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a few faults but overall I enjoyed it. I'm not someone who longs for the 'simpler' life of yesteryear, but still found this book enlightening in many ways. The author does a fair job of illustrating how limited life and choices were for women, and highlights the difficulty of life then by comparison to modern life.

There are issues, the author is not 'average' and as this is by and large a personal memoir it diminishes her ability to fully portray life for many women in that era (although her lack of averageness actually serves to make the story more shocking in a way). The book also jumps around a little and isn't a smooth flowing read, which I presume is down to poor editing (as there are several editing errors in there which are irritating)

[Kazimiera pendrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

T his was quite a good read but not quite as good as i felt it could have been. I felt that the author made a lot of very generalised assumptions regarding women from very different backgrounds to her own but all in all an interesting read

[Arwen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Struggled at times to maintain interest with this book, but on the whole it provided some fascinating insights into life for 1950s women.