Preface -- The symbolic pantomime -- "A sort of silence and embarrassment" -- The dainty life -- "A seat in the hall" -- Centralising the egg yolks -- Popinjays and mob caps -- The desire for perfection -- "Some poor girl's got to go up and down, up and down -- " -- The sacred trust -- The ideal village -- "Silent, obsequious and omnipresent" -- Bowing and scraping -- The age of ambivalence -- Out of a cage -- "Don't think your life will be any different to mine" -- "It was exploitation but it worked" -- "Tall, strong, healthy and keen to work" -- The mechanical maid -- Outer show and inner life -- A vast machine that has forgotten how to stop working -- Bachelor establishments are notoriously comfortable -- The question of the inner life -- "Do they really drink out of their saucers?' -- "Of alien origin" -- A new jerusalem -- A new and useful life -- The housewife militant -- "The change : it must have been terrible for them" -- The shape of things to come -- "We don't want them days again' -- "We've moved to the front" -- "I'd never done what i liked -- never in all my life" -- "We like it because the past is not so worrying as the news" -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgements -- Index.