A son’s search for his mother, a feminist pioneer—and a casualty of her time
In London, 1965, a brilliant young woman—a prescient advocate for women’s rights—has just gassed herself to death, leaving behind a suicide note, two young sons, and a soon-to-be-published book: The Captive Wife. No one had ever imagined that Hannah Gavron might take her own life. Beautiful, sophisticated, and swept up in the progressive sixties, she was a promising academic and the wife of a rising entrepreneur. But there was another side to Hannah, as Jeremy Gavron reveals in this searching portrait of his mother.
Gavron—who was just four when his mother killed herself—attempts to piece her life together from letters, diaries, photos, and the memories of old acquaintances. Ultimately, he not only uncovers Hannah’s struggle to carve out her place in a man’s world; he examines the suffocating constrictions placed on every ambitious woman in the mid-twentieth century.
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“[Gavron’s] quest is a double quest: to find out what his mother was like in life and to find out why she killed herself…The tenacity with which Jeremy pursues this goal is extraordinary…The taboo of silence that shrouded Jeremy’s childhood is broken. Those complicit with it aren’t arraigned; the tone is patient and compassionate. But Hannah steps out of the shadow, fifty years on, and the great unsaids are finally spoken.”
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Guardian