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​​In 1959, when she worked in the psychiatric ward at the White Plain's Hospital in New York, Charlotte's mother was not Margaret or Maggie or Marg or Margie or Marge or Margie or Madge, most of which were given to her as nicknames at one time or another, but Nurse or Miss S.

 In those days, the professional choices for a young woman were nurse, teacher or secretary, all three eventually leading to the ultimate role of wife/mother/homemaker and henceforth many times abandoned, as was the case with Charlotte's mother who married a man with more wealth and status than she could attain on her own.
Charlotte hated the way what was associated with the feminine was undervalued, in ways that were surreptitious and difficult to articulate. Take kindness, it had a feminine feel, the way nursing did or driving children to activities or filling a lunch bag. The so-called little things of life were like that, while the big things -  careers,innovation, big business, wealth, military power - had a masculine feel. The feminine had an often unspoken aura of inferiority.

I am free, thought Frances,now in her thirties, two decades since she'd been been a patient in the psychiatric hospital...