The Good Housekeeping cleaning schedule is a motif that highlights Female Isolation and Conformity. This magazine insert is a prescriptive routine for housewives, outlining which household tasks should be done each day of the week to keep one’s home ideally clean and one’s family always fed. Lulu describes the schedule as “the key to being a good housewife—or at least a decent one” (14). Enforced domestic chores do not create a fulfilling life, but Lulu thinks she is the only woman for whom the completion of menial tasks feels burdensome and unpleasant. She believes that “everyone on Twyckenham Court follow[s] it. Except for [her]. But they d[o]n’t know that” (14). Lulu worries about being an outlier and a failure, comparing herself to the perfect-seeming Nora and others who conform in a robotic way: “It was as if the schedule was embedded in their programming” (14).

The cleaning schedule also emphasizes Patriarchy’s Infantilization of Women. When Nora explains the schedule to Lulu, she describes it as something to adhere to without question: “The point is so you don’t have to think about it. You just do it” (15). Nora suggests that it’s a relief not to have to think, which protects from considering life satisfaction. Unlike men, who are never told not to “think about” aspects of their lives they dislike, women are compelled to maintain complacency and obedience.