The Secret Book Society is set in 1895 England, at the close of a Victorian era governed by a rigid patriarchal social structure. The doctrine of “separate spheres” relegated women to the private, domestic world, while men inhabited the public sphere of work and politics. Women’s legal and economic rights were severely curtailed; although the Married Women’s Property Acts (passed between 1870 and 1893) granted them the right to own property, in practice, men retained immense control over their wives’ lives and fortunes. This societal framework is the source of the female characters’ oppression in the novel, from Eleanor’s complete subjugation to her husband Cecil to Rose’s struggle to conform to the expectations of the English aristocracy.

To maintain this patriarchal social order, the male-dominated medical establishment often pathologized female behavior that defied social norms. “Hysteria” became a convenient, all-encompassing diagnosis for women exhibiting passion, anxiety, or intellectual ambition. A prominent treatment was the “rest cure,” developed by physician S. Weir Mitchell, which enforced isolation and inactivity to break a woman’s spirit, a process famously depicted in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The threat of this dubious cure is ever-present in The Secret Book Society. Lavinia’s family fears that her passionate nature will lead to “madness,” and Eleanor is ultimately institutionalized at “Leavenhall Lunatic Asylum” by her husband (1), who weaponizes a past bout of postpartum depression to punish her for seeking independence. The psychiatric hospital thus functions not as a place of healing, but as the ultimate tool of patriarchal control. The author’s note reveals that a key plot point—in which a woman being taken to an asylum throws her shoe from the carriage as a message for help—was inspired by a true historical account, grounding the fictional narrative in the real-life struggles of women from that period.