The Marriage Trap author Victoria Purman will visit Mooroopna and Nagambie libraries during May.
Victoria Purman says her latest book, The Marriage Trap, is a love letter to women who grew up in Australia in the 1960s.
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“Women, who, for the first time, could see a world in which they could make their own decisions about the size of their families,” Purman said.
“Or, indeed, whether to have a family at all.”
The author of many Aussie bestsellers, including her most recent, The Radio Hour, was inspired to write The Marriage Trap after fresh efforts worldwide to ban contraception, including condoms in some countries.
“It made me reflect on the easy road I had in the 1980s when I went on the pill to make sure I could control my body and decided if and when my partner, now husband, and I would have children and how many,” she said.
Purman began to research the history of oral contraceptives, working on the theory that if she found a topic fascinating, her readers just might, too.
“What I found was a story of women taking control of their bodies and their lives in defiance of societal pressure, the all-powerful Catholic church and sometimes even the government,” she said.
“In 1961, Australia became only the second country in the world to approve the use of the pill by Australian women, after the United States.”
It was still scarcely available, prescribed only to married women for ‘family planning’ purposes, attracted a 27.5 per cent ‘luxury tax’, and was not allowed to be advertised.
And, if your doctor or pharmacist didn’t morally agree with its use, they would not prescribe nor dispense it.
The Marriage Trap focuses on the real-life history of contraception, while telling the fictional story of three Adelaide women from the same family.
The Marriage Trap tells the fictional story of three women in one Adelaide-based family: Olive, 60, and two of her daughters, Cathy, 20, and Evelyn, 10.
“Cathy has big dreams for her life that don’t involve being trapped at home like her mother was with five children,” Purman said.
“She wants to be the first in her family to go to university to become a teacher.
“She’s seen firsthand that women’s lives can be tough. Society and especially the church dictate how girls and women should behave, and when it comes to sex? Not until you’re married, thank you, and then as a woman it’s your role to help Australia ‘populate or perish’.”
Cathy’s little sister, Evelyn, is too young to think about it, but over the course of the decade the story details, her horizons begin to expand.
Their mother, Olive, thinks she’s too old for social change, but when the church reiterates its position on contraception in 1968, she finds herself at a crossroads.
The South Australian author hopes her book will give older readers an opportunity to reminisce about the era they grew up in and reflect on how far society has come.
“And I hope younger readers might realise how difficult things were for women back in the 1960s and ’70s and be inspired to be vigilant about any moves to curtail the rights we have as women to control our own bodies,” Purman said.
“We might think the rights we have are safe, but experiences from other parts of the world have shown us that sometimes hard-fought rights are being wound back.
“We must never take them for granted.”
Victoria Purman is touring Victoria to promote The Marriage Trap, stopping in the Goulburn Valley on Wednesday, May 13.
She will visit Nagambie Library at 10am and Mooroopna Library at 2pm.
To book a spot at Nagambie, click here, or to book a spot at Mooroopna, click here.
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