[5] The Women's Room is set in 1950s America and follows the fortunes of Mira Ward, a conventional and submissive young woman in a traditional marriage, and her gradual feminist awakening.

The Women's Room was published in 1977, but the novel is written as a reflective work, following the main character, Mira, from adolescence in the late 1940s to adulthood and independence in the 1960s.

[6] The 1950s was also a period in which American women were expected to be housewives, to prioritize their roles as wives and mothers before anything else, and to dutifully serve their families and find happiness inside their homes and marriages, rather than in a career.

The Women's Room encompasses many ideas central to this movement, and Mira experiences much of the dissatisfaction common to housewives, discussed in The Feminine Mystique.

The women begin to throw dinner parties in order to create fun evenings together that involve their husbands.

Also while in Beau Reve, Mira witnesses her friends' struggles: Lily goes mad as a result of her son's rebellious behavior, Samantha is evicted after her husband loses his job and leaves her, and Martha takes a married lover who simultaneously gets his wife pregnant.

Mira returns the help in due time when Martha, too, attempts suicide when trying to deal with her failed affair and resulting divorce.

Following her and Norm's divorce, Mira goes to Harvard University to study for a Ph.D. in English literature, with which she hopes to fulfill her lifelong dream of teaching.

It is the heyday of Women's Liberation and Mira, now too, finally able to verbalize her discontent at the society around her, becomes a feminist, although a less radical and militant one than Val.

When Mira's children come to visit her at Harvard, her growth and independence is revealed by a clear change in her views on the dichotomy between motherhood and sexuality.

[10] In June 2004, a sample of 500 people attending the Guardian Hay Festival included The Women's Room in their list of the top 50 essential contemporary reads, demonstrating that time has not diminished the importance of French's novel,[11] and as of 2009, The Women's Room sold over 20 million copies and was translated into 20 languages.

"[14] Susan Faludi viewed the novel as capable of "[inspiring] an outward-looking passion and commitment in its readers," which "was no small feat.

[18] Anne Tyler goes a step further than Goodman and Lehmann-Haupt by stating that the entire novel is "very long and very narrow" and very biased.

[14] French's The Women's Room changed that, as shown by its wide reception and New York Times bestseller ranking.