S:1 E:7 - Unmasking the Mad Wife: Hysteria, Jell-O, and 1950s Survival with Meagan Church

The perfect life was a gilded cage.In this week's episode of Hidden Heroines of History, host Gayvin Powers sits down with Meagan Church, the brilliant mind behind the unnerving book, The Mad Wife, an instant New York Times and USA Today Bestseller. Together, they peel back the linoleum floors of the 1950s to reveal a chilling reality: for many women, "sanity" was a performance, and "hysteria" was a weapon used to silence those who dared to want more.Church dives deep into the suffocating expectations of mid-century motherhood, where a woman’s worth was measured in S&H Green Stamps and the height of her gelatin salads. We explore the terrifying medical gaslighting of the era—where postpartum struggles and valid anxieties were cured with mind-numbing pills and labels of madness. It’s a raw, necessary conversation about the "mad wife" in the mirror and the strength it took to survive a world that refused to see her.