3 stars: enjoyed this book, you might like it too

This is kind of a weird review because I feel like it was a different book than what I expected.

What it ended up being was a history of how femininity was socially constructed, in the context of social class, in Britain over the last few hundred years, and how the construction of modern femininity (as distinct from medieval femininity) was very closely intertwined with the construction of social classes as the middle class emerged. It did this largely through the lens of embroidery. It felt surprisingly modern in how it talked about gender as something changing and socially constructed and existing in the context of other socially constructed concepts, but it did feel very narrowly focused on Britain and Britain-adjacent areas.

Except for at the end in the more modern area, I don't think it really demonstrated embroidery being subversive. Embroidery was used to enforce norms of femininity. At the same time, women rejecting embroidery, in the context of the various feminist movements, often reinforced the idea that things associated with women were inherently inferior. It did talk about how people related to embroidery in different ways and how people could make a world of mandatory embroidery/mandatory femininity more tolerable and find some agency within it, about how embroidery could both trap women and offer them freedom, but it felt rather incongruous with its title. I feel like the book described the situation honestly and accurately, but if you were hoping for more subversion, there isn't a lot in this book.