The Sow in the House: The Unfulfilled Promises of Feminism in Ian Falconer’s Olivia Books

On the surface Ian Falconer’s Olivia series documents how twenty-first-century feminist parents are raising their daughters, but there is also another subtler and more subversive message embedded in the stories. Through his juxtaposition of the two female characters in the story–young girl with a limitless future and her exhausted, housewife mother–Falconer opens a rich vein of social experience, which he expertly mines to manufacture a brilliant, sly, and, at times, a winking critique of what might be called the unfulfilled promises of feminism.