Drawing on her own and other women's lives, Nancy Friday shows that to a woman's character the key lies in her relationship with her mother - that first binding relationship which becomes the model for so much of a woman's adult relationships with men, and whose fetters constrain her sexuality, independence, and very selfhood. Friday believes that on the deepest level women will always be their mother's daughters, and that only when they recognize and understand this will they be able to find their own strength and direct their own lives.