These women had to give up having husbands and children and the reality was often very different from the view that people have of women then. Many people's attitudes are conditioned by their reading Henry James and Edith Wharton, who only cover a fraction of the reality. There were a lot of women like Sara who worked hard at a job. That really interests me, as it ties in with my idea that all history is really psychology. I don't believe in the Marxist economic theory of history, in social forces being more important than human forces.
People make history.
If you examine in detail most periods of American history, you can find out why things happened as they did by looking at the neuroses and psychoses of the key figures involved. This whole organisation was put together by a man who was a certifiable paranoid schizophrenic, James Forrestal. Sounds like he would really have got on well with J.Edgar Hoover. All Hoover did was dress up in women's clothing and mooch around in other people's lives. All this is the kind of thing that interests me, within the context of historical thrillers.