Last updated on October 17th, 2026 at 09:41 am
In 1973, the idea that ordinary women had rich, varied and sometimes startling sexual fantasies was still controversial enough to shock publishers, critics and readers. Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden changed that conversation by doing something simple: she asked women to describe their fantasies, and then she printed what they said.
This is a review of the book’s ideas and its place in history rather than a tour of its contents, which are explicit throughout. It is a book for adult readers.
Table of Contents
What the Book Is
Friday collected accounts from women through letters, interviews and advertisements inviting contributions, then grouped them by theme with her own commentary. Her central argument was that women’s erotic imaginations were as active as men’s, that most women felt ashamed of them, and that the shame did more harm than the fantasies ever could.
The book became a bestseller and was followed by several sequels, including Forbidden Flowers and, later, Women on Top. Friday’s best-known work outside this subject, My Mother/My Self, explored mother-daughter relationships and was also hugely successful.
Its Main Ideas
- Women fantasise, and that is normal. The book’s most basic point was its most radical in 1973.
- A fantasy is not a wish. Friday insists that imagining something is not the same as wanting it in real life, a distinction that matters especially for fantasies involving force or taboo.
- Fantasy is not a sign of an unhappy relationship. Many contributors were content with their partners.
- Shame is learned. Much of women’s guilt about desire, Friday argued, came from family, religion and culture rather than from the desires themselves.
- Anonymity frees honesty. Because contributors wrote anonymously, they described feelings they had never shared with anyone.
The Controversial Material
Some of the fantasies in the book involve themes that many readers find disturbing, including coercion and taboo relationships. Friday includes them deliberately to show how common such fantasies are and how much guilt women attached to them. Her framing is that the mind can explore what a person would never choose in reality. Readers will differ on how persuasive that framing is, and some critics felt the book did not engage enough with the darker implications.
Strengths
- It opened a subject that had been almost entirely silenced.
- It let women speak in their own words rather than through experts.
- It helped many readers feel less alone and less ashamed.
Weaknesses
- Not scientific: the contributors were self-selected, so the book cannot say how typical any fantasy is.
- Dated: its assumptions about gender, sexuality and relationships belong to its era, and its sample was largely American and white.
- Uneven commentary: Friday’s own analysis is sometimes repetitive or thin compared with the testimonies.
Comparisons
Friday followed books like The Sensuous Woman (1969), which offered how-to advice, and preceded Shere Hite’s survey-based Hite Report (1976). More recently, anonymous collections such as Want have continued the same tradition of letting women describe desire in their own voices.
Why It Still Matters
In many societies, including much of South Asia, women’s desire is still rarely discussed openly, and shame around it remains strong. Whatever one thinks of its contents, My Secret Garden is an important document in the history of how women claimed the right to talk about their own inner lives.
About Nancy Friday
Nancy Friday was an American journalist and author, born in 1933 in Pittsburgh. She wrote about sexuality, jealousy and family relationships across several decades and died in 2017.
My Verdict
My Secret Garden is less a book to enjoy than a book to understand. As a historical turning point in conversations about women and desire, it deserves its reputation. As a guide to modern sexuality, it is best read alongside more recent, research-based work.
