This chapter offers an analysis of the cultural geography of the uppermiddle- class suburban cul-de-sac Wisteria Lane in the ABC dramedy Desperate Housewives against the background of postfeminist discourse, ideas about domesticity, and women's film and television. The chapter is divided into two parts: in the first part I discuss how Wisteria Lane is produced as a social space. I am especially interested here in problematising issues of public and private, those discursive realms so often evoked in discussions of the cinematic and televisual suburb but so rarely considered at length. In the second section I study the spatial mobility of the various women that live on the street. Here my concern lies with complicating gender perceptions – as David Morley has noted, there tends to be ‘a collapsing of the image of the wife/mother into the image of the home itself […] the woman and the home seem to become each other's attributes.’ My argument is that although Wisteria Lane and the various homes on it may seem open and democratic in comparison with earlier settings for women's genres, this openness and democracy is precisely the cause for oppression, paranoia and restlessness.

One note on the scope of my study. Social space is a concept that encompasses anything from class to race, power relations to historical genealogies, and intimacy to isolation. It is therefore impossible to discuss it in all its facets and dimensions. I here discuss only two aspects of the social production of Wisteria Lane – public/private and gender – and therefore by no means wish to claim that I have written anything like a definitive account.