The Longings of Women returns to elaborate a theme — home, homelessness, having "a place" — visited briefly by Piercy in earlier novels, and poetry collections. Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), Vida (1980), Braided Lives (1982), Fly away Home (1984): In the broadest sense, all of Piercy's prior, written work provides precedent for this novel.

Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929) also explores the emancipatory effect a safe and private place can have on women. And the flip side of place, place as prison house, being kept patriarchally "in place," is explored in The Longings of Women as it is in Charlotte Perkins's "The Yellow Wallpaper."