Abstract
Hoffman offers an insightful overview of the period’s key social tensions with regard to the changing roles of women in British society in the first half of the twentieth century. The chapter introduces a wide range of concerns, including the perception of a large number of ‘superfluous’ single women following the First World War; increasing access to education for women; expanding career opportunities outside the home occurring simultaneously with continued intense pressure to marry and have children; and changing ideologies surrounding marriage and sexual relationships. Such issues repeatedly appear as both central and peripheral anxieties in the texts explored in the succeeding chapters, and these historical and cultural contexts add valuable insight into the ambivalent modes of femininity depicted in those narratives.
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Notes
- 1.
Gail Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War: The British Experience (London: Croom Helm, 1981), p. 157.
- 2.
Jane Hannan, ‘Women and Politics’, in June Purvis (ed.), Women’s History: Britain, 1850–1945 (London: UCL Press, 1995), p. 234.
- 3.
Hannan, ‘Women and Politics’, p. 234.
- 4.
These pieces of legislation were, respectively, the Sex Disqualification Removal Act of 1919, the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1923 and the Representation of the People Act of 1928.
- 5.
Jane Lewis notes that the number of women married under the age of 45 who had between zero and two children increased from 44.8 per cent in 1901 to 69.8 per cent in 1941, and that the number of families with five or more children decreased from 27.5 per cent in 1901 to 9.2 per cent in 1941. Jane Lewis, Women in England, 1870–1950: Sexual Divisions and Social Change (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1984), p. 5.
- 6.
Hannan, ‘Women and Politics’, p. 234.
- 7.
Lewis, Women in England, p. 128.
- 8.
Deirdre Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty: Women Between the Wars, 1918–1939 (London: Pandora Press, 1989), p. 50.
- 9.
Julian Symons, Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel: A History (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), p. 93.
- 10.
Stephen Knight, ‘The Golden Age’, in Martin Priestman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 81.
- 11.
Alison Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature, and Conservatism Between the Wars (London; New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 65.
- 12.
Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human?: Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), p. 21.
- 13.
Michael Hayes, ‘Popular Fiction and Middle-Brow Taste’, in Clive Bloom (ed.), Literature and Culture in Modern Britain (London: Longman, 1993), p. 77.
- 14.
Felicity Hunt, ‘Introduction’, in Felicity Hunt (ed.), Lessons for Life: The Schooling of Girls and Women, 1850–1950 (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1987), pp. xvii, xix.
- 15.
Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty, p. 46.
- 16.
Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, The Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain 1918–1939 (London: Abacus, 1995), p. 46.
- 17.
Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty, p. 34.
- 18.
Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty, p. 40.
- 19.
Susan J. Leonardi, Dangerous by Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists (New Brunswick, NJ; London: Rutgers University Press, 1989), p. 28.
- 20.
Leonardi, Dangerous by Degrees, p. 23.
- 21.
Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2003), p. 86.
- 22.
Leonardi, Dangerous by Degrees, p. 25.
- 23.
Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War, p. 189.
- 24.
Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty, p. 3.
- 25.
Cate Haste, Rules of Desire: Sex in Britain, World War I to the Present (London: Chatto & Windus, 1992), p. 42.
- 26.
Felicity Hunt, ‘Divided Aims: The Educational Implications of Opposing Ideologies in Girls’ Secondary Schooling, 1850–1940’, in Felicity Hunt (ed.), Lessons for Life: The Schooling of Girls and Women, 1850–1950 (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1987), p. 18.
- 27.
Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty, p. 48.
- 28.
Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty, p. 16.
- 29.
Albie Sachs and Joan Hoff Wilson, Sexism and the Law: A Study of Male Beliefs and Legal Bias in Britain and the United States (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1978), p. 170.
- 30.
As Frank Gloversmith remarks, ‘Domestic service was believed to be the most suitable employment for working-class women. It was the most “natural” kind of work and it was claimed that the happiest, best-kept working-class homes were ones in which the wife had at one time been a servant.’ Frank Gloversmith, Class, Culture, and Social Change: A New View of the 1930s (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980), p. 213.
- 31.
Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War, pp. 221–2.
- 32.
Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty, p. 61.
- 33.
Agatha Christie, Murder is Easy (London: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 53.
- 34.
Roy Lewis and Angus Maude, The English Middle Classes (New York: Knopf, 1950), p. 312.
- 35.
Beddoe states that ‘The single most arresting feature of the inter-war years was the strength of the notion that women’s place is in the home.’ Back to Home and Duty, p. 3.
- 36.
Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War, p. 124.
- 37.
Lewis, Women in England, p. 190.
- 38.
Lewis, Women in England, p. 103.
- 39.
Harold L. Smith, ‘British Feminism in the 1920s’, in Harold L. Smith (ed.), British Feminism in the Twentieth Century (Aldershot: Elgar, 1990), p. 47.
- 40.
Haste, Rules of Desire, p. 100.
- 41.
Haste, Rules of Desire, pp. 100–1.
- 42.
Haste, Rules of Desire, p. 101.
- 43.
Gillian Avery observes that ‘the war forced all school-leavers, however privileged, into jobs; after it was over even those who up till 1939 would have stayed at home until they were married thought if not of a career then of a job, and the qualifications needed before one could begin on a professional training, minimal in the 1930s, were to become more and more exacting’. Gillian Avery, The Best Type of Girl: A History of Girls’ Independent Schools (London: Deutsch, 1991), pp. 228–9.
- 44.
Lewis notes that ‘Marriage … was part of the typical experience of women throughout the period. Between 1871 and 1951 the proportion of adult females who were (or had been) married never fell below 60 per cent.’ Lewis, Women in England, pp. 3–4.
- 45.
Deborah Thom, ‘Better a Teacher Than a Hairdresser?: A Mad Passion for Equality or, Keeping Molly and Betty Down’, in Felicity Hunt (ed.), Lessons for Life: The Schooling of Girls and Women, 1850–1950 (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1987), p. 130.
- 46.
Gladys M. Cox, Youth, Sex, and Life (London: Pearson, 1935), p. 207.
- 47.
Shani D’Cruze, ‘Women and the Family’, in June Purvis (ed.), Women’s History: Britain, 1850–1945 (London: UCL Press, 1995), p. 75.
- 48.
Havelock Ellis, Psychology of Sex: A Manual for Students (New York: Emerson Books, 1954), p. 277.
- 49.
Smith, ‘British Feminism in the 1920s’, p. 54.
- 50.
Haste, Rules of Desire, p. 95.
- 51.
Marie Stopes, Married Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 38.
- 52.
Stopes, Married Love, p. 96.
- 53.
Stopes, Married Love, p. 78.
- 54.
Lewis, Women in England, p. 5.
- 55.
D’Cruze, ‘Women and the Family’, p. 55.
- 56.
Kate Fisher notes that: ‘The early twentieth century saw considerable developments in reproductive technology: the invention of caps and diaphragms and their dispersal in a growing number of birth control clinics from the 1920s; the manufacture of spermicidal pessaries; the commercialization of sheaths; and, in the early 1930s, the production of the latex condom. Despite this, the use of non-technological methods [such as withdrawal, abstinence and abortion] persisted.’ Kate Fisher, Birth Control, Sex and Marriage in Britain, 1918–1960 (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 137.
- 57.
Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty, p. 106.
- 58.
Stopes, Married Love, pp. 79–80.
- 59.
Stopes, Married Love, p. 83.
- 60.
Jane Humphries, ‘Women and Paid Work’, in Felicity Hunt (ed.), Women’s History: Britain 1850–1930 (London: UCL Press, 1995), p. 123.
- 61.
Gladys M. Cox writes in the 1935 health manual Youth, Sex, and Life of the importance of choosing a suitable marriage partner: ‘If you secure the right mate for you, marriage and parenthood are the supreme achievements of life and lead to an exquisite and satisfying happiness … for normal people a happy marriage, with children growing up, offers the best that life can give.’ Youth, Sex, and Life, p. 197.
- 62.
Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty, p. 8.
- 63.
Martin Pugh, ‘Domesticity and the Decline of Feminism, 1930–1950’, in Harold L. Smith (ed.), British Feminism in the Twentieth Century (Aldershot: Elgar, 1990), p. 155.
- 64.
Pugh, ‘Domesticity and the Decline of Feminism’, p. 155.
- 65.
Agatha Christie, Partners in Crime (Glasgow: Fontana Press, 1989), p. 8.
- 66.
Lewis observes that: ‘The encouragement given to middle-class wives during the inter-war years to devote more time to both housewifery and child care marked a departure from the ambivalent nineteenth-century attitudes regarding the degree of personal involvement in domestic tasks compatible with cultured, ladylike behaviour. The changes brought new stresses, however, particularly in respect to the higher standard of child care that was demanded. Child psychologists, active in the new child study movement, and infant feeding experts both emphasised the importance of elaborate routines and schedules to build the child’s character.’ Women in England, p. 116.
- 67.
John B. Watson and Rosalie A.R. Watson, Psychological Care of Infant and Child (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1928), p. 3.
- 68.
Watson and Watson, Psychological Care of Infant and Child, pp. 7, 11–12.
- 69.
Wilhelm Stekel, Frigidity in Woman in Relation to Her Love Life, trans. James S. Van Teslaar (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1926), p. 97.
- 70.
Edward Hitschmann and Edmund Bergler, Frigidity in Women: Its Characteristics and Treatment, trans. Polly L. Weil (Washington; New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company, 1948), p. 3.
- 71.
Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880–1930 (London: Pandora, 1985), p. 89.
- 72.
D’Cruze, ‘Women and the Family’, p. 56.
- 73.
Lewis, Women in England, p. 154.
- 74.
Alison Oram, ‘Inequalities in the Teaching Profession: The Effect on Teachers and Pupils, 1910–39’, in Felicity Hunt (ed.), Lessons for Life: The Schooling of Girls and Women, 1850–1950 (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1987), pp. 117–18.
- 75.
Sheila Jeffreys, ‘Women and Sexuality’, in June Purvis (ed.), Women’s History: Britain, 1850–1945 (London: UCL Press, 1995), p. 205.
- 76.
Jeffreys, ‘Women and Sexuality’, p. 204.
- 77.
Cox, Youth, Sex, and Life, p. 212.
- 78.
Watson and Watson, Psychological Care of Infant and Child, pp. 178–9.
- 79.
Lewis, Women in England, p. 128.
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Hoffman, M. (2016). Change and Anxiety: Historical Context. In: Gender and Representation in British ‘Golden Age’ Crime Fiction. Crime Files. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53666-2_2
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