Abstract
Dramatic shifts in infrastructure occurred in England between the years 1930–1939. These transformations not only generated changes in occupation possibilities and wider work opportunities for both men and women, but also produced a surge in employment for the young demographic and, in turn, the rapid germination of youth culture. As Selina Todd considers, “paid work was a distinguishing characteristic of youth for many women […] ‘[it] dominated their daily lives and shaped their social and domestic responsibilities and relationships’” (2005, p. 1). Judy Giles reflecting on young working-class lives in mid-twentieth-century England stressed that historians “have sought to rescue young working-class English women from invisibility and, at the same time […] assert the significance of this group as agents of change in early- twentieth century England” (Giles 2005).
Young, employed, working-class women in the 1930s were, as will be revealed in the following chapters, a driving force for the modernity found in both design and the new methods of mass manufacture of lightweight garments, the development of manmade fibres and consumption. This chapter argues and confirms that young working-class women were not passive receptors of constructed identities, such as the cinema, women’s magazines and retail marketing practices, they were innovators and clear “agents of change” embodied in, and the embodiment of, modernity.
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Roberts, C. (2022). Agents of Change. In: Consuming Mass Fashion in 1930s England. Palgrave Studies in Fashion and the Body. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94613-5_2
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