Pictures from the margins of marriage: Representations of spinsters and single mothers in the mid-Victorian novel, inter-war Hollywood melodrama and British film of the 1950s and 1960s

Gender and History

Volumn 11, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 233-255

  Fink, Janet ^a   Holden, Katherine ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0004038708     PISSN: 09535233     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-0424.00141     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. E. A. Kaplan, Motherhood and Representation (Routledge, London, 1992), p. 59.
2. There is currently much interest in 'national cinema' and the ways in which film contributes to a country's sense of nationhood and national identity. These discussions are not taken up here although we acknowledge the diverse cultural, social, economic and political forces which were at play in America and Britain and in their respective film industries during this period. Our argument rests on an assumption that filmmakers targeted women audiences by drawing upon issues and themes which were considered to be redolent of a universal 'female experience' and which presumed the dominance of female over national identity. For discussion of 'national cinema' see, for example: Pam Cook, Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema (BFI, London,1996); Andrew Higson (ed.), Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema (Cassell, London, 1996); Andrew Higson, Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995); Sarah Street, British National Cinema (Routledge, London, 1997).
3. There is currently much interest in 'national cinema' and the ways in which film contributes to a country's sense of nationhood and national identity. These discussions are not taken up here although we acknowledge the diverse cultural, social, economic and political forces which were at play in America and Britain and in their respective film industries during this period. Our argument rests on an assumption that filmmakers targeted women audiences by drawing upon issues and themes which were considered to be redolent of a universal 'female experience' and which presumed the dominance of female over national identity. For discussion of 'national cinema' see, for example: Pam Cook, Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema (BFI, London,1996); Andrew Higson (ed.), Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema (Cassell, London, 1996); Andrew Higson, Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995); Sarah Street, British National Cinema (Routledge, London, 1997).
4. There is currently much interest in 'national cinema' and the ways in which film contributes to a country's sense of nationhood and national identity. These discussions are not taken up here although we acknowledge the diverse cultural, social, economic and political forces which were at play in America and Britain and in their respective film industries during this period. Our argument rests on an assumption that filmmakers targeted women audiences by drawing upon issues and themes which were considered to be redolent of a universal 'female experience' and which presumed the dominance of female over national identity. For discussion of 'national cinema' see, for example: Pam Cook, Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema (BFI, London,1996); Andrew Higson (ed.), Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema (Cassell, London, 1996); Andrew Higson, Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995); Sarah Street, British National Cinema (Routledge, London, 1997).
5. There is currently much interest in 'national cinema' and the ways in which film contributes to a country's sense of nationhood and national identity. These discussions are not taken up here although we acknowledge the diverse cultural, social, economic and political forces which were at play in America and Britain and in their respective film industries during this period. Our argument rests on an assumption that filmmakers targeted women audiences by drawing upon issues and themes which were considered to be redolent of a universal 'female experience' and which presumed the dominance of female over national identity. For discussion of 'national cinema' see, for example: Pam Cook, Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema (BFI, London,1996); Andrew Higson (ed.), Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema (Cassell, London, 1996); Andrew Higson, Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995); Sarah Street, British National Cinema (Routledge, London, 1997).
6. The main source of this belief was an article by W. R. Gregg, 'Why Are Women Redundant?', National Review, 15 (1862), which provoked much debate over subsequent decades. See also John Holt Schooling, 'A Woman's Chance of Marriage', Strand Magazine, XV (1898). For discussion of this issue, see Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women 1850-1920 (Virago, London, 1985); Judith Worsnop, 'A Re-evaluation of "The Problem of Surplus Women" in Nineteenth-century England: The Case of the 1851 Census', Women's Studies International Forum, 13 (1990); Cecilia Swaisland, Servants and Gentlewomen to the Golden Land: The Emigration of Single Women from Britain to South Africa (Berg Publishers, Oxford, 1993).
7. The main source of this belief was an article by W. R. Gregg, 'Why Are Women Redundant?', National Review, 15 (1862), which provoked much debate over subsequent decades. See also John Holt Schooling, 'A Woman's Chance of Marriage', Strand Magazine, XV (1898). For discussion of this issue, see Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women 1850-1920 (Virago, London, 1985); Judith Worsnop, 'A Re-evaluation of "The Problem of Surplus Women" in Nineteenth-century England: The Case of the 1851 Census', Women's Studies International Forum, 13 (1990); Cecilia Swaisland, Servants and Gentlewomen to the Golden Land: The Emigration of Single Women from Britain to South Africa (Berg Publishers, Oxford, 1993).
8. The main source of this belief was an article by W. R. Gregg, 'Why Are Women Redundant?', National Review, 15 (1862), which provoked much debate over subsequent decades. See also John Holt Schooling, 'A Woman's Chance of Marriage', Strand Magazine, XV (1898). For discussion of this issue, see Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women 1850-1920 (Virago, London, 1985); Judith Worsnop, 'A Re-evaluation of "The Problem of Surplus Women" in Nineteenth-century England: The Case of the 1851 Census', Women's Studies International Forum, 13 (1990); Cecilia Swaisland, Servants and Gentlewomen to the Golden Land: The Emigration of Single Women from Britain to South Africa (Berg Publishers, Oxford, 1993).
9. The main source of this belief was an article by W. R. Gregg, 'Why Are Women Redundant?', National Review, 15 (1862), which provoked much debate over subsequent decades. See also John Holt Schooling, 'A Woman's Chance of Marriage', Strand Magazine, XV (1898). For discussion of this issue, see Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women 1850-1920 (Virago, London, 1985); Judith Worsnop, 'A Re-evaluation of "The Problem of Surplus Women" in Nineteenth-century England: The Case of the 1851 Census', Women's Studies International Forum, 13 (1990); Cecilia Swaisland, Servants and Gentlewomen to the Golden Land: The Emigration of Single Women from Britain to South Africa (Berg Publishers, Oxford, 1993).
10. The main source of this belief was an article by W. R. Gregg, 'Why Are Women Redundant?', National Review, 15 (1862), which provoked much debate over subsequent decades. See also John Holt Schooling, 'A Woman's Chance of Marriage', Strand Magazine, XV (1898). For discussion of this issue, see Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women 1850-1920 (Virago, London, 1985); Judith Worsnop, 'A Re-evaluation of "The Problem of Surplus Women" in Nineteenth-century England: The Case of the 1851 Census', Women's Studies International Forum, 13 (1990); Cecilia Swaisland, Servants and Gentlewomen to the Golden Land: The Emigration of Single Women from Britain to South Africa (Berg Publishers, Oxford, 1993).
11. Billie Melman, Women and the Popular Imagination in the 1920s: Flappers and Nymphs (Macmillan, London, 1988), pp. 17-20.
12. Writers who criticised middle-class women for avoiding motherhood include: Charlotte Haldane, Motherhood and its Enemies (1927); Jean Ayling, The Retreat from Parenthood (1930); Charlotte Cowdroy, Wasted Womanhood (1923). See also Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930 (Pandora, London, 1985); Alison Oram, 'Repressed and Thwarted or Bearer of the New World? The Spinster in Inter-war Feminist Discourses', Women's History Review, 1 (1992). For eugenicist rhetoric and debates about working-class mothers, see Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, The Survival of the Unfittest (The C. W. Daniel Company Revised edition, London, 1931); Anna Davin, 'Imperialism and Motherhood', History Workshop Journal, 5 (1978); Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare 1919-1939 (Croom Helm, London, 1980); Richard A Soloway, 'Eugenics and Pronatalism in Wartime Britain', in The Upheaval of War, ed. Richard Wall and Jay Winter (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988).
13. Writers who criticised middle-class women for avoiding motherhood include: Charlotte Haldane, Motherhood and its Enemies (1927); Jean Ayling, The Retreat from Parenthood (1930); Charlotte Cowdroy, Wasted Womanhood (1923). See also Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930 (Pandora, London, 1985); Alison Oram, 'Repressed and Thwarted or Bearer of the New World? The Spinster in Inter-war Feminist Discourses', Women's History Review, 1 (1992). For eugenicist rhetoric and debates about working-class mothers, see Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, The Survival of the Unfittest (The C. W. Daniel Company Revised edition, London, 1931); Anna Davin, 'Imperialism and Motherhood', History Workshop Journal, 5 (1978); Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare 1919-1939 (Croom Helm, London, 1980); Richard A Soloway, 'Eugenics and Pronatalism in Wartime Britain', in The Upheaval of War, ed. Richard Wall and Jay Winter (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988).
14. Writers who criticised middle-class women for avoiding motherhood include: Charlotte Haldane, Motherhood and its Enemies (1927); Jean Ayling, The Retreat from Parenthood (1930); Charlotte Cowdroy, Wasted Womanhood (1923). See also Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930 (Pandora, London, 1985); Alison Oram, 'Repressed and Thwarted or Bearer of the New World? The Spinster in Inter-war Feminist Discourses', Women's History Review, 1 (1992). For eugenicist rhetoric and debates about working-class mothers, see Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, The Survival of the Unfittest (The C. W. Daniel Company Revised edition, London, 1931); Anna Davin, 'Imperialism and Motherhood', History Workshop Journal, 5 (1978); Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare 1919-1939 (Croom Helm, London, 1980); Richard A Soloway, 'Eugenics and Pronatalism in Wartime Britain', in The Upheaval of War, ed. Richard Wall and Jay Winter (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988).
15. Writers who criticised middle-class women for avoiding motherhood include: Charlotte Haldane, Motherhood and its Enemies (1927); Jean Ayling, The Retreat from Parenthood (1930); Charlotte Cowdroy, Wasted Womanhood (1923). See also Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930 (Pandora, London, 1985); Alison Oram, 'Repressed and Thwarted or Bearer of the New World? The Spinster in Inter-war Feminist Discourses', Women's History Review, 1 (1992). For eugenicist rhetoric and debates about working-class mothers, see Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, The Survival of the Unfittest (The C. W. Daniel Company Revised edition, London, 1931); Anna Davin, 'Imperialism and Motherhood', History Workshop Journal, 5 (1978); Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare 1919-1939 (Croom Helm, London, 1980); Richard A Soloway, 'Eugenics and Pronatalism in Wartime Britain', in The Upheaval of War, ed. Richard Wall and Jay Winter (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988).
16. Writers who criticised middle-class women for avoiding motherhood include: Charlotte Haldane, Motherhood and its Enemies (1927); Jean Ayling, The Retreat from Parenthood (1930); Charlotte Cowdroy, Wasted Womanhood (1923). See also Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930 (Pandora, London, 1985); Alison Oram, 'Repressed and Thwarted or Bearer of the New World? The Spinster in Inter-war Feminist Discourses', Women's History Review, 1 (1992). For eugenicist rhetoric and debates about working-class mothers, see Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, The Survival of the Unfittest (The C. W. Daniel Company Revised edition, London, 1931); Anna Davin, 'Imperialism and Motherhood', History Workshop Journal, 5 (1978); Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare 1919-1939 (Croom Helm, London, 1980); Richard A Soloway, 'Eugenics and Pronatalism in Wartime Britain', in The Upheaval of War, ed. Richard Wall and Jay Winter (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988).
17. Writers who criticised middle-class women for avoiding motherhood include: Charlotte Haldane, Motherhood and its Enemies (1927); Jean Ayling, The Retreat from Parenthood (1930); Charlotte Cowdroy, Wasted Womanhood (1923). See also Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930 (Pandora, London, 1985); Alison Oram, 'Repressed and Thwarted or Bearer of the New World? The Spinster in Inter-war Feminist Discourses', Women's History Review, 1 (1992). For eugenicist rhetoric and debates about working-class mothers, see Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, The Survival of the Unfittest (The C. W. Daniel Company Revised edition, London, 1931); Anna Davin, 'Imperialism and Motherhood', History Workshop Journal, 5 (1978); Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare 1919-1939 (Croom Helm, London, 1980); Richard A Soloway, 'Eugenics and Pronatalism in Wartime Britain', in The Upheaval of War, ed. Richard Wall and Jay Winter (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988).
18. Writers who criticised middle-class women for avoiding motherhood include: Charlotte Haldane, Motherhood and its Enemies (1927); Jean Ayling, The Retreat from Parenthood (1930); Charlotte Cowdroy, Wasted Womanhood (1923). See also Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930 (Pandora, London, 1985); Alison Oram, 'Repressed and Thwarted or Bearer of the New World? The Spinster in Inter-war Feminist Discourses', Women's History Review, 1 (1992). For eugenicist rhetoric and debates about working-class mothers, see Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, The Survival of the Unfittest (The C. W. Daniel Company Revised edition, London, 1931); Anna Davin, 'Imperialism and Motherhood', History Workshop Journal, 5 (1978); Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare 1919-1939 (Croom Helm, London, 1980); Richard A Soloway, 'Eugenics and Pronatalism in Wartime Britain', in The Upheaval of War, ed. Richard Wall and Jay Winter (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988).
19. Writers who criticised middle-class women for avoiding motherhood include: Charlotte Haldane, Motherhood and its Enemies (1927); Jean Ayling, The Retreat from Parenthood (1930); Charlotte Cowdroy, Wasted Womanhood (1923). See also Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930 (Pandora, London, 1985); Alison Oram, 'Repressed and Thwarted or Bearer of the New World? The Spinster in Inter-war Feminist Discourses', Women's History Review, 1 (1992). For eugenicist rhetoric and debates about working-class mothers, see Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, The Survival of the Unfittest (The C. W. Daniel Company Revised edition, London, 1931); Anna Davin, 'Imperialism and Motherhood', History Workshop Journal, 5 (1978); Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare 1919-1939 (Croom Helm, London, 1980); Richard A Soloway, 'Eugenics and Pronatalism in Wartime Britain', in The Upheaval of War, ed. Richard Wall and Jay Winter (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988).
20. Writers who criticised middle-class women for avoiding motherhood include: Charlotte Haldane, Motherhood and its Enemies (1927); Jean Ayling, The Retreat from Parenthood (1930); Charlotte Cowdroy, Wasted Womanhood (1923). See also Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930 (Pandora, London, 1985); Alison Oram, 'Repressed and Thwarted or Bearer of the New World? The Spinster in Inter-war Feminist Discourses', Women's History Review, 1 (1992). For eugenicist rhetoric and debates about working-class mothers, see Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, The Survival of the Unfittest (The C. W. Daniel Company Revised edition, London, 1931); Anna Davin, 'Imperialism and Motherhood', History Workshop Journal, 5 (1978); Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare 1919-1939 (Croom Helm, London, 1980); Richard A Soloway, 'Eugenics and Pronatalism in Wartime Britain', in The Upheaval of War, ed. Richard Wall and Jay Winter (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988).
21. The competing stereotypes used in the representation of single woman by interwar novelists are discussed in Katherine Holden, 'The Shadow of Marriage: Single Women in England 1919-1939' (University of Essex, PhD thesis, 1996). For representations of spinsters in the theatre, see Maggie B. Gale, West End Women: Women and the London Stage 1918-1962 (Routledge, London, 1996), pp. 172-93.
22. The competing stereotypes used in the representation of single woman by interwar novelists are discussed in Katherine Holden, 'The Shadow of Marriage: Single Women in England 1919-1939' (University of Essex, PhD thesis, 1996). For representations of spinsters in the theatre, see Maggie B. Gale, West End Women: Women and the London Stage 1918-1962 (Routledge, London, 1996), pp. 172-93.
23. See Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800, 2nd edn (London, Longman, 1989), pp. 180-224.
24. 'Evelyn Home's Problem Page', Woman, 19 July 1938; Judge Jeannette G. Brill, 'Sex Before Marriage', True Story, December 1937, p. 24.
25. 'Evelyn Home's Problem Page', Woman, 19 July 1938; Judge Jeannette G. Brill, 'Sex Before Marriage', True Story, December 1937, p. 24.
26. A man interviewed by Katherine Holden was not untypical in being brought up by an 'aunt' who was in fact his mother. Although he found out the truth when he was in his teens, the fiction was preserved between them until she died. See 'The Shadow of Marriage', p. 280. There are numerous oral accounts of grandmothers still of child-bearing age passing off their teenage daughter's children as their own. See for example Nicky Leap and Billie Hunter, The Midwife's Tale: An Oral History of Midwifery from Handywoman to Professional Midwife (Scarlett Press, London, 1983), pp. 106-7.
27. A man interviewed by Katherine Holden was not untypical in being brought up by an 'aunt' who was in fact his mother. Although he found out the truth when he was in his teens, the fiction was preserved between them until she died. See 'The Shadow of Marriage', p. 280. There are numerous oral accounts of grandmothers still of child-bearing age passing off their teenage daughter's children as their own. See for example Nicky Leap and Billie Hunter, The Midwife's Tale: An Oral History of Midwifery from Handywoman to Professional Midwife (Scarlett Press, London, 1983), pp. 106-7.
28. Changes in sexual attitudes and behaviour are well documented in John Costello, Love Sex and War: Changing Values 1939-45 (Collins, London, 1985); Paul Ferris, Sex and the British: A Twentieth-Century History (Michael Joseph, London, 1993); Cate Haste, Rules of Desire - Sex in Britain: World War 1 to the Present (Chatto & Windus, London, 1993).
29. Changes in sexual attitudes and behaviour are well documented in John Costello, Love Sex and War: Changing Values 1939-45 (Collins, London, 1985); Paul Ferris, Sex and the British: A Twentieth-Century History (Michael Joseph, London, 1993); Cate Haste, Rules of Desire - Sex in Britain: World War 1 to the Present (Chatto & Windus, London, 1993).
30. Changes in sexual attitudes and behaviour are well documented in John Costello, Love Sex and War: Changing Values 1939-45 (Collins, London, 1985); Paul Ferris, Sex and the British: A Twentieth-Century History (Michael Joseph, London, 1993); Cate Haste, Rules of Desire - Sex in Britain: World War 1 to the Present (Chatto & Windus, London, 1993).
31. Many of the concerns about family life following the Second World War are laid out in Mass Observation, Britain and Her Birth-Rate (Advertising Services Guild, London, 1945); J. Marchant (ed.), Re-Building Family Life in the Post-War World (Odhams Press, London, 1945).
32. Many of the concerns about family life following the Second World War are laid out in Mass Observation, Britain and Her Birth-Rate (Advertising Services Guild, London, 1945); J. Marchant (ed.), Re-Building Family Life in the Post-War World (Odhams Press, London, 1945).
33. See Janet Fink, 'Condemned or Condoned? Investigating the Problem of Unmarried Motherhood in England, 1945-60' (University of Essex, PhD thesis, 1997).
34. Marjorie Ferguson, Forever Feminine: Women's Magazines and the Cult of Femininity (Heinemann, London, 1983). Some recent work has, however, argued that novels written during the 1950s were less conservative in their depiction of women's lives than is generally claimed and that more research is needed on women novelists and popular fictions of this period. See Niamh Baker, Happily Ever After? Women's Fiction in Post-war Britain, 1945-60 (Macmillan, London, 1989); Deborah Philips and Ian Haywood, Brave New Causes: Women in British Post-war Fictions (Leicester University Press, London, 1998).
35. Marjorie Ferguson, Forever Feminine: Women's Magazines and the Cult of Femininity (Heinemann, London, 1983). Some recent work has, however, argued that novels written during the 1950s were less conservative in their depiction of women's lives than is generally claimed and that more research is needed on women novelists and popular fictions of this period. See Niamh Baker, Happily Ever After? Women's Fiction in Post-war Britain, 1945-60 (Macmillan, London, 1989); Deborah Philips and Ian Haywood, Brave New Causes: Women in British Post-war Fictions (Leicester University Press, London, 1998).
36. Marjorie Ferguson, Forever Feminine: Women's Magazines and the Cult of Femininity (Heinemann, London, 1983). Some recent work has, however, argued that novels written during the 1950s were less conservative in their depiction of women's lives than is generally claimed and that more research is needed on women novelists and popular fictions of this period. See Niamh Baker, Happily Ever After? Women's Fiction in Post-war Britain, 1945-60 (Macmillan, London, 1989); Deborah Philips and Ian Haywood, Brave New Causes: Women in British Post-war Fictions (Leicester University Press, London, 1998).
37. John Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health (World Health Organisation, Geneva, 1952).
38. Helen Jones, Health and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (Longman, London, 1994). She writes, 'The 1950s witnessed a moral panic over prostitution on the streets of London. Hysteria peaked in 1951 at the time of the Festival of Britain and again in 1953 during the Coronation ... The mood of the country revealed deep-rooted sexism. The fact that women were resorting to prostitution and then being singled out for condemnation is both an indicator of the economic difficulties facing some women and the double standards applied to male and female sexual behaviour' (p. 130).
39. For personal accounts of the stigma experienced by unmarried mothers, see Steve Humphries, A Secret World of Sex - Forbidden Fruit: The British Experience 1900-1950 (Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1988), pp. 63-94.
40. For discussion of the nature of these representations see N. Auerbach, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth (Harvard University Press, London, 1982); F. Basch, Relative Creatures: Victorian Women in Society and the Novel 1837-67 (Allen Lane, London, 1974); S. Mitchell, The Fallen Angel: Chastity, Class and Women's Reading, 1835-1880 (Bowling Green University Press, Ohio, 1981); L. Nead, Myths of Sexuality (Blackwell, Oxford, 1988); E. Trudgill, Madonnas and Magdalens (Heinemann, London, 1976).
41. For discussion of the nature of these representations see N. Auerbach, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth (Harvard University Press, London, 1982); F. Basch, Relative Creatures: Victorian Women in Society and the Novel 1837-67 (Allen Lane, London, 1974); S. Mitchell, The Fallen Angel: Chastity, Class and Women's Reading, 1835-1880 (Bowling Green University Press, Ohio, 1981); L. Nead, Myths of Sexuality (Blackwell, Oxford, 1988); E. Trudgill, Madonnas and Magdalens (Heinemann, London, 1976).
42. For discussion of the nature of these representations see N. Auerbach, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth (Harvard University Press, London, 1982); F. Basch, Relative Creatures: Victorian Women in Society and the Novel 1837-67 (Allen Lane, London, 1974); S. Mitchell, The Fallen Angel: Chastity, Class and Women's Reading, 1835-1880 (Bowling Green University Press, Ohio, 1981); L. Nead, Myths of Sexuality (Blackwell, Oxford, 1988); E. Trudgill, Madonnas and Magdalens (Heinemann, London, 1976).
43. For discussion of the nature of these representations see N. Auerbach, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth (Harvard University Press, London, 1982); F. Basch, Relative Creatures: Victorian Women in Society and the Novel 1837-67 (Allen Lane, London, 1974); S. Mitchell, The Fallen Angel: Chastity, Class and Women's Reading, 1835-1880 (Bowling Green University Press, Ohio, 1981); L. Nead, Myths of Sexuality (Blackwell, Oxford, 1988); E. Trudgill, Madonnas and Magdalens (Heinemann, London, 1976).
44. For discussion of the nature of these representations see N. Auerbach, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth (Harvard University Press, London, 1982); F. Basch, Relative Creatures: Victorian Women in Society and the Novel 1837-67 (Allen Lane, London, 1974); S. Mitchell, The Fallen Angel: Chastity, Class and Women's Reading, 1835-1880 (Bowling Green University Press, Ohio, 1981); L. Nead, Myths of Sexuality (Blackwell, Oxford, 1988); E. Trudgill, Madonnas and Magdalens (Heinemann, London, 1976).
45. The paintings of Augustus Egg are particularly vivid examples of this imagery. See also discussion in Nead, Myths of Sexuality.
46. Promotion and fund-raising work by organisations like the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child and local diocesan Moral Welfare Associations continued to draw upon the self-sacrificing mother ideal throughout the first half of the twentieth century. See Fink, 'Condemned or Condoned?'
47. The reservations expressed by Elizabeth Gaskell about her portrayal of unmarried motherhood in Ruth have been well documented as in, for example, Jenny Uglow, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories (Faber & Faber, London, 1993). For analysis of debates about unmarried motherhood in the twentieth century, see Kathleen Kiernan, Hilary Land and Jane Lewis, Lone Motherhood in Twentieth-Century Britain (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998).
48. The reservations expressed by Elizabeth Gaskell about her portrayal of unmarried motherhood in Ruth have been well documented as in, for example, Jenny Uglow, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories (Faber & Faber, London, 1993). For analysis of debates about unmarried motherhood in the twentieth century, see Kathleen Kiernan, Hilary Land and Jane Lewis, Lone Motherhood in Twentieth-Century Britain (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998).
49. Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth (1853; repr. Dent, London, 1967), ch. 33.
50. Mrs Henry Wood, East Lynne (1862; repr. Alan Sutton, Stroud, 1993), p. 309.
51. E. Ann Kaplan, 'Mothering, Feminism and Representation: The Maternal Melodrama and The Woman's Film', in Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and Woman's Film, ed. Christine Gledhill (BFI, London, 1987), p. 118. By the early twentieth century, feminist challenges to the sexual double standard were beginning to influence some novelists. In E. M. Forster's Howard's End (1910) Margaret accuses her husband Henry Wilcox, who had committed adultery during his first marriage, of cruelty and hypocrisy in condemning her sister Helen's illegitimate pregnancy. However, while Helen and her sister end up keeping the child and defying convention, such positive representations of female transgression and independence are rare in popular fiction.
52. E. Ann Kaplan, 'Mothering, Feminism and Representation: The Maternal Melodrama and The Woman's Film', in Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and Woman's Film, ed. Christine Gledhill (BFI, London, 1987), p. 118. By the early twentieth century, feminist challenges to the sexual double standard were beginning to influence some novelists. In E. M. Forster's Howard's End (1910) Margaret accuses her husband Henry Wilcox, who had committed adultery during his first marriage, of cruelty and hypocrisy in condemning her sister Helen's illegitimate pregnancy. However, while Helen and her sister end up keeping the child and defying convention, such positive representations of female transgression and independence are rare in popular fiction.
53. E. Ann Kaplan, Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama (Routledge, London, 1992), ch. 5 and p. 149. See also C. Viviani, 'Who is Without Sin?: The Maternal Melodrama in American Film, 1930-1939', in Home Is Where the Heart Is; Lea Jacobs, The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film 1928-1942 (University of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin, 1992), p. 12. Jacobs notes the continuing popularity of the maternal melodrama in films of this era, where an errant mother comes back into contact with her child and conceals her identity to avoid admitting her evil past.
54. E. Ann Kaplan, Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama (Routledge, London, 1992), ch. 5 and p. 149. See also C. Viviani, 'Who is Without Sin?: The Maternal Melodrama in American Film, 1930-1939', in Home Is Where the Heart Is; Lea Jacobs, The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film 1928-1942 (University of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin, 1992), p. 12. Jacobs notes the continuing popularity of the maternal melodrama in films of this era, where an errant mother comes back into contact with her child and conceals her identity to avoid admitting her evil past.
55. E. Ann Kaplan, Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama (Routledge, London, 1992), ch. 5 and p. 149. See also C. Viviani, 'Who is Without Sin?: The Maternal Melodrama in American Film, 1930-1939', in Home Is Where the Heart Is; Lea Jacobs, The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film 1928-1942 (University of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin, 1992), p. 12. Jacobs notes the continuing popularity of the maternal melodrama in films of this era, where an errant mother comes back into contact with her child and conceals her identity to avoid admitting her evil past.
56. See Jeffrey Richardson and Dorothy Sheridan (eds), Mass Observation at the Movies (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1987), p. 39.
57. Edith Wharton, 'The Old Maid', in Old New York (1924; repr. Virago, London, 1985).
58. Cinema was one of the most popular form of entertainment in the 1930s, with an estimated 40 per cent of the population going twice a week and a further 25 per cent once a week. Charles Mowat, Britain Between the Wars (Methuen, London, 1955), p. 501. Although by the 1930s cinema had become acceptable to middle-class housewives, it was most popular with young working-class women who preferred American films. Deirdre Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty: Women Between the Wars 1918-1939 (Pandora Press, London, 1939), pp. 115-17. For discussion of the continuing popularity of Hollywood films in Britain during the 1940s, see Jackie Stacey, Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (Routledge, London, 1994), pp. 80-125.
59. Cinema was one of the most popular form of entertainment in the 1930s, with an estimated 40 per cent of the population going twice a week and a further 25 per cent once a week. Charles Mowat, Britain Between the Wars (Methuen, London, 1955), p. 501. Although by the 1930s cinema had become acceptable to middle-class housewives, it was most popular with young working-class women who preferred American films. Deirdre Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty: Women Between the Wars 1918-1939 (Pandora Press, London, 1939), pp. 115-17. For discussion of the continuing popularity of Hollywood films in Britain during the 1940s, see Jackie Stacey, Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (Routledge, London, 1994), pp. 80-125.
60. Cinema was one of the most popular form of entertainment in the 1930s, with an estimated 40 per cent of the population going twice a week and a further 25 per cent once a week. Charles Mowat, Britain Between the Wars (Methuen, London, 1955), p. 501. Although by the 1930s cinema had become acceptable to middle-class housewives, it was most popular with young working-class women who preferred American films. Deirdre Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty: Women Between the Wars 1918-1939 (Pandora Press, London, 1939), pp. 115-17. For discussion of the continuing popularity of Hollywood films in Britain during the 1940s, see Jackie Stacey, Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (Routledge, London, 1994), pp. 80-125.
61. Marcia Landy, British Genres: Cinema and society 1930-1960 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1991), p. 191.
62. Viviani, 'Who is Without Sin?', p. 84. The casting of Bette Davis as heroine both of The Old Maid and Now Voyager is significant in this respect, since she was the most popular and critically acclaimed Hollywood star of the late 1930s and 1940s in America and Britain and appeared almost exclusively in woman's films (Maria La Place, 'Producing and Consuming the Woman's Film: Discursive Struggle in Now Voyager', in Home Is Where the Heart Is, p. 146). In a popular film magazine The Old Maid was given four stars and was 'most decidedly going to be one of the best pictures of 1940'. In the following edition a two-page synopsis appeared 'freely adapted' from the film. See Picture Goer and Film Weekly, 27 January and 17 February, 1940.
63. Viviani, 'Who is Without Sin?', p. 84. The casting of Bette Davis as heroine both of The Old Maid and Now Voyager is significant in this respect, since she was the most popular and critically acclaimed Hollywood star of the late 1930s and 1940s in America and Britain and appeared almost exclusively in woman's films (Maria La Place, 'Producing and Consuming the Woman's Film: Discursive Struggle in Now Voyager', in Home Is Where the Heart Is, p. 146). In a popular film magazine The Old Maid was given four stars and was 'most decidedly going to be one of the best pictures of 1940'. In the following edition a two-page synopsis appeared 'freely adapted' from the film. See Picture Goer and Film Weekly, 27 January and 17 February, 1940.
64. Viviani, 'Who is Without Sin?', p. 84. The casting of Bette Davis as heroine both of The Old Maid and Now Voyager is significant in this respect, since she was the most popular and critically acclaimed Hollywood star of the late 1930s and 1940s in America and Britain and appeared almost exclusively in woman's films (Maria La Place, 'Producing and Consuming the Woman's Film: Discursive Struggle in Now Voyager', in Home Is Where the Heart Is, p. 146). In a popular film magazine The Old Maid was given four stars and was 'most decidedly going to be one of the best pictures of 1940'. In the following edition a two-page synopsis appeared 'freely adapted' from the film. See Picture Goer and Film Weekly, 27 January and 17 February, 1940.
65. Spectacles have long featured in the iconography of spinsterhood but Dorothy Parker's cruel and well-known epithet, appearing in Not So Deep As a Well (1937), gave it extra bite. A reader's letter in Picturegoer suggests the discomfort this trope afforded viewers: 'Imagine please for one moment, that you are a bespectacled but modern girl in a cinema with the boy friend and perhaps you will know just how it feels to hear such bad wise-cracks as "Never make passes at girls who wear glasses'", Picturegoer, 13 April 1941.
66. Spectacles have long featured in the iconography of spinsterhood but Dorothy Parker's cruel and well-known epithet, appearing in Not So Deep As a Well (1937), gave it extra bite. A reader's letter in Picturegoer suggests the discomfort this trope afforded viewers: 'Imagine please for one moment, that you are a bespectacled but modern girl in a cinema with the boy friend and perhaps you will know just how it feels to hear such bad wise-cracks as "Never make passes at girls who wear glasses'", Picturegoer, 13 April 1941.
67. Holden, 'The Shadow of Marriage', pp. 274-5 and pp. 280-81.
68. Marilyn French, Introduction to Edith Wharton, Old New York, p. xi.
69. See Holden, 'The Shadow of Marriage', ch. 3. Regina Kunzel argues that in America social workers during the inter-war years were increasingly critical of the policy advocated by most maternity homes of keeping mother and child together and began to sing the praises of adoption as being in the best interests of the child, believing it was necessary to 'subordinate the mother's interests to those of the baby'. See Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalisation of Social Work 1890-1945 (Yale University Press, USA, 1993).
70. See Holden, 'The Shadow of Marriage', ch. 3. Regina Kunzel argues that in America social workers during the inter-war years were increasingly critical of the policy advocated by most maternity homes of keeping mother and child together and began to sing the praises of adoption as being in the best interests of the child, believing it was necessary to 'subordinate the mother's interests to those of the baby'. See Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalisation of Social Work 1890-1945 (Yale University Press, USA, 1993).
71. This trope continued to be used through the 1950s in popular fiction which dealt with extra-marital relationships. See Fink, 'Condemned or Condoned?', pp. 310-12.
72. See, for example, Mary Scharlieb, The Bachelor Woman and her Problems (Williams and Norgate Ltd, London, 1929), W. E. Sargent, The Psychology of Marriage and the Family Life (Independent Press, London, 1940), Leonora Eyles, Unmarried but Happy (Victor Gollancz, London, 1947).
73. See, for example, Mary Scharlieb, The Bachelor Woman and her Problems (Williams and Norgate Ltd, London, 1929), W. E. Sargent, The Psychology of Marriage and the Family Life (Independent Press, London, 1940), Leonora Eyles, Unmarried but Happy (Victor Gollancz, London, 1947).
74. See, for example, Mary Scharlieb, The Bachelor Woman and her Problems (Williams and Norgate Ltd, London, 1929), W. E. Sargent, The Psychology of Marriage and the Family Life (Independent Press, London, 1940), Leonora Eyles, Unmarried but Happy (Victor Gollancz, London, 1947).
75. John Hill, Sex, Class and Realism: British Cinema 1956-63 (BFI, London, 1986), p. 48.
76. See Landy, British Genres: Cinema and Society 1930-1960, pp. 433-82.
77. Hill, Sex, Class and Realism, p. 127.
78. Street, British National Cinema, pp. 62-3.
79. L. Jacobs, 'Censorship and the Fallen Woman Cycle', in Home Is Where the Heart Is, p. 101.
80. One reviewer thought the film's sympathies with the plight of the unmarried mother were somewhat misplaced, writing, 'The problem of finding accommodation and the danger of overcrowding are not confined only to the unmarried mothers in contemporary Britain' (Monthly Film Bulletin, December 1952, p. 168).
81. See, for example, George Moore, Esther Walters (1899; repr. Heinemann, London, 1937).
82. Marjorie Rosen, Popcorn Venus (Avon, New York, 1973), p. 311.
83. Lynne Reid Banks, The L-Shaped Room (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1962), p. 130.
84. Sheila Delaney, A Taste of Honey (London, Methuen, 1959), p. 38.
85. The play disrupts gender and familial roles still further. As Terry Lovell has argued, 'It is Helen [Jo's mother] rather than Jo who is given an active urgent sexuality. Jimmie [the father of Jo's baby] moreover cannot be set against an asexual domesticated Geoff. They are alike in their stereotypically feminine characteristics' (Terry Lovell, 'Landscapes and Stories in 1960s British Realism', in Dissolving Views, p. 172).
86. Roy Porter and Lesley Hall, The Facts of Life: The Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain 1650-1950 (Yale University Press, London, 1995), p. 276.
87. Elizabeth Wilson, Only Halfway to Paradise (Tavistock, London, 1980), p. 125.
88. Many of the adult-rated films of this period, which were characterised by an X-certificate, were popular because of this rating which implied overt portrayals of either sex or violence. For example, in her review of Room at the Top, Penelope Houston comments on the particular publicity afforded to both the novel and the film adaptation: 'John Braine's novel may have achieved Daily Express serialisation and best-seller sales for its sex episodes rather than its social comment. The film, similarly, may climb to the top partly on its X certificate, its heavy breathing sales campaign and some dialogue calculated to jolt a few traditionalists used to the discreet reticence of sub-titles' (Sight and Sound, 28, 1959).