Literature on women's obligations to returning World War II veterans

Women's Studies

Volumn 5, Issue 3, 1978, Pages 223-239

  Hartmann, Susan M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI ST LOUIS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 40749091016     PISSN: 00497878     EISSN: 15477045     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00497878.1978.9978450     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. Valerie Kincade Oppenheimer, The Female Labor Force in the United States: Demographic and Economic Factors Governing its Growth and Changing Composition (Berkeley: University of California, 1972); William F. Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic, and Political Roles, 1920–1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 135-195; Eleanor Ferguson Straub, “Government Policy Toward Civilian Women During World War II,” dissertation, Emory University, 1973
2. Women constituted less than two per cent of the armed services, and, of course, did not see combat. Recruitment propaganda addressed to women stressed the importance of women performing support services “so that men may fight.”
3. This theme is dramatically portrayed in a novel by Frederick Wakeman, Shore Leave (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1944). Its jacket directs: “All women from 15 to 40 take notice.”
4. This paper is limited to the literature on veterans' social adjustment and is based on approximately twenty books, twenty articles in professional journals, twenty articles in popular and women's magazines, fifteen novels, short stories and movies, and five pamphlets.
5. Willard Waller, The Veteran Comes Back (New York: The Dryden Press, 1944), 13; Howard Kitching, Sex Problems of the Returned Veteran (New York: Emerson Books, 1946), v; John H. Mariano, The Veteran and His Marriage (New York: Council on Marriage Relations, 1945), v; Grace Sloan Overton, Marriage in War and Peace: A Book for Parents and Counselors of Youth (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1945), 9; Arch Soutar, “Home coming isn't easy,” Saturday Evening Post, 217 (December 16, 1944), 35–36, 38; Robert A. Nisbet, “The coming problem of assimilation,” American Journal of Sociology, 50 (January, 1945), 261; Herbert I. Kupper, Back to Life: The Emotional Adjustment of our Veterans (New York: L. B. Fischer, 1945), 20; Annie R. Dyer, “Human relations in transition,” Journal of Home Economics, 37, No. 3 (March, 1945), 129.
6. Christopher LaFarge, “Soldier into civilian,” Harpers, 190 (March, 1945), 344-345; Kupper, 19-20; Alanson H. Edgerton, Readjustment or Revolution? (New York: McGraw Hill, 1946), 38, 41; William Best, Jr., “They won't all be psychoneurotics,” Saturday Evening Post, 217, No. 42 (April 14, 1945), 112; David Dempsey, “Veterans are NOT problem children,” American Mercury, 61, No. 261 (September, 1945), 326-331; Bill Mauldin, “Up front,” Ladies Home Journal, 62 (June, 1945), 59.
7. Benjamin Bowker, Out of Uniform (New York: W. W. Norton, 1946), 68; Richard Brooks, The Brick Foxhole (New York: Harper and Bros., 1945), vii-ix; Maxine Davis, “Now that he's home,” Good Housekeeping, 120 (January, 1945), 36; Marion Gough, “Home should be even more wonderful than he remembers it,” House Beautiful, 87, No. 1 (January, 1945), 29; Edward A. Strecker and Kenneth E. Appel, Psychiatry in Modern Warfare (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1945), 64.
8. Waller, The Veteran Comes Back, 14.
9. Ethel L. Ginsburg, “Veteran into civilian: the process of readjustment,” Mental Hygiene, 29, No. 1 (January, 1945), 7; Edwin O. Krause, “For the duration widow,” Parents Magazine XIX, No. 3, (March, 1944), 110; Strecker and Appel, 77; Kitching, 117; Soutar 35–38.
10. Waller, The Veteran Comes Back, 284; Edward C. McDonagh, “The discharged serviceman and his family,” American Journal of Sociology, 51, No. 5 (March, 1945), 451; Coleman R. Griffith, “The psychological adjustments of the returned serviceman and their families,” Journal of Home Economics, 36, No. 7 (September, 1944), 388; New York Times, January 24, 1945, 18; Gough, 29; Krause, 111; William Waller, “What you can do to help the returning veteran,” Ladies Home Journal, 62 (February, 1945), 26; Overton, 155; Dixon Wecter, When Johnny Comes Marching Home (Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1944), 499; “Will you be ready—When Johnny comes marching home?” by a returned veteran, House Beautiful, 87 (January, 1945), 27.
11. Gough, 29; Waller, “What you can do., ”. 94; “When he comes home: a father's advice to his married daughter,” Woman's Home Companion, 71 (December, 1944), 38; Gladys Taber, “Not quite like the books,” Ladies Home Journal, 62 (September, 1945), 111; Margaret Weymouth Jackson, “Time enough,” Ladies Home Journal, 63 (April, 1946), 228; Frank Howard Richardson, “Wartime Worries Department,” Better Homes and Gardens, 23 (March, 1945), 84.
12. Alexander G. Dumas and Grace Keen, A Psychiatric Primer for the Veteran's Family and Friends (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1945), 4; “The combat pilot after the war,” Mental Hygiene XXIX, No. 1, (January, 1945), 147; March of Time film, “The returning veteran,” 1945, National Archives; Waller, The Veteran Comes Back, 288; Edgerton, 40; Kupper, 184–185.
13. Kupper, 182–185, 92.
14. Henry Elkin, “Aggressive and erotic tendencies in army life,” American Journal of Sociology, 51, No. 5 (March, 1946), 409; Ernie Pyle, Here is Your War (New York: Henry Holt, 1943), 298; National Research Council, Psychology for the Returning Servicemen (Washington and New York: Infantry Journal and Penguin Books, 1945), 13; Amran Scheinfeld, “Motherhood's back in style,” Ladies Home Journal, 61 (September, 1944), 136; Franklin M. Reck, “Bart Wall—Soldier to civilian,” Better Homes and Gardens, 24 (September, 1945), 58; Mona Williams, “What's happened to Mary?” Ladies Home Journal, 62 (April, 1945), 106; Clifford R. Adams, “The companion marriage clinic,” Woman's Home Companion, 73 (May, 1946), 34.
15. Niven Busch, They Dream of Home (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 2944); MacKinlay Kantor, Glory for Me (New York: CowardMcCann, 1945), 73; Milton L Miller, “Personality of the returned veteran,” Hygeia, 24 (February, 1946), 146; Soutar, 35; Frederick Robin, “When your soldier comes home,” Ladies Home Journal, 62 (October, 1945), 183; Thomas A. C. Rennie and Luther E. Woodward, Two Talks to Families of Returning Servicemen: When He Comes Back and If He Comes Back Nervous (New York: The National Committee for Mental Hygiene, 1944) p. 13; George K. Pratt, Soldier to Civilian: Problems of Readjustment (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1944) p. 185.
16. Edward and Louise McDonagh, “War anxieties of soldiers and their wives,” Social Forces, Vol. 24, No. 2 (December, 1945), p. 197; Robin, p. 204; Kitching, pp. 56, 59; Wakeman, pp. 103–104, 261; Brooks, pp. 213–214.
17. Bowker, p. 146; Wechter, p. 499; Kitching, pp. 73, 77. An exception to this theme can be found in John Marquand's novel, Repent in Haste (Boston: Little, Brown, 1945) where a young Navy lieutenant seems undisturbed to learn that his wife, whom he knew for a week before getting married, has been unfaithful and wants a divorce.
18. Robert J. Havighurst, Walter H. Eaton, John W. Baughman, Ernest W. Burgess, The American Veteran Back Home: A Study of Veteran Readjust ment (New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1951), pp. 84-85; Miller, p. 98; Adams, p. 34; Rennie and Woodward, p. 13; Overton, p. 164; National Research Council, pp. 73, 83.
19. Margaret Mead, “The woman in the war,” in Jack Goodman, ed., While You Were Gone: A Report on Wartime Life in the United States (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946), pp. 278–284.
20. Mariano, p. 59; Pratt, p. 173—175; War Department Education Manual, GI Roundtable Series, “Do you want your wife to work after the war,” (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1944); Kupper, pp. 186-187; Richardson (July, 1945), p. 8; Dumas and Keen, p. 21; Kitching, pp. 71-72; Edgerton, pp. 10, 25; Ann Maulsby, “War wives: The four types,” New York Times Magazine, April 8, 1945, p. 32.
21. Margaret Buel Wilder, Since You Went Away…, Letters To a Soldier from His Wife (New York: McGraw Hill, 1943), 18.
22. “When he comes home,” 38; Miller, 91, 144; Mona Gardner, “Has your husband come home to the right woman?” Ladies Home Journal, 62 (December, 1945), 41, 72; Kupper, 93–94.
23. Miller, 98; Gardner, 72; Sylvia M. Hahn, “Will you be “so nice to come home to'?” Independent Woman, 23 (March, 1944), 69–88.
24. Carl N. Degler, “What ought to be and what was: Women's sexuality in the nineteenth century,” American Historical Review, 79 No. 5 (December, 1974), 1467–1490.
25. Among the most notorious examples are Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1942); Roy Helton, “The inner threat: Our own softness,” Harper's Magazine, 181 (September, 1940); Edward A. Strecker, Their Mothers' Sons: The Psychiatrist Examines an American Problem (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1946); Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia F. Famham, Modern Woman: The Lost Sex (New York: Harper and Bros., 1947). For a contemporary analysis of such literature, see Abraham Myerson, “Woman, the authorities' scapegoat,” in Elizabeth Bragdon, ed., Women Today: Their Conflicts, Their Frustrations and Their Fulfillments and Their Fulfillments (New York: BobbsMerrill, 1953).
26. Krause, 110.
27. Pearl S. Buck, Of Men and Women (New York: The John Day Company, 1941), 154–155.