Masculinity and domesticity in 1930s South Wales: Did unemployment change the domestic division of labour?

Twentieth Century British History

Volumn 21, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 281-299

  Penlington, Neil ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BEHAVIOR; FEMALE; HISTORY; HOSPITAL SERVICE; HUMAN; MALE; MARRIAGE; MASCULINITY; UNEMPLOYMENT; UNITED KINGDOM;

FEMALE; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HOUSEKEEPING; HUMANS; MALE; MARRIAGE; MASCULINITY; POWER (PSYCHOLOGY); UNEMPLOYMENT; WALES;

EID: 77956155674     PISSN: 09552359     EISSN: 14774674     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/tcbh/hwq011     Document Type: Article

References (90)

1. Some areas of the South Wales coalfield had the highest levels of (male) unemployment in Britain: in many communities unemployment was higher than 50 per cent, with some, such as Nantglo and Blaina, suffering over 75 per cent unemployment for a decade.
2. Stephen Constantine, Unemployment in Britain between the Wars (Harlow, 1980), 17-22.
3. John Stevenson, British Society 1914-45 (London, 1984), 272.
4. Chris Williams, Capitalism, Community and Conflict: The South Wales Coalfield 1898-1947 (Cardiff, 1998), 75.
5. John Tosh, 'Hegemonic masculinity and the history of gender', in Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann and Josh Tosh (eds), Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History (Manchester, 2004), 54.
6. Karen Harvey and Alexandra Shepard, 'What have historians done with masculinity? Reflections on five centuries of British history, circa 1500-1950', Journal of British Studies, 44 (2005), 277.
7. Paul O'Leary, 'Masculine histories: Gender and the social history of modern Wales', Welsh History Review, 22 (2004), 252-77.
8. Neil Evans, 'South Wales has been roused as never before: marching against the means test, 1934-36', in K.O. Morgan and D.W. Howell (eds), Crime, Protest and Police in Modern British Society (Cardiff, 1999), 176-206.
9. Stephanie Ward, ' "Sit down to starve or stand up to live": community, protest and the means test in the Rhondda valleys, 1931-1939', Llafur, 9 (2005), 44.
10. Sue Bruley, 'The politics of food: gender, family, community and collective feeding in South Wales in the general strike and miners' lockout of 1926', Twentieth Century British History, 18 (2007), 229-48.
11. Bruley, 'The politics of food', 77.
12. Kate Fisher, Birth Control, Sex and Marriage in Britain, 1918-1960 (Oxford, 2006), 236.
13. Ross McKibbin, The Ideologies of Class: Social Relations in Britain, 1880-1950 (Oxford, 1991), 228-58.
14. McKibbin, Ideologies of Class, 240.
15. Joanna Bourke, Working-Class Cultures in Britain, 1890-1960: Gender, Class and Ethnicity (London, 1994), 95.
16. The South Wales coalfield had one of the lowest rates of married female employment in Britain.
17. Sally Alexander, 'Men's fears and women's work: responses to unemployment in London between the wars', Gender and History, 12 (2000), 401-25.
18. Steven Thompson, Unemployment, Poverty and Health in Interwar South Wales (Cardiff, 2006), 8, 42.
19. Thompson, Unemployment, Poverty and Health, 8.
20. John Tosh, 'What should historians do with masculinity? Reflections on nineteenth-century Britain', History Workshop Journal, 38 (1994), 187.
21. Paul O'Leary, 'Masculine histories', 264.
22. Adrian Bingham, Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press in Inter-War Britain (Oxford, 2004), 236.
23. John Gillis, For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present (Oxford, 1985), 258-9, 287.
24. For example, St Fagan's National History Museum Sound Archive (NHM) 8091/1 Davies, Clement.
25. N. Dennis, F. Henriques and C. Slaughter, Coal is Our Life: An analysis of a Yorkshire Mining Community (London, 1956), 190.
26. John Ackerman, Up the Lamb (Bridgend, 1998), 94.
27. see also Williams, Capitalism, Community and Conflict, 63-9.
28. Rosemary Crook, ' "Tidy Women": women in the Rhondda between the wars', Oral History, 10 (1982), 42.
29. Jane Pilcher, 'Who should do the dishes? Three generations of Welsh women talking about men and housework', in J. Aaron, T. Rees, S. Betts and M. Vincentelli (eds), Our Sisters' Land: The Changing Identities of Women in Wales (Cardiff, 1994), 34.
30. Kathleen Healy, Growing Up in a Welsh Valley (Ilfracombe, 1999), 47.
31. James Hanley, Grey Children: A Study in Humbug and Misery (London, 1937), 114.
32. Anne Eyles and Con O'Sullivan, In the Shadow of the Steelworks: Reminiscences of a Splott childhood in the 1930s (Cardiff, 1992), 47.
33. Eyles and O'Sullivan, Shadow of the Steelworks, 50.
34. Clive Menadue, The Foxglove Sun: Moments from Childhood Recalled (Blaengarw, 1996), 27-8, 42, 46.
35. 'A Rhondda miner', in H.L. Beales and R.S. Lambert (eds), Memoirs of the Unemployed (London, 1934), 146.
36. T.H. Jones, Fingers in the Sky: A Miner's Life Story (Wembley, 1949), 63.
37. Gordon H. Armbruster, 'The social determination of ideologies: being a study of a Welsh mining community', PhD thesis, University of London, 1940, 271.
38. This stereotype can be found, for example, in Dennis, Henriques and Slaughter, Coal is Our Life, 183.
39. Rosemary Crook, 'Women of the Rhondda Valley between the wars', MA thesis, University of Leeds, 1980, 29-30, 50.
40. Hilda Jennings, Brynmawr: A Study of a Distressed Area (London, 1934), 130, 221.
41. Reginald Morgan, Mad Morgan: Child of the Forest, Man of the Mines (Bradford, 1995), 88.
42. C.B. Edwards, "'It was like this": personal recollections of Garndiffaith in the 1930s, Part I', Gwent Local History, 76 (Spring 1994), 28.
43. Carole White and Siân Rhiannon Williams, 'Introduction', in C. White and S.R. Williams (eds), Struggle or Starve: Women's Lives in the South Wales Valleys Between the Two World Wars (Dinas Powys, 1998), 16.
44. Mair E. McLellan, 'Shadows on the wall', in Struggle or Starve, 76-8.
45. Maggie Pryce Jones, 'Kingfisher of hope', in Struggle or Starve, 89.
46. Pryce Jones, 'Kingfisher of hope', 75.
47. Simon Eckley and Don Bearcroft, Voices of Abertillery, Aberbeeg and Llanhilleth (Stroud, 1996), 27.
48. Grafton Radcliffe, Back to Blaengarw (Blaengarw, 1994), 36-7.
49. D.H. Lawrence, 'Nottingham and the mining country', in D.H. Lawrence, Selected Essays (Harmondsworth, 1950), 117.
50. Pamela M. Graves, Labour Women: Women in British Working-Class Politics, 1918-1939 (Cambridge, 1994), 99-102.
51. Hywel Francis and Dai Smith, The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century (London, 1998 edn), 176-7.
52. Ursula Masson, 'Introduction', in E. Andrews, A Woman's Work is Never Done (Dinas Powys, 2006), xxvi.
53. For example South Wales Miners' Library (SWML) AUD/180 Mrs Jones and NHM 7951/1 Emery, Harold.
54. Constantine, Unemployment in Britain between the Wars, 17-22.
55. John Evans, 'Time to spare', in F. Greene, (ed.), Time to Spare: What Unemployment Means (London, 1935), 90.
56. 'South Wales miner', in H.L. Beales and R.S. Lambert (eds), Memoirs of the Unemployed (London, 1934), 68.
57. Bert L. Coombes, These Poor Hands: The Autobiography of a Miner Working in South Wales (London, 1974), 223.
58. Armbruster, 'Social determination of ideologies', 60, 63, 82.
59. Jean John, Grey Trees: Childhood Memories of Llwydcoed (Bristol, 1996), 117.
60. Eckley and Bearcroft, Voices of Abertillery, Aberbeeg and Llanhilleth, 27, 37.
61. Rhys Davies, Print of a Hare's Foot (London, 1969), 184.
62. A description of unemployed men 'standing together for hours' can be found in Dennis, Henriques and Slaughter, Coal is Our Life, 192.
63. Thompson, Unemployment, Poverty and Health, 42, 87-8.
64. Neil Evans, 'South Wales has been roused as never before', 178.
65. Edwards, ' "It was like this": Part I', 30.
66. Eyles and O'Sullivan, Shadow of the Steelworks, 46.
67. Gwyneth E. Evans, 'Reminiscences of the 1920s and early 1930s', in Afon Tâf History Research Group, Recollections of Merthyr's Past (Newport, 1979), 55.
68. However, as Armbruster demonstrated, most families did not have enough for an 'adequate diet' with charity or allotment food.
69. Healy, Growing Up in a Welsh Valley, 15.
70. Eyles and O'Sullivan, Shadow of the Steelworks, 47.
71. Sue Bruley, 'Women', in J. McIlroy, A. Campbell and K. Gildart (eds), Industrial Politics and the 1926 Mining Lockout: The Struggle for Dignity (Cardiff, 2004), 238.
72. C.B. Edwards, ' "It was like this": personal recollections of Garndiffaith in the 1930s, Part II', Gwent Local History, 77 (Autumn 1994), 44-5.
73. Lawrence, 'Nottingham and the mining country', 118.
74. With original emphasis, in Lawrence, 'Nottingham and the mining country', 119.
75. Neil Evans, 'South Wales has been roused as never before: marching against the means test, 1934-36', in Morgan and Howell Crime, Protest and Police in Modern British Society, 177.
76. Percy Watkins, A Welshman Remembers (Cardiff, 1944), 147.
77. Eckley and Bearcroft, Voices of Abertillery, Aberbeeg and Llanhilleth, 30.
78. David Egan, Coal Society: A History of the South Wales Mining Valleys, 1840-1980 (HMSO, 1987), 108-9.
79. Bingham, Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press, 219, 221.
80. Martin Johnes, A History of Sport in Wales (Cardiff, 2005), 54-5.
81. John Burnett, Idle Hands: The Experience of Unemployment, 1790-1990 (London, 1994), 255.
82. Evans, 'South Wales has been roused as never before', 178, 180, 184.
83. Evans, 'South Wales has been roused as never before', 189-91.
84. Evans, 'South Wales has been roused as never before', 192-3.
85. For example, Will Paynter, My Generation (London, 1972), 90.
86. Hywel Francis, Miners against Fascism: Wales and the Spanish Civil War (London, 1984), 180.
87. Wal Hannington, Unemployed Struggles, 1919-1936: My Life and Struggles Amongst the Unemployed (London, 1977), 89.
88. George E. Evans, The Strength of the Hills: An Autobiography (London, 1983), 87-8.
89. Walter Haydn Davies, The Right Place, The Right Time: Memories of Boyhood Days in a Welsh Mining Community (Llandybie, 1972), 72.
90. Hanley, Grey Children, 73; 'a married woman, 35' in Armbruster, 'Social determination of ideologies', 261.