Tuesday 4 September 2007
The invisible women
Hilary Spurling's review of Virginia Nicholson's book 'Singled out - how two million women survived without men after the first world war." in Sunday's Observer has stayed with me this week. Shocking to hear that the Daily Mail in 1921 commented that 'the superfluous women are a disaster to the human race'. At that time these women could not count on marriage or starting their own families, as so few men returned from the war. Nor could they count on reasonable employment or a career, as the men returning reclaimed jobs done by women in their absence. Of course it's in context of so many dying through war or flu so perhaps many were just glad to be alive? Difficult to know now. It sounds like a sad sad time for so many men and women and makes me think what a lot we take for granted today. Sobering to think these events took place less than a century ago.
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2 comments:
Nice post, Chris, and it got me thinking.
The comment you cite from 1921 is extraordinary, read literally. I guess one can hope that that kind of comment doesn't re-occur in a mainstream media outlet (if there can be said to be such a thing anymore). But could it have been a comment, made out of despair, more at the *situation* in which women were made superfluous, rather than on women themselves and womanhood in general? Such that one could read the comment as, 'the situation of the superfluous women is a disaster to the human race'? It would be interesting to visit the 1921 Daily Mail article to look at the claim's written context.
The claim just sounds too weird, given women's role in re-populating devastated places after war. Maybe there's an ugly dose of male chauvinism mixed in, I don't know. Encouraging men to return to work and to jobs probably was regarded as a way of trying to re-establish normality. But, of course, economic and social arrangements had changed, with women proving they could sustain the war economy with a significantly-reduced pool of male labour.
Are you going to read the book? I'm finding I've got lots to read at the moment...
Hi dr frank
Good to get your comments. I will definitely read it sometime... when feeling strong. The review suggests it doesn't have many happy endings but I imagine that there'll be stories of great insight and courage there also.
Chris
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