- 1 Penny Summerfield, “Approaches to Women and Social Change in the Second World War”, in Brian Briva (...)
- 2 Arthur Marwick, War and Social Change in the Twentieth-Century. London: Macmillan, 1974; Richard T (...)
- 3 Penny Summerfield, ReconstructingWomen’s Wartime Lives. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1 (...)
1While the Second World War is commonly acknowledged as a key moment in the evolution of the condition of women in the United Kingdom, the extent to which it affected people’s definitions of masculinity and femininity, and modified the relations between the sexes both during and after the conflict is still open to debate. In an article published in 1993, Penny Summerfield1 briefly charts out the conflicting interpretations of how the war affected women. While earlier accounts such as those proposed by Richard Titmuss and Arthur Marwick2 presented the war as a decisive step towards the emancipation of women in terms of employment opportunities and personal independence, feminists in the 1970s were quick to point out the limits and temporary nature of the change. They suggested that whatever evolution had taken place had failed to ensure genuine equality between men and women at work or at home, as traditional divisions of roles quickly reasserted themselves at the end of the conflict. On the basis of her own reading of Mass-Observation archives as well as other forms of first-hand testimony, Summerfield argues in favour of a more balanced assessment, above all one that takes into account the diversity of women’s experiences, a theme she later developed in Reconstructing Women’s Wartime Lives3. The latter book additionally addresses the issue of how people re-read their own pasts with the benefit – or drawback – of hindsight.
- 4 “Societies do not all remember the past in the same way, or entertain the same relationship with i (...)
2Summerfield’s work shows how individual women’s interpretations of their own past are inevitably shaped by their subsequent experiences, including their condition at the time they gave their testimonies. While some women retroactively consider the war as a decisive experience that influenced the rest of their lives, others dismiss it as a mere parenthesis. On the collective level, as Henry Rousso’s work on Vichy France has shown, the memories and perceptions of a particular period, as well as historical accounts of the same period, are also inevitably modified by society’s changing agenda and its overall evolution: “Toutes les sociétés ne se souviennent pas de la même manière et toutes n’ont pas le même type de rapport au passé. L’histoire savante comme la mémoire évoluent de surcroît avec le temps”4.
3Michelle Magorian’s novels are part of a long-established prolific tradition of World War Two fiction for the young, but the timing and enduring success of some of her works and her specific attention to the question of gender identity make her a particularly interesting case‑study. She achieved instant success with the publication of her first book, Goodnight, Mr Tom, in 1981. In addition to a number of short stories and some poetry, she has written four more novels so far, all set in the context of World War Two and its immediate aftermath. Most of her works were thus produced in the Thatcher/Major era, at a time of conflicting tendencies within the nation. On the one hand, the undoubted “greatness” of Britain during the Second World War was being held up once more as a model that should inspire the new generations; on the other hand, the implications of the “liberation” of women were severely questioned by Mrs Thatcher and like-minded Conservatives, who were quick to identify the decline of the “traditional” family as a prime factor in the supposed moral collapse of society.
- 5 Her other two novels, Cuckoo in the Nest (1994) and A Spoonful of Jam (1998), have similar themes (...)
4This article therefore proposes to explore the representation of wartime womanhood in Magorian’s first three novels: Goodnight, Mr Tom (1981), Back Home (1985), and A Little Love Song (1991)5. It will attempt to examine the extent to which she identifies war as a catalyst for change in the condition of women, to establish in what light this change is described, and to assess the potential contribution and relevance of her novels to her readers’ construction of gender identity. Particular attention will be given to the depiction of the balance between home and work, the issue of sexuality and morality, and the relationships between men and women.
- 6 Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig, Women and Children First: Fiction in the Two World Wars, London: (...)
- 7 Lynda G. Adamson. A Reference Guide to Historical Fiction for Children and Young Adults, New York: (...)
- 8 Taking into account the limitations with which the term applies to the female version of the quest (...)
5That the war makes a difference is made explicit in all three novels, whose plots conform to the pattern presented by Cadogan and Craig in their study of wartime fiction: “War meant in one way or another an ending of security, a disruption of family life and easy hopes for the future”6. They also exemplify what Lynda G. Adamson identifies as the central mono-myth common to most historical novels: “[...] the protagonist’s initial separation from the tribe or family”7. In Goodnight, Mr Tom, young William Beech is evacuated from London to the village of Little Weirwold in Devon, where he is billeted with Tom Oakley. A Little Love Song focuses on two sisters, Diana and Rose, aged 20 and 17, who as a result of war find themselves living on their own for a whole summer. Back Home takes the more original stance of starting its plot at the end of the war, when sea-vacuee Rusty returns to England after six years in America, and goes through a painful reunion with her own family. The characters’ experiences directly result from the war context and all three books may be described as “Bildungsroman”8 in which the growing-up process is presented as unavoidably affected – and in most cases accelerated – by the particular conditions created by the war: “[...] you all got to grow quicker now”, as Mrs Clarence sadly recognizes (Love Song 23).
6In Goodnight, Mr Tom, the action centres on a trio of male characters: William, the evacuated boy, Tom, the widower with whom he is housed, and Zach, the ebullient Jewish evacuee who becomes his closest friend. The issue of gender identity is addressed in a number of ways through the portrayal of both male and female characters.
- 9 We learn much later that he and his wife Rachel did have a son, also called William, but that baby (...)
7William is the apparently fatherless son of a deranged, sin-obsessed mother, who has successfully convinced him that he is an uninteresting, unlovable human being. Thanks to Tom’s care and nurturing, he goes through an extensive process of self‑discovery. From the beginning, Magorian emphasizes the contrast between William’s mother’s less than adequate parenting skills and Mr Tom’s ability to embark on what he refers as this “motherin’ lark” (Goodnight 20), despite his own masculinity and childlessness9. Soon after William’s arrival, Mr Tom is described as “tenderly” washing the bruises he owes to his mother’s regular beatings when he gives him his first bath (Goodnight 37). During his stay in Little Weirwold, William not only learns to read and write at last – he was illiterate at 9 – but proves to be multitalented: he is a gifted painter, a good singer and a born actor. More importantly, he finds out he is a lovable person, whose company can be appreciated by Mr Tom himself as well as by children such as George, Zach, and the twins, Ginnie and Carrie.
8Half-way through the novel, in a dramatic episode, William is recalled to London by his mother, only to find that in the meantime, she has had a baby girl, whom she fails to feed or wash and whose mouth she gags with sticking tape; for, she says: “‘She’s just trying to get attention. She must learn a little discipline.’” (Goodnight 188). Her son’s newly confident, assertive personality comes as a shock, and a threat to her authority: “The situation was worse than she ever imagined. It would take a lot of hard work to silence him into obedience” (Goodnight 190). Inevitably, the beatings start again. She later leaves William tied to a pipe in a cupboard under the stairs, where Tom eventually finds him holding his by then dead sister in his arms. It is later revealed that his mother has committed suicide, and despite initial opposition from the authorities, Tom adopts him for good.
9Magorian makes it clear that William’s mother is an extreme case of inadequate motherhood, and that her behaviour, so much at odds with her professed principles, is only to be explained by deep-seated psychological problems. As the local fire-warden tells Tom when he comes looking for William: “‘Thinks she’s a cut above everyone. […] Over-religious type, bible-thumpin, you know what I mean.’” (Goodnight 202). A lisping neighbour adds: “‘She keeps herself to herself. Bit of a Madam. […] She thumtimes rents her bedroom and thleeps downstairs. Well so she seth.’” (Goodnight 204). Nothing else is said in the novel to explain why William has no father, or why his mother is unable to deal with the reality of either sexuality or motherhood.
10Through other female characters in the book, Magorian is able to address further dimensions of wartime womanhood, notably the new opportunities which the war offers girls and women. The emblematic figure of the adult wartime woman combining work and domestic responsibilities is represented in an anecdotal vignette, when both William and Tom successively get their first sighting of a London bus conductress, who happens to be a mother of five (Goodnight 186 and 199). As for the new generation’s perspectives, they are explored through the contrasting pair of twins, Ginnie and Carrie. When the latter is told she cannot join the Christmas choir because it is “boys only” (Goodnight 139), she expostulates on the unfairness of traditional gender inequalities:
‘Ent it blimmin’ cheek,’ she exclaimed angrily. ‘Boys gits all the chances. The grammar school will only take boys [...] and they never bother to put girls in [...]. And there’s me dyin’ to go, and him [George] havin’ all the chances, and him hatin’ books.’(Goodnight 189)
11Her twin Ginnie, otherwise portrayed as happily conforming to the stereotypical characteristics of femininity – love of housework, sewing, and knitting – is nevertheless supportive and hopeful: “‘Mebbe now there’s a war on [...] it’ll be different for girls.’” (Goodnight 189). She is proved right, inasmuch as Carrie has both the guts to act on her ambitions: “‘No girl here ‘as ever done it before.’” (Goodnight 168), and the brains to gain a scholarship. Interestingly, her father is supportive: “He was rather proud that one of his daughters wanted to take it [the exam]. The war was encouraging girls to be more independent now” (Goodnight 173).
- 10 Mona Marshall, interview with Thames/Channel 4, 1985, quoted in Penny Summerfield, “Approaches to (...)
12Similarly, new educational opportunities for girls are brought up in Back Home. Rusty’s mother, Peggy, is determined that her daughter will have the life choices she was initially denied: “‘I want Virginia [Rusty’s real name] to have a chance of catching up with her education and not leave school unqualified like I did.’” (Back Home 36). When Rusty, who is not particularly interested in academic pursuits, asks her mother why she is so keen on her going to college, she answers: “‘[...] because I want you to have the chance of being more independent when you’re older.’” (Back Home 248). Her insistence is shown to be rooted in her own experience, and the new awareness and self-confidence she owes to the war: “As a young woman she had never been allowed to work, and she had lived under her parents’ roof until she married” (Back Home 234). As she explains to Rusty about “the Bomb”, her old battered car: “‘Well, this is the first thing that I’ve ever paid out of my own money, and also I made it work; so she’s a sort of a symbol; do you understand?’” (Back Home 257). She had earlier admitted to Beatie, the old lady with whom she lives in Devon: “‘I know it’s a terrible thing to say, but the War was one of the best things that happened to me. [...] I’m so much happier and more confident since I’ve been here.’” (Back Home 36). There she echoes one of the women quoted by Summerfield: “It made a great deal of difference to me. It made me stand on my two feet, gave me more confidence”10.
13Discussing Rusty’s future with her husband, she hammers the point home: “‘I want her to have a career.’” (Back Home 308). He entertains far more traditional views: “‘When she’s finished at school, she’ll do a good cookery course and if she’s fortunate she’ll make a good marriage.’” (Back Home 308). In this upper-middle-class household, it is the father who stands for tradition and the mother for relative modernity, as opposed to Carrie’s working-class family, in which the father is described as favourable to his daughter’s ambitions, while the mother seems resentful of what she perceives as a dereliction of female duties.
14War is thus shown to mean that one has or gets to do things one would not do otherwise, but in Diana’s case in A Little Love Song, this actually means acquiring traditional female skills. It is literally vital for the two well-off sisters to be self-sufficient, as in their seaside lodgings in Salmouth there will be no one to look after them. The war thus provides the motivation for Diana to learn to cook – she can’t boil the proverbial egg – which she rather conventionally concludes to be an asset: “‘This is my one chance of learning to cook before I get married. If I get married’”. (Love Song 55).
15The war also means that one is allowed to do things which would normally be disapproved of: Magorian makes it clear that peacetime conventions would frown at two young women of Rose and Diana’s class being left un-chaperoned. When matters are taken one step further as Diana joins the auxiliary forces, Rose rightly points out: “‘If I’m old enough to be called up, I’m old enough to stay here on my own, Mrs Potts.’” (Love Song 304). Not only social but moral assumptions are challenged by the war context, notably in sexual matters. As young Derry somewhat cryptically remarks, admittedly to serve his own agenda and to get Rose to go to bed with him: “‘Things are different now. I mean, in peacetime, killing people is wrong, but now it’s quite the opposite. I think it’s the same with... [...] When you’re, you know.’” (Love Song 132).
16As in Goodnight, Mr Tom, Magorian suggests that war acts as a catalyst for self‑discovery in all kinds of ways. While Diana enjoys her newly-found talent for cookery, Rose learns to swim, and more significantly fulfils her long-standing ambition of writing a story which proves good enough to be published. In keeping with the novel’s title, A Little Love Song also narrates the two sisters’ sentimental education. By the end of the book, Diana has found the courage to jilt her long-time, well-off admirer, and become engaged to Mrs Clarence’s less socially suited son, whose attractions she describes in the following way:
‘I feel I’m an equal with him and I stop feeling self-conscious. I forget what I look like. Believe it or not, he also treats me as if I’m intelligent. He’s demonstrative and he makes me laugh.’ (Love Song 246).
- 11 Janet Finch and Penny Summerfield, “Social reconstruction and the emergence of companionate marria (...)
17By choosing him, Diana seems to be hoping for the kind of companionate marriage many wartime women aspired to, but did not very often find easy to achieve: “Surveys in the 1950s showed that the ideal of companionate marriage was more popular with women than men, and was rarely realized in practice”11.
- 12 This is reminiscent of Jo March, that other aspiring authoress at odds with conventional notions o (...)
18As for Rose, she has had her first very unsatisfactory sexual experience with Derry, then fallen in love with Alec, whom she agrees to marry. Her new grown-up status, however, is not rooted so much in her introduction to sexuality as in her decision not to return to boarding‑school, and later try and go on to read science at university, as her dead father wanted her to. Instead, she resolves to attempt to make a name for herself as a writer. In contrast to Back Home, Magorian here chooses to associate the dream of an academic career – and, what is more, one in the traditionally male area of science – with Rose’s father’s wishes for his daughter, something which Alec correctly describes as unusual (Love Song 151). In an imitation of her father, Rose then says: “‘Times are changing, my gel, […] Gels have got to be educated just the same as boys; you go into school.’” (Love Song 151). Yet this apparently modern approach is shown to have limits: Diana was not expected to follow the same path, because, according to Rose, “‘[…] she’s beautiful’” (Love Song 151) and therefore presumably more easily marriageable. In Rose’s father’s views, at least as she interprets them, an education and a career thus appear to be a mere fallback option available to girls whose looks are not good enough to guarantee easy access to the more traditional – and preferable? – status of wife, an outlook of rather limited modernity. Like Rusty, however, but presumably less easily, given her affection for her recently dead father, Rose decides against following the path he intended for her. Her move from obedient childhood to independent adulthood is signalled by her decision to have her plaits cut12. When she presents herself to Mrs Clarence with her new hair-style, the latter […] gazes sadly at her and remarks wistfully: “‘You look so grown-up’”. (Love Song 260)
- 13 Penny Summerfield, ReconstructingWomen’s Wartime Lives, op. cit.
19In all three novels, while war is identified as generally allowing people to discover things about themselves, it is shown more specifically to widen the range of potentialities that women may contemplate. The next issue we need to address, in keeping with Summerfield’s interrogations13, is whether it is presented as an irreversible turning-point or merely a suspension of normal conventions. As Lucy Noakes has underlined:
- 14 Lucy Noakes, War and the British: Gender, Memory and National Identity, London: Tamis, 1998, 20.
Until relatively recently, it was received opinion that the war was emancipatory for women [Titmuss, Marwick] […] However, a more detailed reading of employment figures, wartime texts and social policy shows that any emancipation women/did experience in wartime was both limited and transitory, just for the duration14.
20Of the three novels, Back Home is obviously the most centrally concerned with that particular question. All characters have to face the implications of the end of the war: can/should one go back to the status quo ante of normal peaceful conditions, and if so, how?
- 15 Antonia Lant, Blackout: Reinventing Women for Wartime British Cinema. Princeton: Princeton Univers (...)
- 16 As Lant suggests, these conflicting versions are both defined in terms of nation and class. The Di (...)
21When Rusty returns from America, she is no longer the small, timid child she was when she left, but a self-confident teenager whose physical maturity comes as a shock to her own mother: “[…] how surprised and disturbed she had been to discover that her daughter wore a brassiere” (Back Home 50). Not only have six years elapsed, Rusty has been exposed to values that differ from those that prevail in her archetypal upper‑middle-class British family. Much of the book revolves around the clash between what Rusty has been taught by her American family, and what her English one values. Beyond the fairly superficial matters of linguistic misunderstandings or table manners, it is the very notion of what is acceptable behaviour for a girl of Rusty’s age that is shown to be of a relative nature. With the Omsks, like their own daughters, she has enjoyed a greater amount of freedom than is deemed appropriate in her family. Her habit of speaking for herself and taking initiatives shocks them, as does the ease with which she mentions such taboo subjects as menstruation, or the fact that she sees nothing wrong with mixing freely with boys as well as girls. In parallel to what Antonia Lant suggests in her study of the representation of women in British wartime cinema15, the book allows the author to confront two opposite definitions of femininity. Rusty’s American/modern approach, which grants girls more freedom, and allows for greater inter-changeability of roles and more interaction between the sexes, stands in stark opposition to the British/traditional ideal that prevails in the Dickinsons’ home as in the boarding-school where she is sent, which insists on limited autonomy for girls, clearly defined gender roles and rigidly separate spheres, in Victorian style16: “‘[...] boys and girls enjoy different activities, don’t they?’”(Back Home 314), says Rusty’s grandmother. Meanwhile her mother painstakingly explains the rules about not mixing with boys: “‘This behaviour is rather looked down on here. [...] if a girl is known as someone who associates with boys, she’s not considered ‘nice’”. (Back Home 304) She wants her daughter to conform to the expected distribution of roles: “‘In this country we don’t expect young girls to chop up wood. That’s a boy’s job’”. (Back Home 93).
- 17 In the same way, in Goodnight Mr Tom, Will in Little Weirwold is contrasted with Willie the London (...)
22Rusty is not the only one to be trapped in such conflicting views of what constitutes proper behaviour. Her predicament is mirrored by her mother’s. Just as free‑spirited, Americanized Rusty is expected to turn back into demure, well-behaved Virginia, Peggy, the ace car‑mechanic who “[…] can make a vehicle run on almost nothing but elastic bands” (Back Home 21), is meant to revert to being “impractical,” “helpless” Margaret, the submissive wife that husband and mother-in-law order about and treat like a child who, symbolically, does not have a key to the front door of the family house (Back Home 178). The duality of names (Rusty/Virginia, Peggy/Margaret) serves as an indication of these inner conflicts of identities, in combination with the significance of location. American Rusty contrasts with English Virginia, and Peggy in Devon is quite a different character from Margaret in London17, as her daughter eventually realizes when the two of them go there to fulfil the promise made to Beatie, who has just died: “Rusty suddenly realized how unhappy her mother must have been, for the difference in her manner was extraordinary; she looked positively radiant” (Back Home 250).
23Peggy exemplifies the dilemma that many women faced in both wars, according to Braybon and Summerfield:
- 18 Gail Braybon and Penny Summerfield, Out of the Cage, London: Pluto Press, 1987, 209 and 283.
Although there were many changes for women, there was an undertow pulling back during both world wars, by emphasising that change was temporary, that women were really wives and mothers and their place was at home, and that they were doing skilled, important jobs and earning relatively high wages on sufferance. [...] In the Second World War there was less fear of women deserting the home altogether. All sorts of social surveys claimed confidently that women want to return to or start on domestic life, choosing to ignore the hesitant and conditional answers which large proportions of women gave to their questions 18.
24Peggy herself does not question the fact that with the war being over, prejudices will return:
‘I don’t think anyone would buy a car if they knew I’d fixed it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m a woman.’ (Back Home 251)
25Furthermore, her previously quoted definition of the war as “‘the best thing that ever happened to [me]’” is a rare admission of a truth she would rather deny. Through most of the novel, she steadfastly portrays herself as one of Penny Summerfield’s “stoics” rather than the “heroic” she really is. The distinction is made by Summerfield in Reconstructing Women’s Lives and is usefully summarized by Lucy Noakes in her review of the book:
- 19 Lucy Noakes, Review Article: “Gender, War and Memory: Discourse and Experience in History”. Journa (...)
Women who remembered the war as a period of personal change and growth were more likely to draw on what Summerfield terms ‘the discourse of modernisation’ in their recollections using language that described women emerging from the confines of the home to a fuller, more rewarding, public life. Such women […] often used a heroic narrative when describing their wartime selves, emphasizing the importance of women’s work and using a language similar to that found in propaganda and recruitment campaigns during the war. […]
The group of women whom Summerfield entitles the ‘stoics’ tended to tell very different war stories, attributing quite different meanings to their war works. For these women, war work could perhaps be defined as a necessity rather than an opportunity19.
26“‘A lot of women had to take over the jobs normally done by men.’” (Back Home 245) is how Peggy matter-of-factly explains to Rusty how she became an expert in cars, when she could not even drive one before the war; just as she earlier told Beatie: “‘I did it because there was a war on; and I have to do it now because, well, there’s no one else to do it’” (Back Home 96). But Beatie is not fooled and snaps back: “‘Tosh! you love it !’” (ibidem).
27Peggy’s explicit discourse is that she wants things to return to normal, i.e. to pre-war conditions and believes it possible:
Her daughter’s accent and exuberance still disturbed her, but she knew that in time the accent would disappear, and that a year in an English school would calm her down. Virginia would return to the quiet, gentle little English girl who had left her five years ago. (Back Home 56).
- 20 Dorothy Sheridan. Wartime Women. An Anthology of Women’s Wartime Writing for Mass Observation 1937 (...)
28She is shown to cling to this illusory belief for as long as she can. Of her friendship with a G.I. called Harvey, whom her son Charlie also sorely misses, she tells her daughter: “‘Things are different in wartime. You’re separated from your family, and so you make friends with other people to make up for that. Once the war is over, everyone goes back to their family.’” (Back Home 248). But readers already know that she is finding the end of war far more problematic than she had anticipated. For her, Dorothy Sheridan’s claim that “[I]t was peacetime which posed all the frightening uncertainties”20 certainly holds true:
How she had longed for the war to be over, and how she, like her daughter, would love to return to no rationing, plenty of food and clothing, and pretty surroundings. The constant grime and drabness got her down, too, and what with her mother-in-law’s continual carping, Charlie’s distress, a complaining daughter, and now Beatie’s death, she felt as shocked and uprooted as she had four years ago, when she had first evacuated herself to Devon to have Charlie. (Back Home 229).
29Indeed the atmosphere in the London family house is a far cry from Beatie’s easy‑going, tolerant outlook on life. Peggy’s Victorian mother-in-law is proud to have kept everything exactly the same (Back Home 127) and when her son returns, she chimes in with his comment that Peggy’s continued paid work is nothing to brag about (Back Home 308) by stating: “‘The war is behind us. We’ve all had to do strange things. Now we’ve got to get back to normal’” (ibid.). If anything, Peggy’s husband’s return from the Far-East makes things even worse for her. He is as shocked by her transformation as she was by Rusty’s: “‘I didn’t know you smoked, Margaret. […] I didn’t know you had cut your hair either.’” (Back Home 265). Once again, Peggy’s cutting of her hair is a cue to her new and still tentative bid for independence, while in a particularly cruel mirror-episode, her husband takes four-year-old Charlie on the sly to a barber for a crew-cut, as the boy’s abundance of curls is incompatible with his father’s conception of true masculinity: “‘He’s made an absolute disgrace of himself. I actually had to hold him forcibly so that the barber could cut his hair. At least he looks like a boy now.’” (Back Home 316). Rusty is appalled by her brother’s new appearance and obvious trauma: he wets himself and gets a beating for not going straight to bed as he has been told to, as does Rusty for trying to defend him.
30Peggy, too, is shocked when she returns home and is told what has happened, but she is still willing to defend her husband’s behaviour, at least to Rusty’s face, by saying that, although using the cane was harsh, he did need to make Charlie obey him. Yet she also goes on to argue the case with him, a quarrel overheard by their daughter:
They were shouting now.
‘I’m sick of Uncle Harvey this and Uncle Harvey that,’ said a loud voice. ‘I’m his father.’
‘I know that, Roger, but you never give him a chance. You hardly spend any time with him at all. How can you expect him to treat you like a father if you don’t make an effort to know him? […] Roger, you’ve got to spend more time with him – otherwise the situation is going to grow worse. You’re expecting him to be some stiff-upper-lipped young Englishman. Well, he’s not. He’s only four years old.’
‘And tied to his mother’s apron-strings!’
‘And you’re not, I suppose!’
Rusty held her breath. There was a long silence. (Back Home 321).
31Peggy’s new willingness to argue back is shocking to her husband and mother‑in‑law, much, once again, as she herself was stunned when Rusty first answered her back (Back Home 69). The parallelism is equally clear in an earlier instance, when Rusty is sent to her bedroom for using slang and eating the American – and therefore improper – way.
‘I’m going to have a word with her,’ said Peggy, rising.
‘You will do no such thing,’ snapped her husband. ‘Sit down.’
‘No.’
‘Margaret, that’s an order.’
‘Is it! How interesting.’
‘Margaret!’ said Mrs Dickinson Senior. ‘Come back!’
But Peggy was halfway out of the room.
Mrs Dickinson Senior turned to her son. ‘You see what I’ve had to put up with!’ (Back Home 282).
32For most of the novel, Peggy has tried to convince her children – and probably herself – that with a little patience they can all readjust to one another after their wartime separation and “different experiences” (Back Home 283), and be “a family again.” (ibid.). Things come to a crux with the crisis that follows Charlie’s haircut, when her mother-in-law suggests she needs another child to keep her occupied once he goes to boarding-school. Peggy stands up for what she sees as her child’s interest:
‘Charlie is not going to boarding-school.’
[Rusty’s] father gave an artificial laugh. ‘Oh, really? He said. ‘Have you taken the role of the father now?’ (Back Home 322).
33The last straw comes with her mother-in-law’s insinuations that “‘[…] this Harvey spent rather more time than was necessary with [her]’“ (Back Home 322). Peggy finally admits to herself – and explains to Rusty – “[…] she couldn’t start pretending she was the same person she had been six years ago” (Back Home 303). Since her husband is unable to accept her for the person she has become – i.e. the real Peggy, as we are given to understand – she leaves him and settles with her two children in the house Beatie has thoughtfully bequeathed her, a legacy predictably described by her mother-in-law earlier on as “absolutely preposterous” (Back Home 256). In what can be seen retroactively as a sign of her new-found independence, Peggy had dismissed the suggestion that she might sell the house or at least put it in her husband’s name, much to his mother’s discomfiture. It is worth noting, however, that Peggy’s final decision is as much motivated by her concern for the well-being of her children as her need to be true to her real self. While her relationship with Rusty is originally awkward, and makes her daughter understandably nostalgic for the emotional security she experienced with the Omsks and their ability to express their feelings by physical contact, Magorian is at pains to make it clear that parting from her was a dreadful experience for Peggy:
She remembered her, a timid child, bound for America. […] And she remembered, too, the anguish she had felt as the tiny girl had joined the others and then turned back to wave, how she had been unable to say ‘Goodbye, Virginia’, how the words had stuck in a lump at the back of her throat, for it was as though her heart was breaking into a thousand tiny pieces and she didn’t want her to know. She just wanted her to be safe. (Back Home 369).
34In contrast with William’s mother, Peggy is the example of a woman whose genuine maternal love is shown to be compatible with aspirations to a life of one’s own, that is to say one that is not solely defined by the constraints of traditional domesticity.
35In this last part, I wish to try and assess the depth Magorian ascribes to the change which the war has brought to the condition of women, and attitudes towards them, and at the same time identify the limitations and contradictions of her own portrayal of “modern” femininity.
36First of all, Magorian, like Summerfield, duly suggests that not all women – or men, for that matter – were affected to the same extent by the war, or reacted to the changes in the same way. All three novels display a combination of pro-change and of pro-tradition characters. Thus in Goodnight Mr Tom, Carrie’s supportive father has to overcome the reluctance of his wife, who is less enthusiastic about her daughter’s intellectual ambitions:
Mrs Thatcher was still none too keen on Carrie going to the high school but Mr Thatcher was backing her all the way. He had even done some extra labouring so that she could have a proper uniform. (Goodnight 174).
- 21 It is probably not entirely a coincidence if this achieving female character in a novel published (...)
- 22 As studied for instance by Brian Jackson and Dennis Marsden, Education and the Working-Class, Harm (...)
37As we have seen, Carrie’s own twin is happy to conform to traditional expectations: “‘She says the more she learns now the better wife she’ll be when she’s older.’” (Goodnight 301). Neither twin is given explicit authorial approval or disapproval, although Carrie is certainly granted more attention and space in the story21. The plot allows her to fulfil her ambitions, which might be suggestive of authorial support, but Magorian honestly indicates that there is a price to be paid for success. Carrie’s mother continues to be unsupportive: “‘Mum gives me extra [housework] to make up for the term. She says learnin’ and doing homework isn’t work.’” (Goodnight 301). Besides, the girl experiences the classical double alienation about which many working-class children who succeeded at the eleven plus have testified22:
She didn’t dare to let her parents know of the unpleasant aspects of grammar-school life, as her mother still didn’t approve of her going and her father had worked so hard for her uniform and sports clothes. […] She was beginning to feel that she neither fitted into Little Weirwold nor the Girls’ high. (Goodnight 283-284).
38Conversely, we have seen how in Back Home, Peggy’s expressed modern expectations for her daughter clash with her husband’s hyper-conventional conceptions. But they are also somewhat at odds with the choice of a school which still explicitly aims at producing “young women who would make good wives and mothers”, in time-honoured fashion (Back Home 161). No wonder Rusty is puzzled by her mother’s claims that she wants her daughter to be independent while ignoring her stated objections to a university career: “Independence was not what her mother or school encouraged” (Back Home 248).
39Peggy is not the only example of ambivalent attitudes, and I would like to finish on the contradictions and limits, partly recognized, partly unacknowledged by the author, of her portrayal of “new” femininity.
40In A Little Love Song, Diana first appears to represent normative gendered behaviour, as opposed to the transgressive one embodied by Rose, to borrow the terminology used by Judy Simons. Initially, Diana views Rose’s suggestion that they can stay on their own at the cottage with some reluctance for both practical and conventional reasons: “‘Who’s going to cook our meals and wash our clothes? […] what would people think? Two girls on their own?’” (Love Song 13). As we have seen, she solves the first half of the problem by learning to cook herself. As for conventions, she is very soon shown to ignore them as she eagerly makes friends with Dot, an unmarried, pregnant young woman. This time it is Rose’s turn to recoil: “‘You can’t mix with someone like that [...] Because people will think you’re like her. And when they know we’re here on our own [...] we can’t afford to get ourselves a bad reputation.’” (Love Song 40). But Diana simply replies: “‘I admire her [...] I don’t think I could cope if it happened to me.’” (ibidem).
41Rose rallies to her view, largely as a result of reading the diaries of Mad Hilda, the previous occupier of the cottage. A nurse during World War One, Hilda falls in love with Matthew, one of her patients, but her family does not agree to their marrying, partly because of the social gap between them, partly because of her parents’ selfish plan to have her look after them in their old age (Love Song 90). Hilda defies parental authority and social convention by agreeing to go and spend a week with Matthew before he returns to meet his death. Her subsequent pregnancy leads to her being literally incarcerated by her own family, first in a lunatic asylum then in the cottage, her baby having been snatched away from her and the whole thing hushed up.
42Magorian uses Hilda’s story as a counterpoint to Dot’s; like Hilda, Dot presents her current predicament as resulting in part from parental oppression:
‘Me and Jack have been walking out together since we was fourteen. The only reason we didn’t get married was because of me dad. He wouldn’t give us permission. He wanted to keep me at home to look after the kids and work on his stall.’ (Love Song 102).
- 23 Juliet Gardiner’s recent synthesis on World War Two suggests this was not an uncommon view for wom (...)
43Her warm and unregretful memories of her lovemaking with her now dead boyfriend echo Hilda’s account of her week with Matthew, and of her feelings when she finds out she is pregnant: “‘The baby kept his memory alive. No one could take that away from me. I was so confident that at last I had beaten my family. […] How naïve I was then.’” (Love Song 126). In a very similar vein, Dot confesses: “‘I’m that grateful to have Jack’s baby inside me. Honest, Rose. I’m so bleedin’ proud.’” (Love Song 105)23.
44The parallelism between the two stories extends to parental rejection. Dot’s parents are not as extreme as Hilda’s, not so much because time has passed and mentalities changed as because their more modest background gives them less ability to control the situation. Even so, their reaction is not that fundamentally different. As Diana explains to Rose, they will not accept the baby’s existence: “‘Did you know that her parents threw her out? […] [They] said that if she comes back on her own, there’ll be a job waiting for her.’” (Love Song 73-74). For all this, Dot’s fate is far less harsh than that of Miss Hilda when her pregnancy is finally discovered. As Rose finds out in the diary, her father has her certified insane:
What followed was an account of the asylum; of Miss Hilda’s imprisonment there; of how her baby son was snatched from her minutes after it was born; how they brought him to her at set times so that she could feed him; and how she was informed that after six weeks of breastfeeding, he would be taken away for adoption. (Love Song 144).
- 24 The extracts from Hilda’s diary are printed in italics.
45By choosing to have Rose quickly summarize the events, Magorian forcefully conveys the brutality of their sequence to her readers. At other times, she allows them to read Hilda’s own words with Rose, and share her emotional reaction to the account of her most intimate moments with Matthew24:
46It was frightening and exciting all at the same time; it was as though she was in love too, only there was no one for her to love:
We hardly slept at all that first night. Overjoyed at lying in bed together, we held hands. It was such an exquisite sensation that we could barely move. We kissed and murmured and whispered to one another till the dawn.
It wasn’t till the third night that we were joined as man and wife. (Love Song 122).
- 25 Lucy Noakes, War and the British, op. cit., 19.
47Thirty years or so later, Dot is also rejected by her family, though not banished from society as such. Although she is given support by her dead boyfriend’s parents, who come to fetch her and the baby, Magorian stresses that the only way for her to be more widely accepted back into society is to lie: “‘They’re going to help me save up for a wedding ring, and make out me and Jack got married on the sly.’” (Love Song 310). She shows the limits within which women were allowed to depart from conventional standards of morality, even in the specific context of the war. As Lucy Noakes among others has suggested, “[F]ears about female sexuality in wartime were expressed in propaganda posters that demonise the sexually active woman”25. While the topical concern was mainly the impact of war on the breakdown of marriage, unmarried motherhood certainly continued to be unacceptable in most people’s views, as reflected in the novel by Dot’s early testimony:
‘Even the marrieds are treated like convent schoolgirls. Not that we see much of them. The nurses do their best to keep us separated. […]’
‘Why do they keep you apart?’
‘In case we corrupt them.’ (Love Song 102).
- 26 As Rose eventually finds out, Alec is none other than Miss Hilda’s son. Hilda never acknowledged t (...)
48In a later discussion of the issue with Alec, Rose relays the information: “‘The unmarrieds are treated like criminals or as though they have the plague.’” (Love Song 212). Alec is sympathetic, and inadvertently confesses to being an illegitimate child26. Rose soon overcomes her initial shock at this revelation:
49Alec, illegitimate? To her surprise she found that she wasn’t appalled. It was Miss Hilda’s diary which had changed her attitude. It had already made her see Dot in a more sympathetic light. With a sense of shock, she realised that if it hadn’t been for Miss Hilda, her friendship with Dot might never have blossomed, and she might now have withdrawn from Alec entirely. (Love Song 214-215).
- 27 This is later revealed to be a lie, as his eyesight is too bad for him to be considered.
50Indeed, the diary and her conversations with Dot play a major part in Rose’s changing views on the theoretical rights and wrongs of unmarried sexuality, and in her eventual agreement to have full sex with Derry, when he pressurises her under the fallacious pretence that this may be his last summer, as he intends to join the R.A.F.27.
51Rose’s feelings about him are initially mixed. Even though he bosses her around when they go to a G.I. ball where she dances the jitterbug much to his disapproval, she is flattered by his apparent interest, and fantasizes about him, largely because circumstances – including Diana’s own romance with Mrs Clarence’s son – throw them together quite a lot, and mainly because she is full of doubts about her own attractions. The clinching element is her fateful memory of reading a work of fiction where the young hero is said to have died “ignorant of fulfilment ... ignorant even of passion”, which leads her to conclude: “She would have to do it. Not to agree would be so selfish” (Love Song 200).
52While her first experience of physical contact with him leaves her ecstatic – “It was heavenly to be touched” (Love Song 158) – ambivalence soon prevails: “She loved it when he touched her; loved putting her arms round him, she loved it when he stroked her. She was grateful he wanted to spend his time with her at all. Yet there was something wrong” (Love Song 174). When they do actually spend the night together, Derry shows neither consideration for her feelings nor any kind of tenderness:
53‘You’re supposed to lie down,’ he said
54Like a lamb to the slaughter, she thought. […]
It was then that Rose realised, that from the moment she had agreed to go to bed with him, they had not kissed once. (Love Song 201-203).
- 28 As analysed by Susan Thompson in “Images of Adolescence: Part I.” Signal 35 (May 1981), 37-59.
55Yet she allows him to proceed, only to conclude: “This wasn’t wonderful at all, she thought. This was a nightmare. Everyone had lied” (Love Song 204). This last quotation confirms the part played by Hilda’s and Dot’s accounts of the wonders of sexual intimacy in Rose’s behaviour and expectations. Interestingly, she does not get the conventional literary punishment28 of finding herself pregnant as a result of her night with Derry, but Magorian reminds the readers that that might well have been the case by emphasizing Rose’s relief when she has her period: “It was as if she had been given a second chance” (Love Song 249). She also insists on Rose’s sense of shame at the memory of the experience, and her acute and very traditional fear that: “No one will ever want to have anything to do with [her]” (Love Song 252).
- 29 It was in the Thatcher years that the full scale of the AIDS threat was realized. The implications (...)
- 30 Providing an echo to what Judy Simons writes about the real swing scene in What Katy Did, in “Girl (...)
- 31 Be yourself is the title of a collection of short stories by Michelle Magorian.
56Magorian thus conveys a complex message. On the one hand, she does seem to make the somewhat transgressive suggestion, even for a book aimed at adolescent readers of the 1980s29, that premarital sex – at least in the context of a loving relationship – is not necessarily wrong, that it does not unavoidably entail immanent retribution, and can indeed be enjoyable. Whereas Rose’s night with Derry is described clinically as totally unpleasurable, her first experience with Alec, which she more or less initiates, is metaphorically suggested as enjoyable for both of them, while a subsequent episode uses the image of the swing to hint at Rose’s sexual fulfilment30. On the other hand, Magorian conforms to a very normative romantic presentation of relationships and their centrality to a woman’s life, as suggested by the very title of the novel. Rose may well claim independent, unconventional conceptions of her future: “‘I don’t want to be trapped in a house; if I had to get married I’d like to be the one that goes out and earns the money and I’d like the man to stay at home and do the cooking.’” (Love Song 152), but throughout the book she is shown to be thoroughly preoccupied with the perennial anxiety of whether or not a man will ever want her. This is partly denounced as the result of family conditioning: while Diana was the one with the looks, Rose, less obviously feminine, was typecast by her father as the surrogate, brainy son, as we have seen. While she refers jokingly to the fact that even at school, she got cast as a man in plays or in ballroom classes (Love Song 93 and 101), she is shown from the beginning to be worried about her failure to emulate Diana’s good looks, referring to herself as “the ugly duckling”(Love Song 4). So convinced is she of her own unattractiveness that she envisages herself in the future as the spinster aunt of Diana’s children, while finding a ray of hope in the fictional counterexample of Mr Rochester’s love for “plain Jane” (Love Song 62). She is eventually allowed to find both professional fulfilment – or at least the beginning of it, with the publication of her short story – and reciprocated love with Alec, who had previously correctly diagnosed her contradictions: “‘Sounds like you don’t want to be your idea of what a woman should be. [...] So be yourself.’” (Love Song 152)31.
- 32 Lissa Paul, op. cit., 98.
57One may welcome the suggestion that being true to oneself is better than pleasing others at one’s expense, as Rose is said to have done with Derry – “She had pushed her own feelings aside as though they were of no importance” (Love Song 235) – and that unconventional femininity, far from having to be curbed, might bring its own rewards. Yet the message is somewhat marred by the fact that the acceptability of this new version of womanhood somehow has to be validated by the conventional happy ending by which Rose gets a man. On the one hand, this constitutes a neat reversal of the archetypal male version of the quest, as described by Lissa Paul: “When the quest ends, the hero gets his rewards, his property, his integrity and, often, a princess thrown in among the other goods and chattels”32. But other lines imply an acceptance of the more conventional view of male approval as an essential feature of womanhood:
He had always accepted her in spite of her ugliness. But then strangely enough, she had never felt ugly with him; never given her looks a thought. She realised then, that aside from being on her own, he was the only person with whom she could feel totally herself. (Love Song 292).
- 33 Despite the appalling counter-example provided by William’s mother, motherhood is also glorified i (...)
58This is only partly qualified by the author’s suggestion that Rose’s ugliness may be more imagined than real, and that Diana’s good looks bring their fair share of problems, too. Also on the side of the normative is the image of domestic bliss said to be experienced by Rose as she makes toast and dries towels while Alec recovers from the – normatively male – task of physically helping to save two men trapped under a tractor(Love Song 295-298). Furthermore, the experience Rose eventually claims as central to her finally accepting her femaleness, is the ultra “feminine” one of having acted as midwife to Dot – a kind of motherhood by proxy – resulting in the exultant cry of “‘I like being female!’” (Love Song 235). By the end of the novel, Rose has lived transgressively with Alec for a whole week before he goes off to war, just like Hilda and Matthew, but she very conventionally muses about the children she hopes they will have together33.
- 34 And to brother and sister, as Charlie, born after Rusty’s departure, has also initially found it d (...)
- 35 In A Little Love Song, it is symbolic that Derry should frown when Rose says she is considering cu (...)
59Compared to this, Back Home is more original in its ending. Peggy’s resolution to be true to herself ultimately requires her to abandon the comforts and status that supposedly go with being somebody’s wife, and she logically leaves behind a relationship that is early denounced as dead: “Now her husband could be sent home. She had lived for this moment. Now it had come, she felt absolutely nothing” (Back Home 100). In view of the end of the novel, it is interesting to note that when Rusty is told that Beatie lost both husband and son in the previous war and never re-married, she expresses the view that she should find someone again: “‘[…] it’s more fun when you can share good times with someone else.’” (Back Home 55). Her mother, however, immediately replies: “‘Beatie is quite happy without a husband.’” (ibidem). Presumably as a result of her warm experiences with the Omsks, Rusty’s own idealisation of family life proves persistent, if one is to believe her somewhat unconvincing wish – given their appallingly cold relationship – that her father might one day join them in Devon. In Back Home, Magorian thus steers clear of the conventional closure which would allow for general reconciliation. What reconciliation there is, is limited to mother and daughter34, as both overcome their irritation at what they initially considered unsuitable (i.e. unfeminine?) in the other’s behaviour. Rusty no longer wishes that her mother had a more conventional activity, as she did at the beginning – “Why couldn’t she save someone’s life in a more hygienic way, though, like being a nurse or something?” (Back Home 64) – or a more elegant way of smoking(Back Home 94). Peggy accepts that her daughter’s love of carpentry and ability to chop wood are no more unusual than her own passion for mechanics. Both appreciate in themselves and in each other the courage to be different, and thus echo Carrie’s defiant words: “‘I’d rather be happy and odd than miserable and ordinary!’” (Goodnight 168). Significantly, despite such assertive outbursts, and while she genuinely aspires to equality with boys, Carrie, too, is shown to be worried that she might be unfeminine and unattractive, despite her professed lack of interest in matrimony: “‘I don’t want to get married. Imagine having to do housework all the time. Yuk!’” (Goodnight 298.) Like Rose, she needs to be reassured by a masculine voice, that of William, that she does still look like a girl, even when wearing shorts, despite her mother’s disapproval35.
- 36 Gail Braybon and Penny Summerfield, Out of the Cage, op.cit. It is interesting that Rose’s first p (...)
- 37 And therefore to some extent a victim, too, of parental conditioning.
- 38 Including in his response to his bed-wetting.
60In all three novels, Magorian paints a complex picture of femininity through her portrayal of female characters of different ages and classes, who are allowed to undergo various degrees of development. Rusty’s grandmother is impervious to change, and William’s mother is irretrievably unable to cope with either the reality of her sexual encounters with men or the responsibilities of motherhood. Even if Magorian makes it clear that the latter cannot be held fully responsible for her actions, she and Mrs Dickinson Senior, albeit for different reasons, are portrayed in an unremittingly unsympathetic way, although Carrie’s conventional twin is not. In a context in which socially accepted norms of behaviour are inevitably suspended or adapted, a more positive assessment is made of characters who act in accordance with their true selves, rather than out of respect for artificial, and possibly out-of-date traditions. A catalyst for self-discovery for males and females alike, war is unequivocally depicted as specifically widening opportunities for women. Carrie, still a young girl, can hope to fulfil her ambitions because in society at large, attitudes to women’s education are changing, as reflected by her father’s support, even if her mother stands for that part of the population that disapproves of the evolution, and would rather see daughters step into their mothers’ shoes. Rose, who feels “hemmed in” at the beginning of the novel (Love Song 4) eventually frees herself from her sense of duty to her father, her concern about what people might think, and her own conventional acceptance of what womanhood is about. She is definitely one of those women whom war allows “out of the cage”, in Braybon and Summerfield’s words36, as is Peggy, who, too, has learnt to depart from the role that first her parents, then her husband and in-laws had shaped out for her, initially with her collusion. But men are shown to be prisoners of equally restrictive perceptions of masculinity. Interestingly again, those who embody an old-fashioned conception of gender roles stand out as unpleasant characters. This is true of Rusty’s father who, for all his insistence that he is in charge, is rightly derided by his wife as still tied to his mother’s apron-strings37; and of Derry, who mocks his cousin Alec for his sensitivity, insists that men must take the lead – whether in dancing or intercourse – and is positively horrified when Rose suggests he should ride a woman’s bike to go for help. On the contrary, Magorian clearly approves of “new”, caring, nurturing men, who are not afraid of acknowledging and displaying their own feelings, or of acting upon them. Tom, despite his established reputation as a grumpy widower, shows immense understanding towards William38, who is also helped to overcome the stilted notions or right and wrong that his mother has instilled in him, by his friend Zach. As a Jew and the son of theatre actors, the latter is doubly on the margins of society. He is also self-confidently unconventional and enables William to understand that his ability to paint or read or to listen and talk does not mean he is the “sissy” that the boys in his London neighbourhood railed at for refusing to join in their rough games, for fear of getting dirty and risking maternal wrath. Alec epitomizes this ideal of the “New Man”, and Magorian obviously favours the equal partnership that she strongly suggests his relationship with Rose will be, over the patriarchal model exemplified by Rusty’s parents before Peggy’s rebellion.
61The changes brought about by war are described as fraught with tension and uncertainty, as pro-change characters face resistance both outside and within themselves: even Hilda, adequately described as “ahead of her times”, is upset at the sight of her sister-in-law, admittedly after years of seclusion:
I was shocked to see traces of powder and lipstick, having been brought up to believe that only women of easy virtue painted their faces. Luckily I had had some warning of the change in hemlines from the clothes she had sent, otherwise I would have found it impossible to conceal my shock. (Love Song 170).
62This internalization of norms already encountered in other female characters is as much of an obstacle to women’s emancipation as the persistence of stereotypes and prejudices in society at large, suggested by the repetition of patterns in the stories of Hilda, Dot, and Rose. It takes more than an individual, and more than a generation, to change overall views of womanhood.
63In any case, Magorian’s position seems to be that femininity and masculinity should precisely not be regarded as polarized, antagonistic entities and that individuals should be true to themselves rather than conform to what society expects, if it clashes with their real selves, notably, but not exclusively, in terms of gender identity. People should be able to combine interests and display features that are traditionally considered as either typically masculine or feminine. This is certainly the view Rusty vindicates: “‘You can make a place homey and be strong too, and be brainy.’” (Back Home 347), as she tells Lance, the fellow sea-vacuee who briefly befriends her then betrays her. Initially pleased to find in her a fellow soul who can understand how difficult it is for him to adapt to his traditional boys’ boarding-school, which is every bit as Victorian as her own, he even suggests he might join her in her mad plan to escape back to America. But he drops her once he manages to make friends at school and is on the verge of being accepted in the rugby team – a true sign of integration – since the other chaps would think him a “namby-pamby” if they knew he was friends with a girl (Back Home 346).
64Thus Magorian portrays a complex picture of womanhood, of the impact that war has had on women’s lives and of their individual interpretations of femininity. She is careful to show that the internalisation of culturally defined norms is to some extent unavoidable, and that it takes time – and fortitude – for individuals to overcome persisting prejudices in others and conflicting aspirations in themselves. The suggestion that the same battles may have to be fought again and again is of particular interest, given the “backlash” against feminism that emerged in Britain at the time the novels were written. Whether this ultimately makes Rose, with her internal contradictions and eventual ability to “have it all”, or Peggy, a more “either/or” character, the more historically truthful, and – in a different perspective – the more fictionally satisfactory character, remains to be decided; but through those two characters, as well as those of Carrie and Rusty, Magorian certainly provides her contemporary female readers with role‑models that are both inspirational and challenging.