Abstract
In periods of acute social change and insecurity, popular cultural forms have a threefold function. They provide reassurance for marginal groups by according them a symbolic presence, they produce pleasure for the audience by temporarily resolving real tensions in their lives, and they clarify confusions about moral or social boundaries.1 These three processes — persuasion, pleasure and ritual clarification — must be taken into account in any analysis of the fictional representation of subordinate groups. Of these, women constitute the largest — and arguably the most important. extraordinarily wide variety of purposes. Endlessly polysemic, the female form could be employed to signify forbidden wilfulness (The Wicked Lady), ratified monogamy (In Which We Serve), innocent sensuality (Lady Hamilton), doomed feminism (Thunder Rock), proletarian doggedness (Millions Like Us) or aging support (The Prime Minister). But ‘employed’ by whom? By those in control of government agencies and film production companies — all of whom were male. There were comparatively few female workers in wartime feature film, as any attention to Kine Weekly records will show.
To wish for the fragrance of the rose, we must have an organisation capable of receiving pleasure from it, and must be persuaded that such lovely flowers as roses exist. To wish for the enjoyment of the higher pleasures of sympathy and communication between the sexes, heightened by that mutual grace and glow, that decorum and mutual respect, to which the feeling of perfect, unrestrained equality in the intercourse gives birth, a man must be able to have heard of such pleasures, be able to conceive them, and must have an organisation from nature or education, or both, capable of feeling delight from them when presented to him.
(W. Thompson, An appeal on behalf of one-half of the human race…, 1825)
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Notes and References
See, for example, Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London, 1966) and Implicit Meanings (London, 1975).
Muriel Box, Odd Woman Out (London, 1974) pp. 162–78.
Sue Harper, ‘Art Direction and Costume Design’, in S. Aspinall and R. Murphy (eds), Gainsborough Melodrama (London, 1983).
See, for example, Angela John (ed.), Unequal Opportunities (Oxford, 1985);
Jane Lewis (ed.), Labour and Love (London, 1985);
E. Garmarnikow (ed.), Gender, Class and Work (London, 1983);
Barbara Taylor, Eve and the New Jerusalem (London, 1983).
Gail Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War (London, 1981).
Mass Observation (MO), War begins at home (London, 1940) p. 5.
Penny Summerfield, Women workers in the Second World War (London, 1984) pp. 29–31, 62.
Ian McLaine, Ministry of morale (London, 1979) p. 154.
J. B. Priestley, British women go to war (London, 1944) p. 37.
Summerfield, Women workers (op. cit.) pp. 55–7. See also I. Holden, The Night Shift (London, 1941).
Summerfield, Women workers (op. cit.) pp. 153–63; MO, People in production (op. cit.) pp. 88–9; J. Costello, Sex, Love and War (London, 1985) pp. 201–4, 209–10, 363–4;
H. Smith, The problem of “Equal Pay for Equal Work” in World War IF, in Journal of Modern History, 53 (1981) 4.
Ninety-five per cent of women were in favour of equal pay for equal work; the male percentage was much less. See A. Calder and D. Sheridan (eds), Speak for yourself: a mass observation anthology (London, 1984) pp. 183–4.
The film had very good reviews. See The Sunday Times, 11 April 1943, Manchester Guardian, 27 July 1943 and Observer, 11 April 1943. All stressed the film’s ‘authenticity’ and ‘female angle’. See also J. P. Mayer, British cinemas and their audiences (London, 1948) pp. 185, 226, and Sociology of film (London, 1946) p. 231.
Sue Harper, ‘The boundaries of hegemony: scriptwriting at Gainsborough in World War II’, in F. Barker (ed.), The politics of theory (Essex, 1983).
Geoff Brown, Launder and Gilliat (London, 1977) p. 108.
Christine Gledhill and Gillian Swanson, ‘Gender and sexuality in second world war films — a feminist approach’, in G. Hurd (ed.), National Fictions (London, 1984);
Sue Aspinall, ‘Women, realism and reality in British films, 1943–53’, in J. Curran and V. Porter (eds), British Cinema History (London, 1983);
Andrew Higson, ‘Britain’s outstanding contribution to the him’, in Charles Barr (ed.), All our yesterdays (London, 1986).
Costello, Sex, Love and War (op. cit.) pp.316, 29, 14; Raymond Minns, Bombers and mash: the domestic front 1939–45 (London, 1980) pp. 178–9;
A. Calder, The People’s War: Britain 1939–45 (London, 1971) p. 362.
MO, Changes in clothing habits (No. 728, June 1941); J. Robinson, Fashion in the 40s (London, 1980) p. 25;
N. Longmate, How we lived then (London, 1971) pp. 250–2.
J. Weeks, Sex, politics and society: the regulation of sexuality since 1800 (London, 1981) pp. 232–3.
MO, Britain and her birthrate (London, 1945);
Len England, ‘A British sex survey’, in International Journal of Sexology, February 1950.
Lucy Bland & Frank Mort, ‘Look out for the good-time girl’, in Formations of Nation and People (London, 1984) p. 142.
J. Laver, in Screen and audience (undated, but 1946) pp. 33–6.
Muriel Box, Odd woman out (London, 1974) pp. 164–5.
Freud , The psychopathology of everyday life (Penguin, 1966) pp. 37–81.
Aspinall in Curran and Porter (op. cit.) p. 275; Pam Cook, ‘Melodrama and the women’s picture’, in S. Aspinall and R. Murphy (eds), Gainsborough Melodrama (London, 1983) p. 24.
N. Lee, Log of a film director (London, 1949) pp. 34–5;
R.J. Minney, Talking of films (London, 1947) pp.4, 35, 43.
Marjorie Lawrence, Madonna of the Seven Moons (London, 1931) p.131.
R. C. Sherriff, No leading lady: an autobiography (London, 1968) p.321.
E. Betts, The film business, p. 152; M. Korda, Charmed lives (London, 1980) pp. 147–9, 155–6; K. Kulik, Alexander Korda: the man who could work miracles, pp. 249, 254–6.
L. Olivier, Confessions of an actor (London, 1982) p. 91.
L. Hirsch, Laurence Olivier (Boston, 1979) p. 55; Kulik, Alexander Korda (op. cit.) p. 246.
A. Aldgate and J. Richards, Britain Can Take It (Oxford, 1985) pp. 198–9.
J. Ellis, ‘Made in Ealing’, in Screen, 16, No. 1, p. 94; V. Porter, ‘The context of creativity: Ealing studios and Hammer films’, in Curran and Porter (op. cit.) p. 183; Charles Barr, Ealing studios (London, 1977) pp. 6, 44;
Sue Harper, ‘History in film: two British studios 1942–7’, in D. W. Ellwood (ed.), Studies in history, film and society (Copenhagen, 1985).
On the costing of The Bad Lord Byron and The Man in Grey see Daily Herald, 2 March 1948, and Kine Weekly, 19 April 1945. See also Alan Woods, Mr Rank (London, 1952) p. 147.
B. Woodhouse, From script to screen (London, 1947) pp. 63–4, and interviews with Bill Salter and Denis Mason in Aspinall and Murphy, Gainsborough Melodrama (op. cit.).
B. Kesterton, ‘The social and emotional effects of the recreational film on adolescents of 13 and 14 years of age in the West Bromwich area’, in British Journal of Educational Psychology, 19 (1949).
K. Box, The Cinema and the public (London, 1946) in MO 2429;
L. Moss and K. Box, Wartime survey: the cinema audience (London, 1943) in MO 1871.
Ibid., pp.8, 22, 184; J. P. Mayer, Sociology of film (London, 1946) pp. 183, 216. On sets, see Mayer, British cinemas (op. cit.) pp. 189, 214, 234.
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© 1988 Philip M. Taylor
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Harper, S. (1988). The Representation of Women in British Feature Films, 1939–45. In: Taylor, P.M. (eds) Britain and the Cinema in the Second World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19317-2_10
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