Women, Identity and Private Life in Britain, 1900-50

Women, Identity and Private Life in Britain, 1900-50 explores the meanings and experience of home and private life for women who grew up before 1950. It considers the extent to which class, suburbanisation and historical moment as well as gender constructed women’s understanding of domesticity, and discusses the part played by conceptions of home and private life in the shaping of identities. Oral narratives, fiction, autobiography and diaries are used in conjunction with psychoanalytic, linguistic and historical explanations of women’s lives to map a psychological as well as a social history of women’s relationship to the home in the early part of this century. The book argues that while historically specific conceptions of sexual difference were significant in shaping women’s understanding and experience of their lives, equally important were the social, cultural and psychological divisions articulated around suburbia, domestic service and aspirations of respectability. By deploying a diverse range of sources, the author concludes that to understand women’s relation to the domestic and to the idea of the ’private’ requires an approach which encompasses a variety of disciplines and perspectives - perspectives which include environment, class and generation as well as gender.