No wizards; no vampires: what this 80s child read

Last week marked 15 years since the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and a generation of Potter fans has been reminiscing about their introduction to the world of the boy wizard. I'm too old to have read the books as a child - I actually read them for the first time at the age of 19 - and it's got me thinking about some of my most-loved books, wondering if they're still popular now, and wondering what the primary school students and tweens of today are into. Do they still read The Baby-sitters Club books in all their ghostwritten, predictable glory, which I notice were re-released in 2010? Where are all the fans of historical fiction? Are they mainly into vampires these days thanks to That Series That Shall Not Be Named?

Gracing my bookshelves back in the early/mid-90s and providing fond memories today, here are ten childhood favourites (all images show the editions I owned):

Children of Winter - Berlie Doherty

My favourite childhood books usually involved several key elements: the past, events from history (the more gruesome the better), magic and mystery, and time travel. Children of Winter has it all. Three children sheltering from the weather in a barn get transported back in time to the 17th century and the time of the Great Plague. Ker-ching! Books like this featured heavily in my childhood; they seemed to be a popular choice with teachers, helping us learn about events in history, which I obviously had no objection to whatsoever.

Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild

Despite not being even remotely inclined towards dancing (I had a couple of lessons, aged three, and hated them) or acting, I couldn't get enough of Ballet Shoes. The quirky upbringing of Pauline, Petrova, and Posy - the Fossil sisters - probably had a lot to do with this, and I remember adoring the illustrations by Ruth Gervis. Didn't the ending make you misty-eyed? Altogether now: "We three Fossils vow to try and put our names in history books..."

Lady Daisy - Dick King-Smith

Not one of Dick King-Smith's better-known efforts, but seriously. A talking doll. From the past. My eight-year-old self is jumping up and down with glee. Found in an attic by a boy named Ned, Lady Daisy educates him about the 19th century, which comes in handy for his school project on the Victorians. He gets picked for owning a doll by the school bully and it's also a source of anxiety for his father, who would prefer him to be carrying a football around instead (down with restrictive gender stereotyping!).

Moondial - Helen Cresswell

A lot of people remember the cult 1988 BBC adaptation of Moondial, which is how I first came across it too. Once again it's got that combination of magic, mystery, history, and time travel, with a touch of morbidity and creepiness - hooded figures in the dark, covered mirrors, and a girl who's known as the 'Devil's child'. Having seen the television series first, I was delighted to get my hands on the book a few years later.

St Clare's and Malory Towers books - Enid Blyton

Bit obvious, this one, but Enid Blyton's tales of boarding school were ones I read and re-read, having inherited my mum's copies. The midnight feasts! Swimming and lacrosse! The alien concept of 'the honour of the school'! The character tropes that were a feature of both schools: the Mean Girl, the Tomboy, the Snob, the 'Outlandish' Foreign Girl, the 'Mouse' - were predictable, and it's easy to cringe at some of the less-enlightened language used by the author. But I'm not going to deny that I was once a fan.

An Enemy at Green Knowe - Lucy M Boston

We were big fans of Lucy Boston's super-whimsical Green Knowe books in our house. They were based locally, and we even named our dog after key character Tolly. Predictably for me, the series is full of history, mystery, and magic. An Enemy at Green Knowe was always my favourite, thanks to the fact it features the evil Melanie Powers and her witchcraft. Of course, good triumphs over evil, and Melanie's schemes are thwarted by Tolly and his friend Ping.

Anastasia's Chosen Career - Lois Lowry

How awesome was Anastasia Krupnik? I was hooked on her exploits as a tween. I could identify with Anastasia in so many ways, from her secret notebook scribblings to her hatred of gym class. In the editions of the books carried by my local library, each cover was emblazoned with the strapline "The girl who thinks for herself" (oh yes!). In Anastasia's Chosen Career, our heroine enrolls in modelling school in an attempt to boost her self-confidence and poise, hoping it'll help her on her way to becoming a bookstore owner.

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - Judith Kerr

Judith Kerr's classic, based on her childhood experience of fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s, satisfied my love of history. The story follows Anna, a nine-year-old Jewish girl, as she and her family hurriedly leave their old lives behind to move to Switzerland, then Paris. Anna's tales of acclimatizing to life in a new country have stayed with me. Weirdly I have never read the two further books Kerr wrote to continue the story - that's something I've always planned to do as an adult but haven't yet got round to.

The Little House series - Laura Ingalls Wilder

In the early 1990s, Channel 4 re-ran the television series adapted from the Little House books. As soon as I could, I got my hands on them, and became totally obsessed with the Ingalls family. In my make-believe world, being a pioneer girl was one of my favourite things to 'pretend' - living through the 'long winter', exploring the prairie, and wondering what the hell 'molasses' and 'cornbread' were. I'm really keen to get my hands on The Wilder Life, in which Wendy McClure explores the Little House world.

The Ordinary Princess - M M Kaye

One of Princess Amethyst's fairy godmothers tells her "You shall be ordinary!" - and so instead of growing up like your typical fairytale princess, she ends up with straight mousy hair and freckles, prefers to be called Amy, and likes playing in the woods. When she finds out that her concerned parents are hatching a plan to get her married off to some Prince Charming character, she runs away. Amy soon realises that she needs to earn a living and gets a job as a kitchenmaid, where she meets a new friend. A nice twist on the whole 'princess' thing.

Honourable mentions for books I wanted to include: The Witches and Matilda - Roald Dahl; the Ramona Quimby books - Beverley Cleary; Witch Week - Diana Wynne Jones; The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis; The Railway Children - E. Nesbit; The Whitby Witches - Robin Jarvis; Emily of New Moon - L. M. Montgomery; Little Women - Louisa May Alcott.

All the mommas who profit dollas

Upsetting people this week: Elizabeth Wurtzel's piece for The Atlantic, entitled '1% Wives Are Helping Kill Feminism and Make the War on Women Possible', and Cherie Blair's comments on women who put rich husbands and staying at home with the childen ahead of a career. Yes, this is both a 'Mommy Wars' AND a 'Mummy Wars' post, with a dash of Destiny's Child.

The shoes on my feet 

I've bought it 

The clothes I'm wearing 

I've bought it 

The rock I'm rockin' 

'Cause I depend on me 

If I wanted the watch you're wearin' 

I'll buy it 

The house I live in 

I've bought it 

The car I'm driving 

I've bought it 

I depend on me

Wurtzel, like most of us, is concerned about the continuing attempts by Republicans and the Christian right to control what women do with their bodies and their personal lives that have become so numerous and shocking they've required a catch-all term: the War on Women. Unlike most of us, however, she's decided to pin the blame for all this on the wives of rich men. It's a tedious tactic played for maximum controversy: snipe at women; insinuate they're somehow to blame for their own misfortune. Blair, too, has beef with the rich men - and women who want to marry them because they're in search of an easy life and don't want a job. She's also got issues with 'yummy mummies'. Predictably, there is outrage.

Having read Wurtzel's piece, I actually do think that she makes a handful of good points. It's a shame it takes a turn for the worse so quickly.

"Who can possibly take feminism seriously when it allows everything, as long as women choose it?"

That question right there is probably one of the things that makes me - and other feminists I know - want to tear our hair out the most: the idea, beloved of people on the internet who think they're being smart, that gender equality, at the end of the day, is all about choice. We all know it isn't; goodness knows it's used at every available opportunity to justify things that are exploitative, subtly misogynist or have absolutely nothing to do with feminism in the first place.

"Feminism...should mean something. It should mean equality."

Well, obviously.

"Most mothers have jobs because they need or want the money and fulfillment; only in rare cases are they driven by glory. To be a stay-at-home mom is a privilege..."

It's actually not very often that high profile, privileged people point this out. It's usually left to the women who read their articles to shout about it when assumptions about mother who work outside the home are made.

So what goes wrong? For a start, I'm deducting points from Wurtzel because she mentions bra-burning. In general, though, it's her focus on economic equality and how she links this to the War on Women.

"Let's please be serious grown-ups: real feminists don't depend on men. Real feminists earn a living, have money and means of their own."

Why is it suddenly all about cash? Never mind the current job market, eh. Or, you know, privilege.

"And there really is only one kind of equality -- it precedes all the emotional hullabaloo -- and it's economic."

Really? Just one kind? Has she been spending time with Louise Mensch?

"Because here's what happens when women go shopping at Chanel and get facials at Tracy Martyn when they should be wage-earning mensches: the war on women happens."

Wait. How did we get here?

"...these [rich 'housewives'] are the reason their husbands think all women are dumb, and I don't blame them."

Okay. So from what she's saying, rich women choose not to work and instead lead pampered and pointless lives. Their husbands don't work with women (unless they're secretaries); they don't see them as equals. They see them as the person who racks up enormous credit card bills. And then they support the War on Women. Women need to go out to work and have their own money. Particularly intelligent women who have graduated from top universities. Because being a mother isn't a job. ALL THIS IS RUINING FEMINISM AND LEADING TO LEGISLATION INVOLVING VAGINAL PROBES BEING ENACTED.

Even if all these moneyed women and women with degrees from Ivy League institutions went out and worked and realised that they need to stop pretending motherhood is 'work', the War on Women would still be happening. Look what happened in the 1970s and 1980s. Women took great steps forward in terms of economic equality and careers. The right-wing backlash still began. Women on the right made careers of their own telling women not to work and "return to the home".

Plenty of the politicians involved in the War on Women don't really mind women going out to work - they seek to control their sex lives and reproduction. When they do care about women with jobs, it's part of a bigger picture of wanting to keep us 'in our place'. They simply don't trust women to take care of themselves, make their own decisions, and have their own opinions, and I'm not sure it's rich wives who are to blame. An opinionated woman is a harpy, a woman who uses contraception is a whore. A woman boss is a bitch and a woman who has an abortion is going to hell. Let's not pin all the blame on the Real Housewives of Orange County - it's obvious there's more to it than that.

Cherie Blair, tackling things from a UK perspective, I think, has fallen victim to the media's love of creating drama over any comment made about motherhood and work, however insignificant that comment may be. Fair enough, I don't agree with her that women are making a bad decision if they choose to be stay-at-home mothers, and I don't agree that it discourages children from being independent. Emily Murray explained this very well in a piece for the Guardian, pointing out that a politician and a barrister would hardly have the same worries about childcare costs and paying the bills that most of us have to contend with. But I'm not sure her sentiments as expressed in the quotes below are all that much of an attack.

“I look at the sacrifices that women have made and I think why do I need to bother, why can’t I just marry a rich husband and retire?” and you think how can they even imagine that is the way to fulfil yourself, how dangerous it is. In my case I saw my mother abandoned by my father when I was eight – but even good men could have an accident or die and you’re left holding the baby.” 

Isn't everyone in favour of women being able to take care of themselves as much as they can? I don't think this must mean 'having a career' - after all, plenty of people just don't want what's generally regarded as 'a career' - but it's important however much (or little) money you have. A couple of years ago, I remember an acquaintance telling me that she was 'terrible' at managing her finances.

"I think it's because I assumed I'd be married by now, and that my husband would take care of all that side of things," she said.

"We need to devise business strategies and societies that allow women to make choices that aren’t all-or-nothing choices. We’ve been conditioned to think that if we make a choice to have a child at this point, then that defines what you do for the rest of your life. That’s not true – it doesn’t have to be like that…"

I know women who have been conditioned to think that having a child will mean their life will be 'over'. Who think it will mean the end of any job satisfaction or career success. We know the outlook isn't always rosy. As Blair says, the system isn't terribly good at helping us - and our partners - to make "choices that aren't all or nothing choices". Everyone knows that needs to change. It doesn't need to involve every women going out and trying to get top jobs, it needs to result in them being able to feel they are making the best choice for themselves and for their families.

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Why should UK Christians care about mutuality?

I was discussing one of the posts from Rachel Held Evans's Week of Mutuality series with some friends on Twitter yesterday, when someone mentioned that the debate surrounding gender and the church isn't one that we hear a lot about in the UK. If you look at it in terms of the way the issue is discussed in the USA, this is certainly true. As another friend on Twitter, one from America, once said to me, "Over here, the evangelical voice is king." And when she said "evangelical", she meant it in the American sense - that of the Christian Right. It's the culture that I'm currently seeing a lot of younger bloggers reject as they explore whether it's possible to form Christian communities and "do church" in a different way. Evangelical yet more accepting, more open to questioning, more open to people who don't "fit the mold". More accepting of science, more accepting of women in leadership, less centred on condemnation and less intertwined with right-wing politics.

To the majority of people in the UK, you mention "women and the church" and they'll think of the current debates about women bishops. Others will think back 20 years, to the debates about women being ordained. For a lot of people, the idea of churches where a woman can't even read aloud from the Bible, or where a woman working outside the home would be an abomination, is quite odd. The church telling husbands and wives what they should and shouldn't do at home would be weird. A couple of years ago, the fact that a Church of England curate gave a Valentine's Day sermon urging women to "remain silent" and "submit" caused such outrage that it became a national news story (sorry - it's a Daily Mail link). Of course, if you read the comments, you'll see the nation's supporters of male headship coming out of the woodwork, but as a rule, it's not something that a lot of people see as a Big Deal.

1. It may not be a Big Deal for the UK church, but what about our brothers and sisters in Christ?

Unfortunately, not everyone is happy for things to stay that way. By and large, parachurch organisations and ecumenical bodies in the UK have a reasonably positive attitude - on paper - towards women and what they are "permitted" to do. But in recent years, groups and individuals with a more conservative and restrictive viewpoint have been aiming to exert more influence - in universities, through books, through insisting women are excluded to accommodate them, through having a personality that appeals to a certain type of Christian (Mark Driscoll; young men - I'm looking at you). As the church realises the amazing impact that raising up women and encouraging them to serve in whatever ways they are truly gifted to do can have, they wish instead for the tide to turn. People do leave churches because they refuse to call a woman "Pastor". They do walk out of services because they won't take communion from a woman. Teenage girls do attend seminars at summer camps and get told that any ambition to "lead" means they have "Jezebel spirits". Women do leave the church because of what they've been told about their gender. It's not just America's problem.

I believe that much of what is taught in the name of "distinct roles" is nothing more than 20th century gender stereotyping at best (and incredibly, some prominent theologians happily admit this, saying it's necessary to instruct people how to "fit in" with society's expectations of their gender), highly damaging and potentially abusive patriarchy at worst. In terms of theology, it's often a case of desperately clutching at straws (check out Rachel's posts from good analysis of the theological issues at stake). You might think that's me being overly dramatic, and I'm not suggesting for one moment that I think the "Biblical Patriarchy" movement could make significant inroads in the UK (it couldn't - I don't think even the most earnest British Christian could cope with the realities of Vision Forum), but just because it's not happening here doesn't mean it shouldn't matter to us, as part of the Body of Christ. Some of the posts written as part of Mutuality2012 make that abundantly clear when they describe the way their authors have been treated and made to feel in the name of  a "plain reading of scripture".

2. On paper, we're there (depending on the denomination). In reality...

I mentioned above that "on paper", things look pretty good for women in the UK church. This gets to make people feel quite good about the situation. We're really positive about equality! We have a woman speaker sometimes! Women are the backbone of the church! You know how it goes. But if having a woman speaker sometimes, or admitting that women do all the support work behind the scenes and always serve the refreshments and always look after the children allows people to sit back and wash their hands of the whole issue of gender and the church, that's not good enough. We have to support those women who want to lead churches. We have to praise those women who want to head up organisations. We have to affirm those women who don't want to stay in the background but stand at the front with pride.

And this won't happen simply through praise and affirmation. It's got to happen through good employment practices like encouraging and supporting women who are mothers and want to work in full-time ministry, or not requiring that clergy wives forego a career. We need to talk about the women of the Bible and their stories on a Sunday, in the main service - not just as a part of women's Bible studies or women's retreat days. Churches should be discouraging sexist attitudes and showing that men and women can be a lot of different things, outside of stereotypes and expectations. They should be doing more to support single women and divorced women and childfree women and women who are survivors. It's not about "political correctness" as some would probably claim - there's nothing suspect about making "equality" a priority. It's not some woolly liberal concept to be treated with suspicion and laughed off as nothing to get too involved in or too serious about; it is, in fact, Biblical.

3. When people care, great things happen.

I'm thinking of the important work done by the Sophia Network and Women and the Church. By Soul Survivor's Equal conferences. By organisations like Restored, fighting gender inequality and violence against women. By all the people who have ever helped a woman see that she is not limited by her gender but free to make waves. It's our duty to educate ourselves and set an example for others. It's as simple as that.

This post is part of a synchroblog for Rachel Held Evans's Week of Mutuality. Follow the conversation on Twitter via the #Mutuality2012 hashtag.

Motherhood. Womanhood. Whatever.

I can't remember whether or not I've ever mentioned the fact that I found being married quite hard to adjust to, being a person used to spending a lot of time alone, and having had a relationship, pre-marriage, that had been primarily long-distance. Someone else was making demands on my time. Living together felt a bit stifling. I wondered whether I would lose my identity, whether I had stopped being "Hannah" and had instead become "Luke's wife". This scared me. After a while, I adjusted. Things were fine. It took a while, and a lot of talking things through, but one of the first things you need to learn about marriages is that they take work, and it's good to realise this at the beginning.

Adjusting to motherhood involves many of the same issues. I'm now at home until next year, but someone else is making demands on my time. This time, however, I can't throw my hands up and say that I need my own space, because that someone is a newborn. Of course Luke spends his fair share of time parenting too, but for the time being, I'm the one with the food. And so at present, I spend the majority of my days on the sofa, or on my bed, baby attached to me, checking Twitter on my phone as he eats.

I've used plenty of this time to look back on my experience of pregnancy and birth. I feel incredibly fortunate  that everything was so straightforward and without complication. I certainly wasn't expecting to dilate from six to ten centimetres in an hour. I definitely didn't think I'd pop a baby out after just 18 minutes of pushing. Everyone tells you your birth plan will "go out of the window" once you get to hospital and things get moving. I stuck to mine: I was standing up until the very end; I used gas and air, no drugs; I had a physiological third stage. These were my choices; I decided they were right for me and for my situation, and because everything progressed without complications, I was able to go with what I had planned. What other women choose to do, or have to do out of medical necessity, has nothing to do with me. I know everyone doesn't treat the experience of birth like that - hence the so-called "wars" that take place on blogs and forums, where a simple retelling of a birth story is often seen as a judgement on women whose experiences didn't go to plan or who chose to do things differently. It could have all been very different for me, so there's no judgement here.

I was surprised at how everything turned out. It made me feel very powerful. Powerful because of what my body has done in terms of creating a child; powerful because of how I had managed my labour; powerful because of how my body worked to bring Sebastian into the world. I felt somewhat less powerful in the following days as I experienced all the expected anxieties that come with being a new mother: hormones, sleep, feeling as if broken glass was coming out of my nipples when I fed. There are other things I've done that have influenced a positive attitude towards my body image, not as something to feel smug about because I have a magazine-approved "bikini body" (I don't - especially right now), but as something awesome - climbing a mountain, running half marathons. Now "creating and birthing a child" can be added to that list and also to my list of "defining experiences of my journey as a woman". It definitely deserves a place there. That's my journey, not "the journey of women in general".

See how blogging about motherhood is already making me feel as if I have to attach qualifiers to everything, in case people think I'm being judgmental about the choices and experiences of other women? It's not something I normally do - it's ridiculous, and it's a sad reflection on how all this works. Apologising for your opinions the minute you talk about them (isn't that what we women are supposed to do?). Mommy wars. Mummy wars. Whatever. So I think that's the last time I'll do it: no more qualifying statements for me. I trust people to understand, by looking at the way the rest of this blog works, that this isn't what I'm about. If it's anything like my pregnancy, I'll blog about about motherhood once every few months. So there's some advance warning.

On a break

Expect a bit of a break from regular posting for the time being - our son Sebastian Henry James arrived (rather speedily - less than two hours after getting examined at the hospital) on May 13th, weighing in at 7lbs 8oz and making plenty of noise from the off. We are both well and I'm definitely hoping to resume normal service in the near future.

Rape culture: still around; still as grim as ever

The newspapers have, for the most part, been putting on a united front regarding the horrific details of the case that has led to this week's sentencing of nine men involved in the grooming, rape and exploitation of girls in Rochdale. Granted, much of this is down to the fact that there's much wrangling over whether race is the most important factor in how we should view the case. Did "political correctness" mean that police didn't do enough? Is race the "elephant in the room"? Certain news outlets are intent on making a really big deal about the supposed fact that "you can't talk about race" - while talking about it a great deal. They're choosing to ignore the fact that numerous similar cases over the years have involved white perpetrators, because it's a sensationalist angle guaranteed to create controversy and really get the mouth-frothers going.

The focus on the ethnic background of the perpetrators has meant that one key aspect of the way the media generally deals with rape cases hasn't really been noticeable. Even the comments on Mail Online have been remarkably free of it, which really does surprise me (although to be fair, the opportunity to talk about race and immigration is guaranteed to get them excited more than just about anything else). I'm talking, of course, about victim blaming, something that's so ingrained into the way society talks about sexual violence that we have to listen to people discussing rape in terms of whether it's "rape rape" or, you know, one of those lesser types of rape where it's committed by a partner, or if a woman "flirted" with her attacker. We hear about a judge describing a girl of 11 as a "willing participant" who "looked older" as if that makes it okay that two men raped her and filmed themselves doing it. We see newspapers referring to 12-year-old girls as "lolitas" who have ruined the lives of the men who gang-raped them. We see the public rally round a man who has been found guilty of rape, turning on his victim instead and "outing" her online.

Due to the fact most people are pretty busy obsessing over the factor of race in the Rochdale case, this hasn't been too evident. Until last night, when BBC News featured a report on the sentencing and asked a local man for his thoughts.

"Some argue," we were told by reporter Chris Buckler, "That it's up to families to take responsibility too," referring of course to the oft-repeated refrain of "Where were the parents?!" when very young girls are abused and exploited.

The man interviewed on the street claimed that if he had a daughter "She'd be in bed for seven" (as if this would solve everything).

"But ultimately, if they're being sexually exploited, the ones that are responsible are the people doing the grooming," replied Buckler.

"Yeah, but it takes two to tango," came the response.

And there you have it. A group of men rape a number of young girls. Everyone agrees that it's bad - of course it's awful, they're "monsters", in tabloid parlance. But beneath it all, there is still an unwillingness to totally place the blame with them. And so we have "Where were the parents?". Never mind the fact the girls have all been described as "vulnerable" and "known to social services" so strict and protective parents may well not have been a feature of their lives. Never mind the fact that it's impossible for parents to stop such things happening to their children no matter what - because of the simple fact that sexual violence exists. Even more unpleasantly, we have "It takes two to tango". Never mind about the fact the girls were given drugs and alcohol, never mind about their age. They must have been in on it somehow. In a roundabout way, it's their fault, because they weren't your stereotypical innocent "good girls". I mean, they hung around outside takeaways in the evening, for goodness' sake - what did they expect? If someone had kept them under control it would have been fine.

Rapists rape, but for many people, there must always be this element of it being the victim's fault, as if it's completely unpalatable to actually, just for once, simply condemn the perpetrator. Even if it's just slightly her fault. She should have done something to stop it. She should have not acted in a certain way. Her family should have been there. She shouldn't have put herself in that situation.

What's been highlighted, although much less prominently than the issues of race, is the fact that the whole thing could have come to light four years ago. Instead the case was dropped because it was decided that the victim who came forward would not be viewed as a credible witness by a jury. When young girls, particularly young girls from supposedly "difficult" backgrounds, make allegations, society's default reaction is disbelief and dismissal. The police know this; indeed, it's the default reaction for many of their own profession. Julie Bindel, highlighting the way victims are ignored in a piece for the Guardian yesterday, said:

"The uncomfortable truth is that there is complacency about organised sexual exploitation, which leads to few convictions regardless of the ethnicity of the perpetrators. We choose instead to blame the victims."

She went on:

"The truth is that the victims of the most horrendous abuse are being let down – viewed as troublemaking slags, in fact – which is why opportunist grooming gangs can get away with it so often."

Even when the rapists have been sentenced, when it has been acknowledged that abuse has taken place, for some people, the girls and women whose lives they've ruined will always be "those girls", those "troublemaking slags", whether we're talking about the men from Rochdale or Ched Evans or Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Their voices won't matter - they're just there to be judged or used as statistics. The assumption, for some people, will always be there, no matter what the details of the case happen to be. Rape culture isn't going anywhere fast.

Image from here.

UPDATE: Following the victim-blaming extravaganza that was last night's Question Time, here's some further reading on what happened, and the response it received:

- The F Word - Slut-shaming and victim-blaming: the journalist, the vicar and the politician

- Sian and Crooked Rib - Don't presume

The Fifties: a warning from history

I purchased The Fifties Mystique, Jessica Mann's new memoir-cum-warning, at the weekend after reading her piece for the Guardian entitled "What do you mean, the good old days?" The article was an intriguing read, discussing how Mann feels that today's women are wrong to wish for a return to the supposedly simpler or happier times before the massive societal changes that the 1960s and 1970s brought, and the new opportunities and choices they afforded women. Mann remembers this so-called golden age, and doesn't remember much of it with affection. It's less "the golden age" and more "The Fifties: a warning from history".

As the country has struggled with recession and assorted economic woes in recent years, the newspaper or magazine feature about the women who simply long for the "good old days" has become a bit of a cliche. The unhappy career woman who's sick of slogging her guts out at the office in return for little in the way of fulfillment. The woman who's found she can't "have it all". The middle class stay-at-home mother who has found new joy in making cushion covers, baking and wearing floral dresses. The women who idolise the 1950s as a time when they could "just be women". We keep hearing about this fad called "the new domesticity" and it's possible to track down a plethora of articles discussing whether it's fun, empowering, or a step in the wrong direction for women.

I suspect that much of this "new domesticity" fad has a great deal to do with trends in "women's interest" journalism and selling products to affluent families rather than anything else. It's about marketing a lifestyle over encouraging a genuine interest in what it involves, and I think it's also possibly on its way out as a fad, as people grow tired of ditsy print cake tins and Kirstie's Homemade Home and circular debates about cupcakes and what is and what isn't "feminist". 

But "new domesticity" aside, Mann says she is concerned that too many of today's women are wishing they lived in the past without realising what this truly would have meant for them, and for society in general. She quotes one woman as saying "I'd love to be a captive wife," one describing the post-war years as "prettier and nicer", and another, commenting on the unfairness of having to "bring home the bacon as well as cooking it". What she sets out to do through telling the story of her early life, is make people more aware of the limitations and frustrations of the era she describes in terms of its greyness, boredom, bigotry, hypocrisy and obsession with deference, while warning them not to be complacent about gender equality.

Several times, she refers to reading Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique as an important turning point for her, because it led her to realise that she was not alone. Mann had a happy marriage and loved her young children, but she was also bored and frustrated, and felt that there must be "something more" out there for her to get involved in and challenge herself. I've been reading The Feminine Mystique this year, and while I don't agree with all Friedan's assertions and see the limitations of the book, it's fascinating as a book that really hits you with just why the women's liberation movement was so angry. It's a bit fashionable these days to sneer and smirk at those ranting second wavers, and for the more conservative critics of feminism to disapprove of their unbecoming behaviour, their supposed desire to do away with "the family" and their imagined anti-children stance. Maybe fewer people would sneer if they read through some of the quotes I ended up highlighting as I read the book.

Mann is correct in saying that things today have changed to the extent that there are obviously a lot of things that many people take for granted, things that don't figure in their nostalgia for the post-war years. Ignorance and complete shame about sex and bodily functions would be one of them - from anatomical terminology to the female orgasm to contraception, Mann describes the weirdness of being totally in the dark about it all - from the antenatal classes that would start with a discussion on "How did baby get there?", to a problem page in a women's magazine that featured a letter from a mother of four asking how she could prevent having any more children. The printed answer was that she should send a stamped addressed envelope to the magazine to receive a personal response - the point being, of course, that it would have been beyond the pale for the magazine to print advice about contraception.

Another of these things that has changed beyond recognition is the position of women in public life and in the workplace. While it's obviously not ideal even now, we've moved beyond the "good old days" when women didn't have a place in public life, and a job was something you did to keep you occupied until you got married, and many jobs were simply out of bounds. Mann remembers applying for jobs and being told "Certainly not - we don't take women". She remembers never learning about the achievements of women in history at school, the uncomfortable attitudes that still faced women who went to university and took their studies seriously. The issue of women and education is something that Friedan looked at extensively in her book, and I don't think I'll forget how completely miserable I felt reading through the descriptions of accepted thinking on women and learning from the time.

Being "too bright" was supposedly a hindrance, as was wanting to "compete with men" in terms of having a job and being able to manage money. A girl who "got serious" about her studies would be "peculiar, unfeminine", while young women undergraduates told Friedan that it was most important to them to "graduate with a diamond ring on your finger" and to not be "too educated" because that wasn't what men wanted. Personal ambition for the middle class woman acceptably extended to a husband with a good job, a lovely house and a brood of beautiful children. There was little sense of sisterhood among most women because they were set up to be in constant competition for a man. It hadn't always been like this - both Friedan and Mann contrast the 1950s glorification of the housewife with the "new woman" heroines of magazines in the 1930s and 1940s, and focus on its relationship with consumerism and post-war backlash. The women of the 30s and 40s were described in terms of their dreams and ambitions. Romance was often a factor in their lives, but they were portrayed as being adventurous, being involved in a variety of jobs, being pioneers and standing up for their beliefs.

By the 1950s, dreams and ambitions were described in terms of the happiness brought by a new pair of curtains or a kitchen appliance; fulfillment was a compliment bestowed by a husband following the purchase of the latest shade of hair dye; feeling depressed was solved by deciding to have another baby. Ultimate joy was realising that you were best off in your role as the "little woman", who didn't tax herself by attempting to go back to college or understand the family finances. I think you'd be hard pressed to find many women today who could identify with any of that, despite the media's insistence on wheeling out panic pieces entitled "Do men REALLY want an intelligent woman?" or "Men: still threatened by successful women" every so often.

More alien to most women today (whether it's a feature of their own lives or not) would be the concept of having no personal ambition, no sense of self, no right to want time alone or time for personal development. Mann highlights the more open, confessional, talk-about-everything culture of the 21st century, and this is often particularly evident in the books, websites and self-help articles that encourage us to get the job we really want, achieve the goals we're really passionate about, take up new interests, have a career change, sort out our relationships, find ourselves. Mann remembers how talking about feelings, or expressing discontent with your lot in life was simply not done, particularly if that involved feeling miserable about being a housewife and mother. And gender equality was old hat, the preserve of terrifying yet slightly comical 1930s spinsters in tweed suits.

By the end of The Fifties Mystique, Mann has dealt engagingly with her own early years as an evacuee, schoolgirl, student, young wife, mother and finally, a woman looking for "more". She turns her efforts to encouraging today's women not to look at inequality and their dissatisfaction and see turning back the clock as the answer, but to look towards the problematic issues of the 21st century that are causing it instead. She mentions the stressful long hours culture of work today, the still-elusive dream of shared parenting and equality in relationships, the admonitions that we "can't have it all" that discourage women and fuel judgmental attitudes, the "old-fashioned sexism" of biological determinism (quoting Natasha Walter's excellent Living Dolls), the one-sided and exploitative approach to women's sexuality and appearance, and the fact that as during the 1950s, mothers are still to blame for everything.

"The history of women in the last one hundred and fifty years could be described as two steps forward, one step back, as when they took useful roles during the Second World War and were herded back to domesticity afterwards. Those who take hard-won rights for granted and have choices and chances once undreamed of, should recognise that the price of women's liberation is eternal vigilance," she writes.

In her article for the Guardian, Mann writes about her daughter's complaint that today, not working outside the home and enjoying motherhood is looked upon with scorn. What I see is the wider issue that most of our choices, as women, are looked upon with scorn. To work, or stay at home. Have a "career", or a "job". Have children when we're 20, or when we're 30. Send them to nursery while we work, or spend all our time with them. Pursue personal interests, or have none. Be open about enjoying sex, or be open about having issues with it. Society sets us up to judge the choices of others, creating "wars" and "catfights" rather than encouraging us to press for change. And it is this that often prevents us from seeing the bigger picture, so keen are we to assert the validity of whatever choices we've made.