3 After the War

When news of the armistice reached Great Britain in November 1918, the predominant desire was to return to normality as soon as possible. After four years of war, however, the renaissance of the perceived comfort of the Edwardian era was bound to fail. The destruction of men (9% of the male population between the ages of 20 and 45 had been killed, and twice as many wounded) and material had wrought changes in the social and political structure of Great Britain that were impossible to reverse. Anyone born between 1900 and 1910 was exposed to the destructive influence of war at an age when circumstances are most formative; a generation had grown up that knew little or had forgotten most about stable peace. Air raids, rations, veterans who lost limbs or lungs, war propaganda, corpses of boys returning from the trenches, had shaped the image of these people's world. Patriotism, though strong throughout the war and well after, was not blind anymore, and feelings were mixed as to the price a nation and its individuals had to pay for it. 1914 and 1918 had ceased being mere dates; they had the word 'before' and 'after' attached to them that marked the incision between eras.

On the other hand, the urgency to return to the status quo was strong and influential enough to impede the flow of changes that the war had started or at least furthered. By the end of the war, the Labour Party, and therefore its aims, had so much risen in influence that the government was a coalition of Labour, Conservative and Liberal party^[1]. Trade Union membership expanded, with 45% of those eligible for membership being unionised in 1920.^[2] Its successes before the war and its co-operation with the government during the war stabilised the Unions' influence. While taxes were raised to cover the budget necessary to transfer Great Britain from war to peace, real wage earnings rose steadily until 1922^[3]. At the same time, mechanisation and mass production routinised industrial labour, a process started during the war when the enormous demands for war-related products induced the industry to maximise efficiency. Even though this meant the slow decline of individual craftswork, the concentration of labour in factories also enabled greater organisation in Unions.^[4]

Despite the upheaval that the turmoils of the First World War caused, society was loath to change; quite on the contrary, there was a strong desire to rewind the clock to the allegedly blessed times of the Edwardian era. The class system was still rigidly in place, and although the importance of aristocracy diminished in favour of businesspeople, a title was still the highest aim one could strive for. The gentry had always relied on land to elevate their status, but the 1920s saw the peak of what begun in the 19th century with the land depression: ownership of land and estates no longer secured the wealth that the aristocracy depended on, it became a downright liability. Yet titled persons still held a large proportion of government offices, and the 'top' professions were filled with people from aristocratic background. However, distinctions became blurred. The upper and lower middle-classes expected to be able to aim for positions formerly monopolised by the aristocracy, and a white-collar job came within range of every enterprising working-class person. Generally speaking, the middle-class and its sub-divisions were on their way to expansion and success. The elite was no longer recruited on the grounds of a title alone; money and the appropriate education, which in turn became more widely available, became the most influential, sometimes the only decisive factors for an ambitious career.^[5]

The situation of women after the war deteriorated again; an anti-feminist reaction set in, fuelled by the demobilisation of men who flooded back into the labour market. Women were no longer needed to secure the economic stability on the home front, and tendencies to send women back to being full-time mothers and wives, never altogether extinct during the war, returned in full force. Working women were once again a serious threat to male employment, their financial and social independence was frowned upon. A strong propaganda machine was set into motion to recapture pre-war male domination and separation of spheres. Working women became associated with moral and sexual laxness, irresponsibility and un-'femininity'. Even though studies during the war had shown that gainful employment outside the home was advantageous to the health of both women and their children as financial stability provided better nourishment, and self-respect underscored mental tranquillity^[6], the argument was resuscitated that working mothers neglected their families and endangered the future of the nation. The term 'flapper' was coined by the media and used to denote the prototype of the giddy, irresponsible, morally loose working 'girl'.

Here again, the situation differs depending on the social background; working-class women, whose participation in the labour market had always been taken for granted suffered less from society's sudden return to pre-war values. Although the opportunities available for them in the factories were reduced, there were almost no comments on their continued presence in the lower-paid industrial jobs. The derision for 'flappers' was mainly aimed at middle-class women who flocked into clerical occupations; their chances of prestigious, interesting and well-paid work were slim as well, and additionally they were the target of society's scornful attitudes.

The granting of women's partial suffrage in 1918 is not necessarily contradictory to the anti-feminist reaction. On the one hand, the Representation of People Act gave the vote only to women over the age of 30, when most women were expected to be married, responsible mothers, and on the other hand, it was closely linked to the electoral rights of their husbands. The bill enfranchised about eight and a half million women, or 36.9% of the total 21.4 million electors.^[7] With a ratio of 12 women for every ten men, the denial of full suffrage ensured that women's political muscle would not overpower male structures. The standard woman who was given the vote was "[...] likely to be married, to have children and to have no lasting interest in employment or a career. In short she appeared to be a stable element in a changing world, one who was unlikely to seek to promote radical, feminist issues in parliament if enfranchised." These women's "[...] inclusion within the political system would tend to strengthen rather than destabilise it."^[8] If there remained a residue risk, it was finely calculated.

The Representation of People Act and the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 only partly removed sex inequality, and it was greeted with less than enthusiasm by feminists. The National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, NUSEC, formerly NUWSS, was hopeful but far from satisfied, and kept equal pay, equal franchise, equal guardianship over children and equal access to the professions and the civil service on their agenda.^[9] Both Acts helped to satisfy the majority of Britons who were agreeable, in a very general way, to the move for equal citizenship while those who tried to keep women in their 'proper' places did not stand much to loose.

It is worth elaborating that there is a difference between emancipation and suffrage; while both are results of the same overall feminist movement, they are, to a certain extent, separable in the context of the early 1920s. The parliamentary advances were almost entirely independent from the backlash on the labour market, or rather, one softened the blow of the other. The total numbers of women working outside the home remained relatively stable throughout an extended period of time. Between 1911 and 1931, around 30% of the workforce were women. What changed quite dramatically after the war were the areas of employment; with higher education available in almost all universities, the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act opened some of the professions to a slightly higher percentage of women. After the war, more than twice as many women were occupied in clerical jobs compared to pre-war figures. On the other hand, women working in teaching or nursing and women factory employees were reduced in numbers.^[10] Apart from the numerical shift within occupational areas, however, the most striking disparity between men and women was the character of female employment. Not only did they earn an average of below 50 per cent compared to men's wages, they were largely excluded from occupations that involved career opportunities. During the war, industrial and non-industrial promotion was possible whenever the position had been vacated by a man enlisting in the armed forces. After the war, these higher positions were regained by male employees, and women were again relegated to menial tasks. Despite the legal advances for women, equality was still further away even than it is today.

The feminist movement in the 1920s faced a partial victory that made its leaders look towards wider goals; while "[...] feminists for whom the vote was essentially symbolic grew complacent, thinking the struggle for women's emancipation over but for details"^[11], for many it was still obvious how much was lacking. With roughly eight million women entitled to vote and the opening of Parliament to women, one way to achieve the goals of sex equality was through political instruments. The militant tradition of the WSPU became obsolete with the advents of certain, limited political rights, and the parliamentary course of NUSEC and the Women's Citizen Association (WCA) seemed more promising. There remained the problem of defining the exact goals of the women's movement after the war; as always, women's needs and aims were as heterogeneous as each individual's situation, and while the issues themselves were fairly undisputed, the weight of each point was open to debate. To avoid schisms along the lines of priorities which would have weakened the organisations, parts of the feminist movement abandoned its non-party policy and tied its cause to one of the three major political parties, according to their supportiveness; other feminists used the new electoral rights to nominate independent candidates, with limited success. All in all it seemed more feasible, though not necessarily easier, to gather the different aspects of the feminist movement under the umbrella of a political party, and since a women-only party was unlikely to be successful, only the established parties remained. Their support was less than enthusiastic, and with the integration into larger political agendas, however inescapable, the struggle for emancipation lost a lot of its momentum.^[12]

Furthermore, the women whose welfare was the supposed aim of the feminist movement were far from unified; neither the combined effort on the home front during the war nor the acquisition of partial suffrage could mend the largest split, the class barrier. The class distinction in the factories during the war, where middle-class women supervised working-class women, was, contrary to official proclamations, firmly in place, and the Representation of People Act did nothing to alleviate the difference. Thus the loyalties of women were much more firmly based along the boundaries of class than on the boundaries of gender.

"Subject to the discipline by middle-class welfare supervisors, the control and authority of the women police, the out-of-hours interference by women patrols and the proximity of a handful of members of the privileged middle and upper class at work on the factory floor, the class identity of women was confirmed on all sides during the war. In the postwar world, with women over 30 newly enfranchised as voting citizens, women's political allegiances were even more important than before the war. [...] In the politically polarized atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s, class identity overwhelmed any gender bonding among women of different classes."^[13]

In addition to obstacles interfering from the outside, then, women's way to emancipation was also encumbered by frictions within the movement, its participants and beneficiaries. The obvious heterogeneity of a group exclusively defined on the basis of gender (which, after all, comprised more than 50 per cent of the whole population) was difficult to reconcile and also probably often neglected.

On the whole, however, the feminist movement gained further ground in the inter-war period, a trend already apparent in the first few years after the war. This progress was possible despite the official nods towards equality between the sexes rather than because of them, but the movement's rebuffs did not outweigh its successes. The machinery, once set in motion, acquired a certain amount of self-perpetuating energy, and after attaining something approaching equal citizenship, other achievements were bound to follow. The women's movement has a long tradition of successes and backlashes, but on the whole, its history is one of constant progress.

"Whether in science and technology, in politics and industrial relations, [...] in diplomacy and foreign policy, or in matters such as social welfare and education, the contrasts between the Edwardian age and the post-war were smaller than the similarities; war accelerated what was already in train. [...] None the less, change was to be seen in almost every aspect of live within this period [...]. Over the whole period continuity is at least as marked as change; changes were gradual, and large only when their cumulative weight was seen in retrospect."^[14]

The First World War had brought political and social changes that advanced the women's movement to a new level. Most importantly, however, it had a significant impact on women's mental make-up; they had become conscious of their abilities to perform almost any given task as well as men could, and this knowledge was hard to curb, though its suppression was, and is, tried over and over again.

4 Embedment

These actual and psychological developments, then, constitute the first factor that enabled women to gain entrance into a literary field that had been previously dominated exclusively by men. The socio-historical situation of women in Britain after the war differed significantly from conditions before the war, as almost all sectors of public life were penetrated by a large number of women who were formerly considered incapable of performing 'male' jobs. I suggest that detective fiction was just one male-dominated sphere that now lost its exclusively male nature. Additionally, women had an advantage here inasmuch as writing, particularly the writing of novels, had a long and strong female tradition. Female novelists had stood their ground for more than a 100 years before the emergence of the female detective novelist, so that any woman aspiring to write detective fiction could pervade the genre from the firm basis of an established and accepted form.

^[1] Mowat, C.L. 'History: Political and Diplomatic' in Cox, C.B. and A.E. Dyson (eds.) The Twentieth Century Mind: History, Ideas and Literature in Britain Vol. II 1918-1945, Oxford, 1972, pp. 1-25, p. 3

^[2] Stevenson, John British Society 1914-1945, London, 1984, p. 195

^[3] ibid., p. 117

^[4] ibid., p. 187

^[5] ibid., pp.330

^[6] cf. Woollacott, op. cit., Chapter 3

^[7] Pugh, op. cit., p. 34

^[8] ibid., p. 42

^[9] ibid., p. 51

^[10] cf. ibid., p. 91

^[11] ibid., p.43

^[12] cf. ibid., Chapter 3

^[13] Woollacott, op. cit., pp. 186

^[14] Mowat in Cox II, p. 2