The Meanings of Home in Postwar Britain
Author(s): Claire Langhamer
Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 40, No. 2, Domestic Dreamworlds: Notions of
Home in Post-1945 Europe (Apr., 2005), pp. 341-362
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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c 2005 SAGEPublications,
London,ThousandOaks,CAand
of Contemporary
History
Copyright
Journal
New Delhi,Vol40(2),341-362. ISSN0022-0094.
DOI:10. 177/002200940505
1556
ClaireLanghamer
The Meanings of Home in Postwar Britain
In November1959 the Britishsocial scientistMark Abramsused the pages of
The Listenerto draw attentionto an apparentlynew postwardevelopment:
... for the first time in modern British history the working-class home, as well as the middleclass home, has become a place that is warm, comfortable, and able to provide its own
fireside entertainment - in fact, pleasant to live in. The outcome is a working-class way of
life which is decreasingly concerned with activities outside the house or with values wider
than those of the family.'
This 'home-centredsociety', founded on cross-classaffluence,was described
as exhibitinga numberof novel features,includingre-workedgenderroles (the
'domesticatedhusband'and 'chooser and spender'wife) and family-focused
leisure. In effect, it was claimed that the years immediatelyfollowing the
second world war witnessedthe triumphof a comfortable,consumer-bound
and increasinglyprivatizeddomesticlifestyleaccessibleto all.
A businessmanas well as researcher,Abrams'scommitmentto consumer
research saw him implicitly promoting lifestyles founded on consumerism:
certainlythe veracityof his findingson youth spendingpatternshas beenchallenged by recentwork.2However, Abramswas not alone in identifyingthe
increasingdomesticationof postwarBritishsocietyas a centraland distinctive
development.GrahamCrow has arguedthat:
It is ... in this period that the modern domestic ideal of an affluent nuclear family living in a
home of their own and enjoying the benefits of leisurely home life took shape, with emphasis
placed on the privacy of the individual household rather than the wider community.3
In a more overtlycriticalvein, LynneSegaldescribesthe 'tensedomesticityand
anxious conformityof the fifties,when a seeminglyendlessand all-embracing
consensus held sway throughout almost every Western nation'.4 James
Obelkevichnotes simplythat 'the one post-wartrendthat standsout above all
the rest is the growing significanceof the home'.sIn Britain,as elsewherein
I would like to thank the editors of this special issue, the JCH referees, Alex Shepard and Nick
Hayes for their very helpful comments on this article.
1 M. Abrams, 'The Home-centred Society', The Listener, 26 November 1959, 914-15.
2 B. Osgerby, Youth in Britain since 1945 (Oxford 1998), 24-6.
3 G. Crow, 'The Post-war Development of the Modern Domestic Ideal' in G. Allan and G. Crow
(eds), Home and Family. Creating the Domestic Sphere (Basingstoke 1989), 20.
4 L. Segal, Straight Sex. The Politics of Pleasure (London 1994), 4.
5 J. Obelkevich and P. Catterall, Understanding Postwar British Society (London 1994), 144.
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342
Journalof ContemporaryHistoryVol 40 No 2
Europe,the modernhome and its inhabitantswere representedas the symbolic, and actual,centreof postwarreconstruction.
The centralaim of this articleis to explore the meaningsof 'home' in postwar Britain:how was home situatedin publicdiscourseandwhat was the relationshipbetweenpublicperception,individualdesireand materialreality?The
articlewill considerthe extentto which the Britishhomewas re-madein these
years, asking whetherdomesticity1950s-stylewas distinctfrom the modern
domesticitythat a numberof historianshave identifiedin the 1930s,6 consideringwhethergenderroles were differentlyconfiguredin the Cold War era
and exploringthe degreeof penetrationachievedby the home-centredmodel.
The articledrawsupon life historysourcesand social surveymaterialsthat
allow access to subjectiveunderstandingsof 'home'. In particularit employs
evidencecollected by the pioneeringBritishsocial investigativeorganization,
Mass-Observation.Mass-Observationwas established in 1937, with the
avowed aim of constructing'an anthropologyof everydaylives', generating
materialinto the 1950s. Its approachwas eclecticbut includedobservational
research, the solicitation of diaries and the collection of responses to a
monthly 'directive',a seriesof open-endedquestionson particulartopics sent
by the organizationto a panel of volunteers.In 1981 the directivesystemwas
revivedand a 'new'and ongoingMass-ObservationArchivewas created.In its
totality, Mass-Observationoffers 'an interminableattention to the daily'.7
This researchdraws upon 'old' and 'new' Mass-Observationto explore both
historically-sitedmeanings of home and recently-solicitedmemories of the
postwarperiod.8
As a numberof studieshave ably demonstrated,attentionto 'home' allows
for interventionin a numberof debatesaroundthe natureof social changein
the middleyears of twentieth-centuryBritain.9Significantsocial, culturaland
economic developmentssuch as changes in the nature of 'work' and technology;demographicand emotionalshifts;risingstandardsof living and postwar patternsof immigrationall informed,and were informedby, the nature
and status of the Britishhome.10This articlewill show that there was much
that was new in the postwar Britishhome: the impact of war and a changed
economiccontext wieldeda majorinfluenceboth materiallyand discursively.
Yet the new was sometimesnot quite that new. In a numberof ways it was
dreamsand aspirationsfirst formulatedin the 1930s which were realizedin
6 For a review of the field see A. Bingham, 'An Era of Domesticity? Histories of Women and
Gender in Interwar Britain', Cultural and Social History, 1, 2 (2004), 225-33.
7 B. Highmore, Everyday Life and Cultural Theory. An Introduction (London 2002), 75.
8 For more on Mass-Observation see D. Sheridan, B. Street and D. Bloome, Writing Ourselves.
Mass-Observation and Literary Practices (Cresskill, NJ 2000).
9 See, for example, W. Webster, Imagining Home: Gender, 'Race' and National Identity,
1945-64 (London 1998); J. Giles, Women, Identity and Private Life in Britain, 1900-50
(Basingstoke 1995); A. Light, Forever England. Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between
the Wars (London 1991).
10 This article does not directly address the relationship between postwar migration and meanings of home. For a comprehensive study of this area see Webster, op. cit.
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LanghamerTheMeaningsof Home in PostwarBritain
343
the 1950s. More specifically, pre-existing demographic trends framed and
fuelled the desire for, and possibility of, a more home-centred way of life,
whilst 'modern' domesticity pre-dated the end of the war. Furthermore, if one
legacy of the 1930s was the desire for a modern home, another was the impossibility, for some, of attaining it. Even at the end of the 1950s significant
sections of the British population remained excluded from the home-centred
society: housing need remained a crucial political issue. Fundamentally, then, a
focus upon the home, its significance, meanings and the lived experiences and
relationships within it allows us to explore the tension between past, present
and future within postwar Britain and encourages us to see the 1950s as 'a
period of instability rather than unthinking smug conventionality'."
In October 1942 Mass-Observation asked its panel of largely, but not exclusively, middle-class volunteer contributors the question: 'What does "home"
mean to you?'12Responses suggested that 'the majority of people, men and
women equally, consider their home of great importance, and many regard it
as the centre of their life'.13It is not, perhaps, surprising that at the height of
war, individual men and women looked to 'home' as a centring value in their
lives. As Leora Auslander demonstrates in her article in this issue, the loss, or
potential loss, of home has symbolic as well as material consequences. For
example, one male respondent observed that:
Home means being on leave, and the complete relaxation that means. Leisure, quiet, privacy,
courtesy, relative luxury and comfort, forgetfulness of the army and all idiocy and petty
oppression, muddle, hurry and noise and squalor and discomfort, anxiety and worry.... I
never appreciated home before the war so much as I do now.'4
For women, too, the circumstances of wartime intensified a longing for
home, as this woman's response indicates: 'Home means to me a place of my
own where I can have my own things and be on my own and invite my own
friends. In fact, the antithesis of a billet.''"For these and other respondents the
experience of war enhanced the significance of home: fantasies of 'home', at a
number of different levels, provided a counterpoint to, and explanation for,
war itself.
Yet elsewhere, the ways in which the panel articulated their attachment to
home suggests a simultaneous 'looking backwards' and 'looking forwards' a pivot between a home life experienced by some but desired by many in the
1930s, and the material reality of the 1950s experience where some, though
not all, of those dreams were realized. Chief among the meanings ascribed to
11 L. Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880 (Basingstoke 2000), 166.
12 Mass-Observation Archive (hereafter M-OA), Directive Replies (hereafter DR), October
1942, 'Home'.
13 M-OA File Report (hereafter FR) 1616, 3 March 1943, unpaginated.
14 M-OA FR 1616, 2.
15 M-OA FR 1616, 8.
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344
of Contemporary
Journal
HistoryVol40 No 2
homeby the 1942 directiverespondents
werethoseof 'relaxation,freedom
andcomfort'.As one45-year-old
womanteacherputit:
Home meansto me, warmth,shelterand peace,a placewhereI can be myself,to relaxwhen
necessary,to havemy own possessionsnearme and to use themwhen I wish:a placewhere
I can work at my own speedandnot keepto a time-tableas I haveto usually- or not work
at all; a place whereI can choose my own radio music,keep my own books, picturesand
aroundfora change,andtheplacewhereI canfeelsafe."
flowers,andmovefurniture
An associationof homewitha privatized,
to both
familylifewasimportant
menandwomen.Foroneman,homewas 'theplacewhereoneis in thecompany of the personor people whom one loves best'. A femalepanellist
observedthat:'Youneverrealizewhat homemeansto you untilyou have
foundedone yourselfandcreateda familyof yourown. To us it meansall,
whilstanotherstatedthat:'Homemeans
security,happiness,comradeship',
thespotwhereI cankeepmyfamilysafeandsheltered
andprivate.'7
Whilsthomeas a placeof relaxation,freedom,peaceand privacywas a
centralmotif,homeas the locationfor personalartefacts,a placeassociated
withactualphysicalcomfortanda psychicspacewithinwhichto establishand
developpersonalandfamilyidentitieswerealso significantfactors.Forone
manhomemeant'a lovingwife,aneasychair,a comfortable
bed,a realcupof
in viewof
coffee,a goodwirelessset,a numberof books...'.18Unsurprisingly
its statusas a workplace,as well as a livingspace,morewomenthanmen
thephysicalenvironment
of homeas a significant
factor.AsMasshighlighted
Observationnoted,'It mattersmoreto the ordinarywomanthat her home
shouldbe aesthetically
thatit shouldbe lightandpracticalto run.'9
furnished,
Incontrast,morementhanwomendefinedhomeas 'thepivotof theirlife'.As
fromYeovilputit:
a 39-year-old
... [homemeans]practicallyeverything.It'smightyfineto comehomeaftera long dayto see
the wife and hearthe kids. To havea tea which alwaysis aboveminimumrequirementsand
then,in summer,to pokearoundin thegarden,in winterto sit on top of thefire,to reador fall
asleep.2'
Thesegenderdifferencesin the meaningof homereflectboth the different
rolesplayedby menandwomenwithinthe homeandthe waysin whichthe
wasmediatedbygender.Itwas,nonetheless,
left
privateandpublicdistinction
to a femalepanellistto anticipatea centralthemeof postwardomesticlife in
Britainwhenshestatedthat:
I believeit is inthebuilding
Thissetting,the
upof homelifethatourfuturegreatness
depends.
solidarityin families,is stillthe bestidealof life;it is herethattheold, youngandmiddle-aged
get eachother'spointof view. A happyhomeand familylife is the bulwarkof a Nation.'
16
17
18
19
20
21
M-OA DR, October1942, 'Home'no. 1048.
M-OA FR 1616, 4-5.
M-OAFR 1616, 6.
M-OA FR 1616, 11.
M-OADR, October1942, 'Home'no. 2697.
M-OAFR 1616, 9.
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LanghamerTheMeaningsof Home in PostwarBritain
345
The view that 'a happyhome and familylife is the bulwarkof a Nation' might
indeed be taken as the blueprintfor postwarreconstructionin Britain.While
the BritishWelfareStateplacedfamilymaintenanceat its centre,explicitconcerns aroundpopulationdeclineand rates of marriagefailurewere evidentin
the setting-upof the Royal Commissionon Population (1945-49) and the
Reportinto Procedurein MatrimonialCauses(1946-49). Suchanxietieswere
closely linkedto the availabilityof suitablelocationswithin which familylife
could be re-establishedand safeguarded.In July 1945, PicturePost outlineda
plan to 'get the houses' needed in the postwar world.2 The article began
with a letter from an ex-servicemanwhich exemplifiesthe extent to which
aspirationsfor familylife were obstructedby the lack of actualhomes:
I am 27 years old and have just been discharged after 5 years in the Service. I intended getting
married in May, and settling down to start a family. For the last six months I have been
trying to find a house, a flat, anything, where we could live. But nothing doing. The best we
have been able to get so far, is our name on a never, never council list, an offer of a furnished
flat at four guineas a week, and a house, bomb damaged, at 1,500. All this out of my wages,
6 per week as a clerk, before deductions. Well, I have decided with my fianc6e that after
being engaged for three years, we are going to keep on being engaged till we get somewhere
to live. We don't want to live with her parents or mine. We have seen too many marriages go
wrong that way. And we aren't going to bring up our children, living in furnished rooms.
What's happened to the better Britain you promised us a couple of years ago? When we
needed guns, the government found them. When we needed planes, the Government found
them. We want houses. So what about it?
For PicturePost in 1945, the housingquestioncontinuedto be 'morethan a
personalproblem,it [was] a problemfor the nation'.
Certainly,the rebuildingof Britishhousing stock concernedpolicy-makers
from an early stage in the planning process: the devastation wrought by
wartimebombingensuredthat this was unavoidable.Moreover,the 'people's
war' rhetoricencourageda people'sparticipationin housingplanning.Beyond
the government-sponsoredDudley Committee, a number of other bodies
attemptedto discernthe housing preferencesof the Britishwith the aim of
influencingthe rebuildingof the nation. In its 1943 report,An Enquiryinto
People's Homes, Mass-Observationset itself the task of recordingviews on
postwar housingstatingthat: 'Howevercompressed,uninformedand contradictory the feelings and opinions of ordinary citizens may be, it is these
opinions which must eitherbe met or modifiedand led into new channelsby
planners.'23
Aswe willagainseewhenwe examineresponsesto theBritainCanMakeIt
exhibitionof 1946, the feelingsand opinionswhichpeoplebroughtto the
postwarhomehelpto accountforthelivelydialoguebetweenpastandpresent
values evident in the reconstructedhome. Although broadly satisfied with
theirpresentdomesticsituation,those surveyedby Mass-Observationin 1943
22 PicturePost, 28, 2, 14 July 1945, 16-17.
An Enquiryinto People'sHomes (London1943), 5.
23 Mass-Observation,
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346
Journalof ContemporaryHistoryVol 40 No 2
were quite willing to offer descriptionsof what the organizationexplicitly
describedas 'dreamhomes of the future':
On the whole, people (notably housewives) are very long-suffering as far as their housing
conditions are concerned, and are inclined to put up with much. At the same time, they are
quite capable of envisaging the sort of home they like. They are ready to help the planners
and architects to build it for them.24
In fact, 49 per cent of those surveyedwould ideallyhavelikedto live in a small
house with a garden;10 per cent wanted to live in a bungalow (a finding
which surprisedthe survey-makers)and flats were by far the most unpopular
of housing types.2 Other wartime studies produced similar conclusions.26
Privacy,self-containmentand plenty of labour-savingdeviceswere centralto
these visions of the future.
'Dreamhomes'were not, of course,simplybuildings.'Home'is a fluid concept, open to multiplemeanings:a house is not necessarilya home.As outlined
by Richard Hoggart in his semi-autobiographicalaccount of working-class
culture,the 'good' working-classhome boastedwarmthand a 'good table'by which was meant the full provision of tasty, not necessarilywholesome
food.27ForHoggart,homewas, and had long been,the centreof working-class
life. As he explained:'Wherealmost everythingelse is ruled from outside, is
chancy and likely to knock you down when you least expect it, the home is
yours and real:the warmestwelcomeis still "Meky'self at 'ome".'28
One 1950s study of working-classlife in a Yorkshiremining community
found that cosiness, 'a combinationof warmth and comfort', was the most
importantquality of the 'ideal' home, followed by tidinessand cleanliness.29
The emphasisupon a cosy home life representedthe persistenceof past meanings of home; the ability to maintainhigher standardsof cleanlinessrepresenteda materialpostwargain. This mixingof old and new meaningsof home
was also evidentin the working-classcommunitysurveyedby MadelaineKerr
in the first five yearsof the 1950s when she observedthat:
In homes, the new things are absorbed into the kind of whole instinctively reached after. The
old tradition is being encroached upon, here as in so many other areas. But the strong sense
of the importance of home ensures that change is taken slowly.30
Certainly,for the people of Ship Street,Liverpool,the home was simply too
highly valued to allow wholesale,rapidchange.Home was an all-consuming
24 Ibid., xxiv.
25 Ibid., xxiii.
26 M. Clapson, 'The Suburban Aspiration in England since 1919', Contemporary British
History, 14, 1 (2000), 156.
27 R. Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (1957, London 1992), 37.
28 Ibid., 34.
29 N. Dennis, F. Henriques and C. Slaughter, Coal is our Life. An Analysis of a Yorkshire
Mining Community (1956, London 1969), 179.
30 M. Kerr, The People of Ship Street (London 1958), 40.
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TheMeanings
Britain
of HomeinPostwar
Langhamer
347
and constantfactor:'The Ship-Streeter's
pivot is his home. He is born,nursed,
for
when
and
cared
sick,
broughtup,
eventuallydies, underthe supervisionof
the Mum.'3
Neither cosinessnor the wider negotiationbetweenold and new were evident amongst working-classhome-makersalone. The middle classes could
demonstratea similarcommitmentto domesticwarmthand this is particularly evident in responses gathered by Mass-Observationin its study of the
autumn1946 BritainCan Make It exhibition.32
Designedas a morale-boosting
indicationof Britain'smanufacturingpotential,BritainCan Make It included
amongstits attractionsnumerousdomesticgoods includingfurniture,furnishings and fabrics,ceramicsand domesticappliancesas well as furnishedrooms.
The overall effect was to present an optimisticvision of the well-designed,
if not readilyavailable,Britishhome. And yet, 'good' design did not always
solicit popularapproval.As one housewifemarriedto an engineertold MassObservation'sresearchers:'I don't like the ultra-moderndesigns - I like
what's cosy and neat.'33Anotherwoman claimedupon leavingthe exhibition
that: 'My tasteshaven'tbeen changedfor the simple reasonthat I have got a
cosy and comfortablehome, as nice as any I have seen.'34Furthermore,MassObservationfoundthat the terms'modern'and 'old-fashioned'were deployed
by visitors to the exhibition with variablequalitativemeaningsattachedto
them:'Theycan both be anythingfromhigh praiseto derision.'3Old and new
were not staticconceptswithin the context of home life: the old could be as
valued as the new within the postwarworld.
Certainly a cross-class dream of attaining a 'home of one's own' was
not new to the postwar period:it had a persuasiveappeal for middle- and
working-classmen and women able to rent or buy homes beyond the slum
conditionsof innercity life in the yearsup to the secondworld war as well as
In the yearsbeforeand afterthe war, this dreambecamea realityfor
beyond.36
ever-growingnumbers.Fourmillionnew homeswere builtduringthe interwar
period,of which 1.5 millionwere state-aided:the postwarLabourgovernment
presidedover the buildingof 900,000 new houses and by 1957 2.5 million
flats and homes had been constructed,the majority by local authorities.37
Large-scaleslum clearance schemes and the development of new estates
31 Ibid., 38-9.
32 Mass-Observation employed 15 field investigators to conduct 2523 direct and informal
interviews to ascertain knowledge about and reactions to the Exhibition. For a helpful collection
of essays on the Britain Can Make It exhibition see P.J. Maguire and J.M. Woodham (eds), Design
and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain. The Britain Can Make It Exhibition of 1946 (Leicester
1997).
33 M-OA, FR 2441, '"Britain Can Make It" Exhibition', 26 November 1946, Section B, 13.
34 Ibid., 22.
35 Ibid., 13.
36 J. Giles, 'A Home of One's Own. Women and Domesticity in England 1918-1950',
Women's Studies International Forum, 16, 3 (1993), 239-53.
37 J. Burnett, A Social History of Housing 1815-1985 (London 1986), 249, 286.
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348
Journalof ContemporaryHistoryVol 40 No 2
actively changed both the physical environmentof home and the meanings
investedin home and communitylife.
In the postwarperiod the politicalmeaningsof housing becameever more
significantand it was consistentlycentralto political debate throughoutthe
1940s and 1950s. The protractednatureof the second world war, the social
dislocation effected by large-scaleevacuationschemesand the geographical
mobility of civilianwar-workers,as well as servicemenand women, fostered
both an intensifiedromancewith home life as well as pressingpracticalneeds
which demandedpoliticalsolutions.The V-1 and V-2 attacksof 1944-45, for
example, damaged or destroyed nearly one-and-a-half million houses.38
Indeed,one recentstudysuggeststhat the failureto providehomescontributed
significantlyto Churchill'selectoraldefeatin 1945.39Writingin PicturePost in
November 1945, the MP BarbaraCastle outlined the nature of 'operation
housing' by explicitly using war imagery and vocabulary.40Later in that
decade optimisticaccounts of wartime reconstructionfound their way onto
the pages of the same publication.For example, in January1949 under the
headline 'Housing: London shows the way', the rebuildingof Stepneywas
held up as a model of the transformativepower of planning:
Manyof theseflatscontainfourrooms,a utilityroom,a dryingbalcony,a sun balcony,and
a boilerin the kitchento providedomestichot water,or elsegas or electricwater-heaters.All
living rooms will have open fires. What a contrast to the rooms pictured by Charles
Dickens!41
Nonetheless,a public opinion surveyof the same year found that the Labour
government'ssecondmost outstandingfailurewas being'too slow with housing'.42
The differencethat new housing provision could make to the quality of
familylife was considerable,even wherethe actualgains appearquite modest.
For example, one oral history interviewee,who marriedduringthe war and
lived with her motheruntil the birthof her second son in 1947, describedthe
delightshe felt upon movinginto a postwarprefabricatedhouse:
We thoughtthat was lovely, houses havingbathrooms,you know. You had a tin bath in
the yardand it came in front of the fire on Fridaymight.You had your bath in there.Told
everybodyelse to clearout while you had your bath. But the prefabhad a bathroom,and a
fridge.So we werewell off then.And a garden.43
38 GeraldineAnn Robinson, 'An Investigationinto the EmergencyFactory-madeHouse of
1944', DPhilthesis,Universityof Sussex(2003), 489.
39 Ibid.,513.
40
Picture Post, 29, 7, 17 November 1945, 10-11.
41 PicturePost, 42, 4, 22 January1949, 7-8.
42
Picture Post, 44, 6, 6 August 1949, 34-5.
43 Interviewwith Hannah,a working-classwomanbornin 1916 who marriedin 1942 andwas
a postwarhousewife.These oral historyinterviewswere conductedin 1994 as part of a wider
projecton women'sleisurein twentieth-century
England.For more detailsof the interviewpractice see C. Langhamer, Women's Leisure in England, 1920-1960 (Manchester 2000).
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LanghamerTheMeaningsof Home in PostwarBritain
349
Despite their wider emphasis upon a supposedly alienating loss of 'community'and social solidarityattendantupon the move from BethnalGreento
the LCC estate they fictitiouslycalled 'Greenleigh',"Young and Willmott's
mid-1950s study,Familyand Kinshipin East London, also found evidenceof
the clear materialgains presentedby postwarhousingprovision.'"When we
first came we were thrilled",said Mrs Lowrie,explainingthat their home in
BethnalGreenhad been so smallthat mealshad to be eaten in relays."Backin
BethnalGreenwe had mice in two rooms", said Mrs Sandeman."Afterthat
this seemedlike paradise."'c EvidencefromBirmingham,Salfordand Oxford
also emphasizesworking-classapprovalof postwar estate life and has been
used to contestYoung and Willmott'snegative,and influential,assessmentof
the new communities.46
And yet neither'mod-con'47
living nor the basic privacyof a home of one's
however
were
universal
defined,
own,
experiencesduring this period. 'Old'
in
sub-standard
housing, lack of basic amenities and,
problems persisted,
A widely-expresseddesireto
a
of
available
housing.48
fundamentally, shortage
re-establishmaritaland familylife in the yearsafterthe war, seen most clearly
in the postwar baby-boom which allayed population fears even before the
Royal Commissionon Populationhad reported,in realitysaw countlessyoung
couples compelledto live with theirparentsor otherrelatives.The continuing
strains that this created even at the end of the period consideredhere were
documentedby the PopulationInvestigationCommittee/GallupPoll surveyof
1959-61 that foundthat accessto housingwas the most frequentlyarticulated
concern amongmarriedcouples. Analysingthis data, RachelPiercenoted the
'disturbingfinding'that only a quarterof marriedcouples were able to begin
In their BethnalGreenstudy Young
their marriedlife living independently.49
and Willmottfound that:
In Bethnal Green few couples have much choice at the start of their marriage. They have to
find space under a roof belonging to someone else, and, since there is little enough of that,
they have to put up with what they can get. So it is not surprising that many couples begin
their married life in the parental home."0
In fact, nearlyhalf of the couplesthey surveyedlivedwith parentsimmediately
aftermarriage.Nonetheless,the fantasyof a 'homeof your own' was strongly
44 'Greenleigh'was actuallythe Debdenestatein SouthEssex.
45 M. Youngand P. Willmott,Familyand Kinshipin East London(1957, London1962), 127.
46 M. Clapson, 'The SuburbanAspirationin Englandsince 1919', ContemporaryBritish
History, 14, 1 (2000), 158-9. See also idem, InvincibleGreen Suburbs,Brave New Towns
(Manchester1998).
47 The term 'mod. con.' was first used in a housingadvertisementin Punchmagazineon 24
January1934, meaningany amenityor applianceregardedas typicalof a well-equippedmodern
home.
48 See, for example,'The Bestand Worstof BritishHousing',PicturePost, 62, 13, 27 March
1954, 37.
49 RachelM. Pierce,'Marriagein the Fifties',TheSociologicalReview(March1963), 233.
50 YoungandWillmott,op. cit., 31.
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350
Journalof ContemporaryHistoryVol 40 No 2
heldbyallmarriedcouples,'formostpeopleanythingelseis secondbest'.s1
An
assumedrelationship
betweenmaritalcontentment
and domesticlocationis
evidentin a 'truestoryof realpeople',whichappeared
in Womanmagazinein
1954. Entitled'The house that mendeda marriage',the story explained
whyJoyceandHenryHarriswere'thehappiestmarriedcouplein Britain'.5A
underthe pressureof livingwith parents
marriagewhichhad disintegrated
was revivedby the experienceof home-building,
chieflybecauseHenryhad
heldfirmto thebeliefthat:'Ifonlywe couldgetourownhouse,ourmarriage
wouldbe success.Therewasnothingwrongwithourlove.'5
Evenwherehomeswereavailable,theysometimesborelittleresemblance
to
the 'ideal'homespromotedby exhibitionsand domesticmagazines.Massthatindividualmen
Observation's
studyof BritainCanMakeIt demonstrates
and womenwereacutelyawareof this disjuncture
betweenmoderndesigns
andpracticalreality:'Nineout of ten peoplewouldlikeitemsthattheyhave
seen in the Exhibitionin theirown homes:yet less than half that number
believethattheywilleverhavethem.'s54
In hermid-1950sstudyof ShipStreet,
MadelaineKerrfoundthat:
severalroomsin a houseare out of use owingto damp,the ceilinghaving
Frequently,
collapsedandcausedgeneraldisrepair.Fewhouseshaveelectriclight.Most havegas, though
one or two still use oil lamps.Most, too, haveonly cold watertaps.In one case, waterhas to
be broughtfroma tap in the yard.The flats, beingnewer,are of coursebetterequippedand
most have bathrooms.5s
In anothernortherncity,Manchester,
the 1951 CensusReturnsdemonstrate
that41 percentof householdsdidnot haveexclusiveuseof a fixedbathand
only 56 per cent couldclaimexclusiveuse of pipedwater,cookingstove,
kitchensink, water closet and fixed bath."6By 1961 over a quarterof
Manchester
familieswerewithouttheuseof a fixedbathandnearlyone-fifth
werewithouttheuseof a hot watertap.S7
Thesefiguresprovideclearevidence
of the persistence
of pre-warconditionsandsuggestthatpostwardiscourses
of classlessnesshad little foundationin materialcircumstance.
As MassObservationhad notedbackin 1943, 'Whetheror not a housepossessesa
bathroomhas becomea majorsocialdividingline'.s"
Thistypeof distinction
continuedwell into the postwarworldwith,of course,fundamental
implicationsforthenatureof workwithinthehome.
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
Ibid.,33.
Woman,15 May 1954, 53.
Ibid.
M-OA,FR 2441, SectionB, 30. Emphasisin the original.
Kerr,op. cit., 27.
Censusof Englandand Wales1951, Countyof Lancashire,153.
Censusof Englandand Wales1961, CountyReport,Lancashire,393.
An Enquiryinto People'sHomes,op. cit., xiii.
Mass-Observation,
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LanghamerTheMeaningsof Home in PostwarBritain
35
While the materialityof some postwarhomes suggeststhat the home-centred
society achieved only partial penetration, a widely-expresseddesire for a
differenttype of home life certainlypre-datedthe 1950s. The most significant
manifestationof this desirewas a demographicshift towards smallerfamilies
and near universalmarriageat ever-youngerages. The first half of the century
witnesseda declinein the birth-rateof such rapiditythat the two-childfamily
was firmlyestablishedas a norm by the end of the interwaryears.The period
between 1930 and 1950 was also, as Pat Thanehas observed,'the goldenage,
indeedthe only age, of the near universal,stable,long-lastingmarriage,often
Both pheconsideredthe normalityfrom which we have since departed'.59
nomenawere key constituentsof what one historiandescribedin the 1980s as
the 'modernlife cycle'.60Both had significantimplicationsfor the natureand
meaning of home and offered the possibility of a more intimate home life
duringthe centralyearsof the century.The timingof these demographictrends
makes unsupportableclaimsthat the postwarperiodwitnessedeithera return
to 'traditional'patternsof familylife or the emergenceof entirelynew forms.
Yet when combinedwith rising affluence,a nation primedfor consumption
and the (eventual)availabilityof goods for purchase,they informedthe idea
and practiceof home life in postwarBritain,framingaspirations,familyrelationships, housingplans and demandfor homes. Perhapstheir most widelyperceivedimpact,however,was in encouragingthe rise of domesticprivacy.
A more privatizedhome life was both dreamand reality for middle-class,
and increasingnumbersof working-class,familiesprior to the second world
war. The Wythenshawecouncil housing developmentin 1930s Manchester
actively encourageda commitmentto privacy and an intense family-based
lifestyle:'Inmost oral evidencefromWythenshaweresidentsa favourablecontrast is drawnbetweenthe new estate,wherepeople kept themselvesto themselves, and the intrusiveoldercommunities.'61
Moreover,even withincrowded
working-classhousing, a premiumwas placed on the ability to mark out at
least some measureof privacywithin everydaylife.62These tendenciesgrew in
the yearsthat followed. Mass-Observationnoted in 1943 that:
The desire for privacy, for keeping oneself to oneself, is a powerful motive in modern society;
people wanted to be 'all on our own like', and liked to have their own street door. Whatever
people may think of their neighbours in the street or the people they meet shopping or going
down town, they definitely like to have their home to themselves.63
59 P. Thane, 'Family Life and "Normality" in Post-war British Culture' in R. Bessel and D.
Schumann (eds), Life After Death. Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during
the 1940s and 1950s (Cambridge 2003), 198.
60 M. Anderson, 'The Emergence of the Modern Life Cycle in Britain', Social History, 10, 1
(1985), 69-87.
61 A. Hughes and K. Hunt, 'A Culture Transformed? Women's Lives in Wythenshawe in the
1930s' in A. Davies and S. Fielding (eds), Workers' Worlds. Culture and Communities in
Manchester and Salford, 1880-1939 (Manchester 1992), 90.
62 M. Tebbutt, Women's Talk? A Social History of 'Gossip' in Working-class Neighbourhoods,
1880-1960 (Aldershot 1995).
63 Mass-Observation, An Enquiry into People's Homes, op. cit., 171.
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352
of Contemporary
Journal
HistoryVol40 No 2
Hoggart,referringto the yearseitherside of the war, suggestedthat:
The hearthis reservedfor the family,whetherlivingat home or nearby,and those who are
'somethingto us', and look in for a talk or justto sit. Muchof the freetime of a manand his
wife will usuallybe passedat that hearth;'just staying-in'is still one of the most common
leisure-timeoccupations."64
Moreover,as with otheraspectsof postwardomesticity,therewas a degreeof
instrumentalityin adoptingnew patternsof living while maintainingaspects
of the old. MelanieTebbutt,for example,rejectsa view of the new estatesof
both the 1930s and 1950s as necessarilyless 'social' than other patternsof
housing.6'One intervieweerecalleda real sense of 'community'on the new
estate where she lived in the 1950s: 'You could always depend on, if you
wanted any help there was always a neighbourwould help out with someIndeed,the very factorsthat are
thing. And it was a very close community.'66
often seen as integralto the home-centredsociety, such as private gardens,
could themselves inculcate a sense of community, as another interviewee
recalled:
We paid a shillinga week into a fund and we bought a lawnmowerthat was communal
propertyand a wheelbarrowand gardeningtools. And sharedthemout betweenus and sort
of dug one another'sgardensover,you know to get themdone quickly.67
In particular,mothersused child-relatedactivitiesto make social contactsand
in doing so maintainedrelationshipsoutsidethe home:
And the kids played in the garden with one another cos they had plenty of friends, cos everyone was the same kind of thing. And we had the school run, we used to take it in turns to
take half a dozen kids to school. Bring them home at lunchtime and take them back again
and bring them home at home time. But we did turns each so we didn't have the same thing
to do every day. There'd be a little crowd of mothers at the school gate waiting for them.68
The woman-centredneighbourhoodnetworksthat providedmutual aid and
support for families in the years before the second world war were, in this
respect,reconstitutedfor a new era.69
And yet a trendtowards a more home-basedleisureand increasinglymore
home-centredpatternsof consumptiondid deepen in the postwar years. As
one male respondentto a recentMass-Observationdirectiveon 'memoriesand
64 Hoggart,op. cit., 35.
65 Tebbutt,op. cit., 154.
66 Interviewwith Irene,1994. Irenewas a working-classwoman bornin Manchesterin 1922
who marriedin 1952 and had two children.
67 Interviewwith Hannah,1994.
68 Ibid.
69 On neighbourhoodnetworksin the interwarperiodsee E. Roberts,A Woman'sPlace.An
OralHistoryof Working-classWomen,1890-1940 (Oxford1984). On the postwaryearssee M.
Clapson,'Working-classWomen'sExperiencesof Moving to New Housing Estatesin England
since 1919', 20th CenturyBritishHistory,10, 3 (1999), 345.
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TheMeaningsof Homein PostwarBritain
Langhamer.
353
imagesof the 1950s' asserted:'Ourinterestslay entirelyin our homewhichwe
had just moved into and our marriage which had just begun .
. .
our own
entertainmentwas familygames and the wirelessprogrammes,our home and
garden were all-consuming."70
Risinglivingstandards,decreasinghours of paid work and improvedhousing provisionfor many heraldedthe triumphof domesticforms of leisure:the
phenomenalrise of television and simultaneousdecline of the cinema being
only one example.Whilejust4.3 percent of the populationowned a television
set in 1950, 81.8 per cent possessed one a decade later.71Yet home-based
leisurewas neverunproblematicleisureas far as most women and some men
were concerned.As home-basedand 'family'leisuregained ascendancyover
alternativeleisurehabits, the creationof a comfortablesite for other family
membersto enjoythemselvesbecamean importantaspect of domesticwork.
Home-basedleisurewas a form of leisurethat neededto be serviced.72
Interestin the appearanceof the postwarhome was intenseand was itself a
site wherework and leisureas well as educationand entertainmentintersected.
For example, ever-increasingattention was paid to home aesthetics in
women's magazinesand wide-rangingadvice on home design was offeredto
readers.The popularityof the BritainCan Make It exhibition,which attracted
over a million people, provides additional evidence of this interest in aesthetics:92 percent of those leavingthe exhibitiontold Mass-Observationthat
Despite the absenceof pricesfor
they would recommendit to their friends.73
the
and
widespreadunderstandingthat 'Britaincan make it,
goods displayed
but not get it',74the exhibitionseemedhighlyeffectivein fuellingand directing
the desire for better-lookinghomes, at least amongstthe 'artisanclass' who
formed a disproportionatepercentageof the visitors. As Mass-Observation
noted: 'A numberof people mentionthat they now realisehow shabbytheir
own homes are .... In some cases it seems that a long-established satisfaction
The centralattractionfor visitorswere the
with homes has been disturbed.'75
furnishedrooms,and althoughhalf of the visitorsclaimedthat theirtasteshad
not been changedby theirvisit to the exhibition,subsequentresearchvisits to
interviewees'homes suggestedthat the exhibitionrarelyfailed to exert some
degreeof influencein termsof desiredchangeif not actualalteration.76
The 1946 exhibitionprovidesan early exampleof attemptsmade by postwar design experts to mould public taste. Five years later, the avowedly
forward-lookingFestival of Britainperformeda similar function. Designed
both as a 'tonic to the nation' and 'proclamationof national recovery'the
exhibition of May-September1951 showcased new talent in the arts and
70 M-OA, DR, Spring2003, 'Televisionand Imagesof the 1950s and 1960s', Men no. G2134.
71
A.H. Halsey (ed.), Trends in British Society Since 1900 (Basingstoke 1972), 552.
72
73
74
75
76
Langhamer,op. cit., 133-45.
M-OA, FR2441, SectionA, 15.
Ibid.
M-OA,FR2441, SectionB, 21.
Ibid.,28.
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354
Journalof ContemporaryHistoryVol 40 No 2
sciences while providing a national celebration to mark the centenary of
the GreatExhibition.The Festivalplacedpopulareducationin 'culture'at its
centre; the household was to be the key site of learning."As in 1946, the
Festivalplannersattemptedto communicateexpert ideas about the design of
everydayhouseholdgoods and homes to the generalpublic.Within a country
emergingfrom postwarausterityand the immediatehousingcrisis there was,
however, more scope than in 1946 to shape actual consumer practices.7"
The 'Live ArchitectureExhibition'in the East End of London presenteda
'scientifically'-builtestate in explicit contrast to the slums of the past. The
Festival'sLand and Sea TravellingExhibitions,through which the London
Exhibitionwas diffusedthroughoutthe country,includeda sectionon 'People
at Home', wherein domesticproblemswere shown to be resolvablethrough
the combinedeffortsof designerand scientist.The Festival'sBatterseaPleasure
Gardens provided luxury goods for sale, implicitly guiding its visitors in
appropriatestyles of consumption.A particulardomesticdesign vision therefore permeatedthe Festivalof 1951 and framedits reception.7"
Certainly,new typesof housingencouragedownersand tenantsto engagein
home-improvementand gardeningin their so-called 'leisure' time. 'Homemaking'in its most literalform becamea significantpastimefor some, though
not all, men. Young and Willmottclaimedthat the men who made the move
from BethnalGreen to 'Greenleigh'increasinglyoperatedwithin a mode of
companionatemarriage:
We can see that husbands not only do more to aid their wives in emergencies; they also spend
less on themselves and more on their families. When they watch the television instead of
drinking beer in the pub, and weed the garden instead of going to a football match, the
husbands of Greenleigh have taken a stage further the partnership mentioned in an earlier
chapter as one of the characteristics of modern Bethnal Green. The 'home' and the family of
marriage becomes the focus of a man's life, as of his wife's, far more completely than in the
East End.80
In a later study of the middle-classsuburb of Woodford, the same authors
claimedto find husbandswho were 'as busykeepingup with rapidlychanging
fashionsof interiordecorationand designas his wife is kept absorbedin conforming to rising and ever-changingstandardsof child-care,cookery and
dress.More money is used for the house, more leisureused for work.'81
The universalityof this reformedmodelof masculinity,andindeedthe veracIf a reformed
ity of the researchupon which it is based,has been questioned.82
77 B. Conekin, 'The Autobiographyof a Nation'. The 1951 Festivalof Britain(Manchester
2003), 49.
78 Ibid., 49.
79 Ibid., 51.
80 Young and Willmott, op. cit., 145.
81 P. Willmott and M. Young, Family and Class in a London Suburb (London 1960), 33.
82 J. Finch and P. Summerfield, 'Social Reconstruction and the Emergence of Companionate
Marriage,1945-59' in D. Clark(ed.), Marriage,DomesticLife and Social Change.Writingsfor
JacquelineBurgoyne(1944-88) (London1991), 23.
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LanghamerTheMeaningsof Homein PostwarBritain
355
didexistit wascertainlycut throughby differences
domesticated
masculinity
of generation,occupationand socialidentityandframedby the specificities
of individualrelationshipnetworks.For example,Dennis,Henriquesand
Slaughter's
studyof the 'Ashton'miningcommunityin Yorkshireobserved
that:
A man'scentresof activityare outsidehis home;it is outsidehis home that are locatedthe
criteriaof successand socialacceptance.He worksand plays,and makescontactwith other
men and women,outsidehis home. The comedianwho defined'home'as 'the place where
you fill the pools in on a Wednesdaynight'was somethingof a sociologist.83
It hasrecentlybeensuggestedthatthe 'familyman'of the 1940sand1950s
noran entirelysecuremasculineidentity;it was
wasneitheran unconditional
Nonetheless,a closerelationship
undoubtedly
certainlynot a universalone.84
existedbetweenthechangingnatureof housing,home,familylifeandexperi'the
notesin his studyof amateurgardening,
encesof leisure.As Constantine
on
the
had
a
effect
has
in
cities
this
of
British
profound
century
re-building
leisureactivitiesof thatlargesectionof thepopulationwhichwasinvolved'."8
Thenatureof housingprovisiondidnot directlycausea shifttowardshomecentredleisurebut it reflected,reinforcedand enableddevelopingtrendsto
reachfruition.
In additionto actingas a locationfor leisureandleisurework,thepostwar
Yetpostwarconsumerdreamshadtheir
homewasalsoa siteof consumption.
for domesticproducts
rootsin an earlierperiod.In the 1930s,advertisements
minimization
of labour.For
the
and
comfort
domestic
harmony,
promised
follows:
as
advertised
were
Grates'
'Luckyyoungwoman,
example,'Triplex
she'sstarting1937withherbestwishcometrue.There'sa sparklein hereyes
as she surveysthe handsomenew Triplex.... Threehundredandsixty-five
By1945PicturePostoffered'a foredaysof luxuryandleisureaheadof her.'86
the
of
the
tasteof some
things post-warhomemayhave. one day:they
The goods
in
ideas
are American
designfor comfortand laboursaving'.87
and
a
chair
a
screen
lunch
box, fly
designed
presentedincludeda transparent
to give '100 per cent comfort'.More ambitiousdesiresachievedpartial
for
realizationin the 1950sandit waswomenwho weredeemedresponsible
as
the
as
As well acting
domesticconsumption.
guardiansof
orchestrating
homeandfamilyleisure,womenwerechargedwithchoosingandpurchasing
for the house.Yetwomendidnot consumepassively.88
Instead,theyinvested
83 Dennis,Henriquesand Slaughter,op. cit., 180. Emphasisin the original.
84 M. Francis, 'The Domestication of the Male? Recent Research on Nineteenth- and
BritishMasculinity',TheHistoricalJournal,45, 3 (2002), 645.
Twentieth-century
85 S. Constantine,'Amateur Gardeningand Popular Recreation in the 19th and 20th
Centuries',Journalof SocialHistory,14, 3 (Spring1981), 401.
86 Good Housekeeping,30, 5 (January1937), 87.
87 PicturePost,26, 6, 10 February1945, 22.
88 A. Partington,'TheDesignerHousewifein the 1950s' in J. Attfieldand P. Kirkham(eds),A
Viewfrom the Interior.Womenand Design (London1995).
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356
of Contemporary
Journal
HistoryVol40 No 2
their own meaningsin designedgoods, meaningswhich were sometimes at
odds with the producer'sintent, if necessaryignoringdesign dictatesto produce a domesticlook that was simultaneouslymodern,reassuringlycosy and,
above all, practical.As one visitor to the Britain Can Make It exhibition
observedof the domesticappliancessection:'Oh, I'm just interestedin washing machines, and anything that makes life easier for the housewife. This
section is reallythe most importantfor the housewife.'89
Commentingon attitudes towardsthe furnitureexhibited,Mass-Observationfound that aesthetic
and practicalconsiderationsbalancedeach otherout.90Despitethe vigourwith
which 'modern'interiordesign and furnishingswere promoted, they rarely
achieveda total victorywithin the aestheticsof everydaypostwarhomes:the
dialoguebetweenold and new continuedand it was the 'chooserand spender'
wife who mediatedbetweenthe two.
How, then, did individualmen and women understandand negotiate their
domesticlives in the postwarperiodand to what extent did these understandings differ from those of previous decades?The modern life cycle outlined
above ensuredthat duringthe middle years of the twentiethcentury,gender
roles were in a state of transition,with men and women working out new
ways of living within a historically-distinctfamily framework.Revision and
negotiation, ratherthan acceptanceand acquiescence,are perhapsthe most
helpful way of understandinggender relations in this period. Certainly,
the assumptionthat postwar domesticityand 'traditional'gender roles were
mutuallyreinforcingneedsto be challenged.
First,to what extentdid the postwarperiodwitnessthe emergenceof a 'new
man' as suggestedby Abrams?We have alreadyseen that the emergenceof
masculinehome-makingaccompaniedthe emergenceof new formsof housing.
Combinedwith a reductionin working hours and increasesin real incomes,
new housing forms also encouragedan expansion of house-work for men,
albeit an expansion mediated by gendereddiscoursesof appropriateness.91
Distinctionsbetweenacceptableand unacceptablemale houseworkremained
of real significance.So, for example,when Mass-Observationasked its panellists to describethe householdjobs most usuallyperformedby men in 1948,
they provided the following list: mending and fixing, carrying the coal,
chopping firewood, lighting the fire, washing up, table-settingand windowcleaning.92All of these were, of course, time-limitedjobs rather than more
expansiveresponsibilities.Nonetheless,some men were engagedin the work
of childcareand othermore routinedomesticchores,as one respondentto the
2003 Mass-ObservationDirectiverecalled:
89 M-OA,FR 2441, SectionC, 14.
90 Ibid.,25-32.
91 J. Bourke, Working-ClassCulturesin Britain, 1890-1960. Gender, Class and Ethnicity
(London1994), 81-94.
92 M-OA,DR, March/April1948, 'Housework'.
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TheMeanings
Britain
of HomeinPostwar
Langhamer
357
In my earlymarriedlifeI usedto comehomeat nightto a pileof soilednapkinswhichI
washedandwrungby hand.Mywifekeptthesheetsformyreturnso thatwe couldwring
a spin-dryer.93
themouttogether.
Howwe shouldhavewelcomed
Hoggartcertainlyclaimedto identifya measuredchangeovertimeamongst
working-class
couples:
therearesignsof a striking
changein thebasicattitude....
Amongsomeyoungerhusbands
willsharethewashingupif theirwivesgo outto work,orwill
Someworking-class
husbands
take turnswith the baby if theirjob releasesthemearlyand not too tired.But manywives
and'setto' to do all thehousework
comehomefromworkjustas tiredas theirhusbands
without help from them. And not many working-classhusbandswill help their wives by
pushingthe baby roundthe streetsin its pram.That is still thought'soft', and most wives
wouldsympathise
withtheview.'4
As we havealreadyseen,othersocialsurveys,notablythoserootedin areas
of morerigidgenderroles.g9
of heavyindustry,identifiedthe maintenance
Nonetheless,it seemsaccurateto concludethat therewas an increasingly
albeitwithina widerframeactivemasculine
rolewithinpostwardomesticity,
foractuallyrunningthehome.
workof continuityin femaleresponsibility
of domesticity
Recentworkhaslargelymovedawayfromanunderstanding
as necessarilya sourceof oppressionfor women.Instead,domesticityis
viewedas a rationalchoicefor women,a possiblesourceof
increasingly
It was alsoa discoursethat
an
to exerciserealskill.96
and
delight
opportunity
between
the
identities
of
migrantand indigenous
explicitlydifferentiated
women."Yetwhiledomesticity
it wasrarelydoneso in an
mightbe embraced,
unmediated
way:womencontestedandrefinedit to suittheirownconception
of 'home'.
'Homemanagement',
as TheHousewife'sPocketBookof 1953 explained,
'is not an easyjob, and unlessa littlethoughtis givento organising,it can
in a muddleandtheworknever
witheverything
easilybecomesheerdrudgery,
done.'9Moreover,'Home-making
is an artaboutwhichonecanneverknow
enough.It is quitethe mostimportantof all humanactivities,andhowever
well it is doneit can alwaysbe donejusta littlebetter,therebybringingto
In thesetwo statements
life an evengreaterrichness.'99
this domesticmanual
for
the
the
suggests grounds potentialdisgruntlement, ever-increasing
capacity
of the domesticrole to expand,and assertsits fundamental
valuewithin
society.A recentstudyof 1950s Americancookbookssuggeststhat close
discourseof
readingsof domestictextscanrevealmorethanan unchallenged
93 M-OA, DR, Spring2003, 'Televisionand Imagesof the 1950s and 1960s', Men no. K1515.
94 Hoggart,op. cit., 57.
95 See,for example,Dennis,Henriquesand Slaughter,op. cit.
96 J. Bourke,'Housewiferyin WorkingClass England,1860-1914', Past and Present,143,
(May 1994), 167-97; Giles,op. cit.; Light,op. cit., 217-21.
97 Webster,op. cit.
98 TheHousewife'sPocketBook (London1953), 11.
99 Ibid.
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358
of Contemporary
Journal
HistoryVol40 No 2
domestic conformity.They can, in fact, suggestcontradictionsand anxieties
by articulating'what must not be articulatedbut assumed,in order to maintain "traditional"genderroles'.'00Certainly,the definitionaltension between
art and drudgeryalludedto in the Pocket Book providedthe basis for contentmentand discontentmentwith postwardomesticity.
When asked about their postwar experiences,women rarelyfail to express
pleasurein at least some aspectsof theirdomesticwork. As one working-class
intervieweeexplained:
I think it's just that I did just enjoy, I just enjoyed having it nice and putting your nice tea set
out and that sort of thing, you know. It was all part of the pleasure. ... This home making
thing to me was nice, you know.'0'
It is also clear that women developedstrategiesto evade those aspects of the
job that they most disliked,as the followingextractdemonstrates:
My bugbear the stairs (laughs) cleaning them. Oh I used to hate vaccing the stairs, used to do
everything and then I'd say to Dennis, now I've done it all, I've only the stairs to do when I
come back. So I'd know that when I'd come back he'd've done the stairs (laughs) He never
cottoned on (laughs) Never cottoned on.102
Nonetheless, as the spread in ownership of labour-savingdevices was
only partial even at the end of the 1950s, houseworkremainedphysicallydemandingwork; work which daughtersobservedwith increasingdisdain.A
central motif within much life history materialand works of fiction which
illuminatethe process of growing up in 1950s Britainis a refusal to accept
home life as then constructed.Whetherwe considerthe writingsof the Angry
Young Men or the reflectionsof those who laterbenefitedfromthe emergence
of 'secondwave' feminismin the late 1960s, a constructionof 1950s domesticity as oppressiveand stultifyinghas stuck hard. As AngelaCarterput it: 'I
grew up in the fifties - that is, I was twenty in the 1960s, and, by God, I
deservedwhat happenedlater. It was tough, in the fifties. Girls wore white
gloves."03
Yet, a desire for a differentkind of life is not absent from sources which
documentgirls growingup in the 1940s and, indeed,the precedingdecade.In
her studyof youngwomen on the cusp of adulthood,conductedin 1945, Pearl
Jephcott describedthe aspirationsof working-classgirls, moulded by their
own experienceof overcrowdedhomes and lack of privacy:
100 J. Neuhaus, 'The Way to a Man's Heart. Gender Roles, Domestic Ideology and Cookbooks
in the 1950s', Journal of Social History, 32, 3 (1999), 547.
101 Interview with Jean, 1994. Jean was born in 1930, married in 1955 and had two children.
102 Interview with Ivy, 1994. Ivy was born in 1920 to working-class parents, married in 1943
and had three children.
103 A. Carter, 'Truly It Felt Like Year One' in S. Maitland (ed.), Very Heaven. Looking back at
the 1960s (London 1988).
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LanghamerTheMeaningsof Homein PostwarBritain
359
The intelligentgirls realizehow much the badlyplanned,over-packedhome has addedto
theirmother'swork,which,in the miningfamilies,is normallyheavy.Thegirlsknowat firsthandhow difficultit is to bringup childrensatisfactorilyundersuchconditions.Theyrealize
what extraeffortan additionalchild causesand what difficultieseven minorillnessesmay
add. They have seen and sharedthese burdensfor all their eighteenyearsand they do not
intend,if theycan avoid it, to havea similarlife for themselves.'1
Work on youthful lives in interwar Britain has shown that a combination of
new job opportunities, increased disposable income and access to commercial
leisure inculcated a sense of freedom and independence in young British
women which marked their youthful years as different from those of their
mothers.1 Certainly, it has been suggested that girls, rather than boys, were
the driving force behind an interwar 'teenage' culture.0'6A re-formed marriage
relationship, and through this, access to a home of one's own, was often
constructed as a way of escaping the fate of the mother.107The limitation of
family size was central to a sense of control over that home. Thus, while girls
who grew up in the 1950s might position themselves against domesticity per
se, earlier cohorts positioned themselves against domestic drudgery, making
informed choices which they hoped would enable them to avoid the kind of
life led by their mothers.
However, it was not just young women and men who expressed their discontent with domesticity in the postwar years. For some adult working-class
women, dreams of domestic life conflicted with the everyday reality: domesticity 1950s-style differed from the pre-war fantasy in a number of respects.
Within an era often defined as one in which the domestic was privileged, the
status of domestic work actually fell sharply. Whilst domesticity as imagined
in the interwar period was a full-time, modern profession, in the postwar
period other pressures drew women outside the home in increasing numbers.
Between 1931 and 1951, the proportion of women in employment aged
between 35 and 59 jumped from 26 per cent to 43 per cent.'"1The rise in
labour market participation amongst married women actually led to a reduction in the status attached to home-making. A general perception that married
women's wages were now used to buy 'extras' for the family, rather than to
ensure survival, undermined the importance of their contribution to the
family economy, despite the fact that for some women paid labour remained a
pressing necessity. Moreover, working-class woman's traditional skills of
managing, making and budgeting became less valued in an age of consumer
goods and rising incomes.'09
104 P. Jephcott,RisingTwenty(London1948), 37-8.
105 Langhamer,op. cit.
106 K. Milcoy,'Imageand Reality.Working-classTeenageGirls'Leisurein Bermondseyduring
the InterwarYears',DPhilthesis,Universityof Sussex,2000, 225.
107 J. White, The Worst Street in North London. Campbell Bunk, Islington, between the Wars
(London 1986), 197.
108 Bourke, Working-Class Cultures in Britain, 99.
109 Roberts,op cit., 92.
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360
Journalof ContemporaryHistoryVol 40 No 2
Formiddle-classwomen,too, domesticityfailedto deliverwhat it promised:
a skilledand 'scientific'role became,in the absenceof domesticservantsafter
the war, a commitmentto choreswhich their motherswould have employed
other women to perform.Somecontemporarycommentatorsclaimedto identify in the person of the middle-classhousewifea vivid illustrationof a more
general levelling-downof class difference.Ruth Bowley, for example, asked
PicturePost readersin 1949, 'Is the Middle ClassDoomed?',suggestingthat:
Today, the middle-classwife and the council-flatwife queueside by side for the fish. Later,
they may meet again at the doctors'surgery.They may wait togetheroutsidethe primary
school playground.Bothwearutilitycoats, and carryheavyshoppingbags.And theirhands
showthesamestoryof potatoespeeledandfloorsscrubbed.o0
In fact, recent work reveals that, faced with a discourse of classlessness,
middle-classwomen attemptedto mark out their own identitieswithin the
category 'housewife'by emphasizing'creativehomemaking'over 'the rough'
of householdmaintenance."'
Acrossclasses,the promisedprofessionaland respectedmodernoccupation
became, in reality, a part-timejob that could be combinedwith other, also
under-valued,part-timejobs. The fact that this re-conceptualizationfollowed
a periodwhen both unpaidand paid work had beenpresentedas valuablewar
work must have made the transitionall the more painful.A combinationof
the unravellingof the constructionof housewiferyas a full-timeoccupation,
the social isolation felt by some housewiveswithin their new homes and the
new domesticlaboursthat middle-classwomen found themselvesexpectedto
perform,led some women to feel cheatedof the valuethat had been placedon
theirwork. 'Theysee marriageas a full-timecareer,and they want, literally,to
make a job of it', observedPearlJephcottof the girlsshe surveyedat the end of
the war. 'It is a matterof principle,evenwith those girlswho are maddeningly
irresponsiblein everyotherway, that a woman'sfirst duty is to look afterher
own home.'"'
Modern domesticityreachedmaturityin the postwar period but the demographic trends which framed the emergence of Abrams's 'home-centred
society' and the aspirationswhich fuelledmaterialrealitypre-datedthe Cold
War era. The secondworld war did not, of itself, createa desireto retreatinto
the privateworld of home, althoughit undoubtedlyfiredpre-existingdesires.
In this way, the postwarnarrativeof new beginningsand historically-distinct
lifestyles neglects significantaspects of pre-war domestic life across social
classes. As Conekin et al. put it, 'The modern in this period was a hybrid
110 PicturePost, 43, 10, 4 June 1949, 13.
111 J. Giles,'Help for Housewives.DomesticServiceand the Reconstructionof Domesticityin
Britain,1940-1950', Women'sHistoryReview,10, 2 (2001), 299-332.
112 Jephcott,op. cit., 72.
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LanghamerTheMeaningsof Homein PostwarBritain
361
affair, assembledout of tales about the past as well as narrativesof the
future.'1"3
Certainly,therewas muchthat was new in the yearsafterthe secondworld
war: postwaraffluencewas undoubtedlya centralfactor in enablingmodern
domesticityto take hold; new housing stock providedmore than simply a
location for the home-centredlifestyle,and the memoryof war heighteneda
desire for domestic stability. But domestic fantasieswere themselvesestablished prior to the war and were informed by the knowledge that smaller
family size had already fundamentallyaltered the nature of family life in
Britain.While family size continuedto decline beyond the period examined
here, by the 1970s the 'goldenage' of stable,nearuniversalmarriagewas over
as marriageratesdroppedand divorceratesspiralled.To this extentthe homecentredsociety discussedin this articlewas historicallyspecificto the central
yearsof the twentiethcentury.
was nevera uniformexperience:the significantnumYet, home-centredness
bers who lacked homes of their own even at the end of the 1950s attest to
this. As we have seen, significantnumbersof householdsenteredthe 1960s
without the privacy,comfortor labour-savingconsumerdurableswhich have
become characteristicof the 'affluent'society. Nor was the domesticityupon
which home-centrednesswas founded entirely uncontested.Both men and
women had reasonsto suspectthat the materialrealitythat followed earlier
dreamswas not quite what they had anticipated.Young women in particular
domesticexpresseda reluctanceto acquiescein the new consumption-defined
be
for
while
adult
women
that
the
could
ity,
forgiven
thinking
reality of
to
did
not
live
its
earlier
postwardomesticity
up
promise.
When Mass-Observationaskedfor memoriesand recollectionsof the 1950s
in spring2003, popularmemoriesof this periodwere cut throughby gender.
Amongstmen, home and domesticlife were infrequentlyexplicitlycentralto
reconstructionsof the past. The narrativesthey offered suggestmyriadother
ways of readingthe postwarperiod:safety,order,respectfor others,simplicity and a less freneticpace of life are constructedas key characteristics.For
example, a 69-year-oldman described'a more ordered,well mannered,considerate and leisurely way of life . . . it was less hectic, we had more time to
enjoy leisure,therewas full employment,we were morepolite and considerate
to each other,people could be seen smilingin the street,they looked and were
happier,bothpoorandrich'.14Anotherobservedthat'lifewas not drivenby
Suchresponsesclearlyspeakto contemporary
concerns
commercialisation'."''
of everydaylife
about,for example,crime,violenceandthe individualization
andarerefracted
throughthe rapidsocial,culturalandpoliticalchangesthat
accompaniedthe last yearsof the twentiethcentury.They also warnus against
113 B. Conekin, F. Mort and C. Waters (eds), Moments of Modernity. Reconstructing Britain
1945-1964 (London 1999), 3.
114 M-OA, DR Spring 2003, 'Television and Images of the 1950s and 1960s', Men no. A883.
115 Ibid., Men no. B1426.
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
362
of Contemporary
Journal
HistoryVol40 No 2
assigningunduedominanceto domesticityas the definingfeatureof the postwar world. Nonetheless,while many women offered similarreconstructions,
speakingof 'safety, securityand familiarity',"'others conjuredup dominant
memoriesmore explicitlyrooted within the home, such as the intricaciesof
domestic labour, the routines of family life and the aestheticsof the 1950s
house. Such genderedreconstructionsof the past should not, of course, surprise:home exercisesa morepowerfulhistoricalpull on the memoriesof those
who worked within it. Moreover,even those conceptualizationsof the postwar periodwhich do not explicitlyplace home at theircentrespeakto notions
of 'home'implicitlyin theirevocationof stabilityand security.
Whenlocatingthe postwaryearswithin a longerhistoricaltrajectory,MassObserversof both genderstendedto locate the 1950s in a continuumwith the
pre-war period. As one respondentput it: 'What does strike me is that the
period I grew up in - say mid-fiftiesto mid-seventies- was in many ways
far more similarto the period my parentsgrew up in - the mid-twentiesto
mid-forties- than to the world today, another30 yearson.'"'7Consideration
of the postwarhome shouldencouragehistoriansof twentieth-centuryBritain
to explore furtherthe dynamicrelationshipbetweenthe 1930s and the 1950s:
not to identifya postwarreturnto 'traditional'modelsbut to unravelthe complex mannerin which dreamsfirst dreamtbeforethe second world war were
realized,adaptedor rejectedin the ColdWarera.Whilehomelife in the 1950s
was not an unproblematicreturnto earlierpatterns,neitherwas it sufficiently
distinctfrom interwarexperiencesto be viewed as a 'new' model of living.
ClaireLanghamer
is SeniorLecturerin Historyat SussexUniversity.Sheis the author
of Women's Leisure in England, 1920-1960 (Manchester 2000) and
is currentlyworkingon a historyof love and courtshipin
twentieth-centuryBritain.
116 Ibid.,Womenno. A2212.
117 Ibid.,Womenno. B2948.
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