Can I mention again how much I am enjoying reading Virginia Nicholson's Singled Out? First The Far Traveler and now a book on the "surplus women" in England after the First World War. I think this is going to be a good year for me and nonfiction books if these titles are any indication of what's in store. It sounds like an odd topic--a book on single women or spinsters, but it is utterly fascinating. The book is anecdotal and Nicholson is excellent at tying the information together in a readable manner. I read a criticism by one reader that they felt the book was good, but "choppy". I actually like the format. It's easy to pick the book up and read a bit without feeling when you stop that later you'll need to backtrack to pick up the thread again.
The first chapter discusses the actual war and the women who lost their fiances and boyfriends. It was heartbreaking reading some of the stories. One of the very first women Nicholson writes about was a reader, and you know what books do to girl's brains:
"May was a worry to her parents because she had an over-active imagination. She learnt to read early and loved fairy stories. The little people were real to her. There was a fairy prince who married a fairy princess and lived happily ever after; they lived in flowers. Sometimes one heard their tiny tinkling laughter, but one never saw them. The assiduous doctor wagged his head and told her parents that too much reading would damage her brain. She must be kept back, he said. On his advice she was denied books and only allowed to read at school, though she sneaked her father's carpentry manuals to bed with her at night and read whatever she could lay hands on. When she got older she managed to get hold of copies of Jane Eyre, Lorna Doone and Kim. But her favourite was Marie Corelli, whose melodramatic romances imbued her with a sense that some day, somewhere, she would unite with her twin soul."
Can you believe that? Denied books? May's fiance was a Quaker who registered as a pacifist. He was sent to jail, but there he studied first aid and learned how to care for the wounded. He volunteered for a non-combatant role in the war and was quite fearless in his work. He was a stretcher bearer and sadly was killed in action.
Nicholson goes on to talk about the stigma attached to a single woman at the time. Spinsters were not looked upon fondly in general by either men or women. Once the war was over there were many questions of what to do with these women. During the war they filled necessary and important roles, but with men returning home, they were not accepted anymore in the work environment.
"Life for the single woman was full of (such) grey areas. Should she entertain, travel alone, be seen in public? What would she wear? If she was not a housewife, could she be a house-spinster? And if she could not find a man to support her, how could she support herself? Job possibilities were very limited, and after the war unemployment was high; between 1914 and 1918 the female workforce increased by nearly a million, most of the uneducated ones going to munitions factories or domestic service, while higher up the social ladder they became nurses or teachers. Friendships, whether with men or women, were cast into doubt by post-Freudian society's heightened awareness of sex ('...Do they?...Don't they?'), while sexual appetites themselves, ravenous and urgent as they might be, were virtually taboo in polite society. ...Surplus Women had many problems, not just of grief and loss, but of closed minds, of male (and female) hostility, of archaic expectations and the law stacked against her. A single woman's life in the 1920s and 30s often felt like a gritty struggle against prejudice, poverty, and exclusion."
I think I will definitely have to buy this book once it comes out in paperback. Aside from the interesting historical information it is also full of literary references as well. Nicholson does a wonderful job of talking about female authors whose work reflected the the difficulties single women encountered. Many of the authors I've heard of and now will make a point of searching out and reading. In the first 50 pages alone, my list:
- E.M. Delafield, Thank Heaven Fasting
- Angela du Maurier, It's Only the Sister
- Vera Brittain, The Dark Tide
- Margery Perham, Josie Vine
- Irene Rathbone, We That Were Young
- Ruth Holland, The Lost Generation
- Elizabeth Bowen, A World of Love
- Winifred Holtby, Crowded Street and South Riding
- Ivy Compton-Burnett
- Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes
- F.M. Mayor, The Rector's Daughter
I hope you won't mind if I share more later. It's really amazing to think what single women have gone through in the past. Happily there isn't quite the stigma attached these days to not having, or not necessarily wanting a husband.