A lost world of womanhood
To today’s young, it’ll sound like life on another planet. A remarkable new book lays bare how very different things were for women in Fifties Britain — not least in the bedroom
‘Never talk cleverly to men — they’re terrified
of brainy women’
The average young woman of the Fifties had one supreme goal in life: to land herself a decent husband. he didn’t have to be devastatingly good- looking or rich. he just had to earn enough money so that she could stay at home, raise the children and never have to work for a living again.
The alternative? Being labelled a spinster or old maid, and probably slaving for a lifetime in a low-paid and low-status job.
From our vantage point in the 21st century, the Fifties often seems bathed in a rosy nostalgic glow. It was, after all, an era of stayat-home mums and strong family values — exemplified by images of radiant housewives in flattering frocks, posing in front of a batch of freshly baked fairy cakes
But what was it really like to be a woman in this critical post-war decade? What did she want — and what was she thinking?
To find out, I combed hundreds of diaries, newspapers, magazines and academic papers, and asked numerous women to talk to me about their own memories. What soon became clear was that the idealised version of the Fifties marriage often had little in common with the humdrum reality.
The first disappointment for many innocent young brides happened on what should have been one of the happiest nights of their lives. half a century after the death of Queen Victoria, there was still a staggering amount of ignorance about sex. According to a mid-Fifties survey of women aged between 20 and 30, a full 23 per cent had never been told anything about it at all.
Others had been indoctrinated from adolescence with the idea that it wasn’t ‘feminine’ to like it, while thousands more knew only a few details — often laughably inaccurate.
even a nurse such as Jennifer Craig, for instance, was well into her training before she found out how ‘it’ happened — and then only because a friend had laid hands on an off-the-syllabus anatomy book.
Brenda Nash, a teenager from Birmingham, wasn’t so lucky: she was told how babies got out, though she remained completely baffled about how they got in. In short, while nearly every woman aspired to get married, she often had little idea about what actually took place between the marital sheets. And when she did find out, the evidence suggests that she by no means always enjoyed it.
‘I love my husband, and we have a charming home and three wonderful children. But it is all spoilt for me because I do so hate bedtime and all it implies,’ was the start of one letter sent to the Woman’s Own agony aunt, Leonora eyles. It was typical, said eyles, of 60 per cent of the letters in her daily postbag.
She advised the mother-of-three to build up a sense of gratitude to her husband for working hard and bringing in the money — by telling herself: ‘he is doing this for us, to keep going this home we share, to buy things for me, to pay our rent, to give me treats . . . I love him so much!’
In other words, sex was a transaction. The man got what he wanted. The woman got a roof over her head.
With newly-weds, eyles took a briskly sympathetic attitude.
Sex problems, she said, could usually be solved with a bit of home decorating.
Couples who got down to papering and painting ‘their nest’ would discover that physical activity made all the difference. ‘Night will approach and a happy mating with it,’ she promised.
If such advice rings strangely in modern ears, it’s because attitudes t o men and marriage have undergone a total revolution in the past half-century.
Consider t he well- meaning advice given to young husbandhunters in a popular one-shilling pamphlet called how To Get Your Man! Crucially, said the author, they needed to remember the following points:
IT’S often necessary to lose in order to win. Men do not take kindly to being beaten by women at games.
NeVeR suggest that you have any claim on his time.
Be ChILDLIKe and feminine at all times.
LOVe him, feed him, sympathise with him, soothe him, admire him.
DON’T talk ‘cleverly’ to him. Men are terrified of brainy women. NeVeR talk about yourself. The cover of this pamphlet shows a woman with a pointed bosom and vertiginous heels in the act of throwing a lasso around the neck of a pin-striped male. It may look humorous, but the message is utterly serious.
Similar advice was offered in hundreds of other pamphlets, books and magazines, all of which wer e avidly devoured by impressionable young women.
And minor celebrities of the day — such as the novelists Barbara Cartland, Monica Dickens and Noel Streatfeild — were encouraged to pitch in with their own pearls of wisdom. In Marriage For Moderns, a manual for women, Cartland warned that you must never ever beat a man at tennis. Otherwise — God forbid — you could end up a spinster.
Man, she claimed, is actually a Neanderthal who has no homing or paternal instincts. Fortunately, he can be reeled in — provided the woman presents herself as beautiful, passive, dependent, inferior and subordinate.
‘however much women believe in emancipation,’ she said, ‘however much they talk of careers and professions, they all of them know that unless they can capture a husband and have a child, they have failed.’
The cl ear s ubtext behind Cartland’s words — and those of so many other writers and broadcasters — was that women had no independent identity.
Only men could confer meaning on their existence. even if a woman had a satisfying or glamorous career, it was fully understood that she’d be only too happy to give it up for a man.
Take, for example, a Pathe film, shot in 1951, that shows curvaceous models in two-piece swimsuits on a sandy Bournemouth beach.
As they smile at the camera, a jaunty male voice says: ‘ When t hey’ve developed al l t heir
charms, they’ll be far too good to work as mannequins! They’ll be parading in their own wedding gowns, if the menfolk get half a chance.’
For ordinary mortals, who lacked the allure of a swimwear model, the process of attracting a husband could be quite exhausting.
Noel Streatfeild, author of Ballet Shoes, produced a daunting instruction manual on how to approach womanhood. ‘Every girl cannot be beautiful, but every girl can — and must — be attractive,’ she wrote i n Years Of Grace. ‘I want you to be lovely in every way. When you wake i n the morning, always jump out of bed, never crawl. Go straight to your window and get some fresh air into your lungs. Smile . . .’
As posture was regarded as one of a girl’s chief attractions, she included much advice on tucking in the bottom and standing tall at all times. ‘Poise will make you look somebody, instead of nobody.’
For those wanting more detail, Glorify Yourself, a self-improvement book by Leonore King, offered diagrams showing how to prevent the bust wobbling while walking up stairs.
It also demystified a range of essential techniques, such as how to carry your gloves and handbag, how to wear coats, and how to turn decorously in a doorway: ‘One of the most beautiful movements which any woman can execute.’
Loveliness didn’t just happen, explained the author: it involved exertion. ‘Rotate your ankles for ten minutes daily to keep them slim. Slap yourself under the jaw every day with a flannel to prevent a double chin. And no slouching at bus stops . . .
‘These little matters of personal attractiveness mean the difference between riches and poverty, marriage or spinsterhood, and wedded bliss or broken homes.’
The prize for all that anklerotating and chin- slapping was great. A housewife could expect to find herself liberated from many of the chores that connected her to the outside world.
In Woman’s Own, Monica Dickens explained: ‘The instinctive desire of woman is to attach herself to a man who will be her provider.
‘The average woman is only too happy to do so — to have the tedious business of coping with the duller mechanics of existence taken off her hands.’
After all, she said, everyone knew that men liked making decisions, paying bills, ordering taxis, t ackling plumbers, meeting landlords and signing things.
As for women, they preferred childcare and keeping house. Many did. But that didn’t mean that they could relax once they had a wedding ring on their finger. Nothing less than perfection, they were warned, would suffice.
Barbara Cartland again: ‘Makeup should be as much a discipline and a habit as cleaning one’s teeth. So beware the consequences of being the kind of fat, slovenly wife who lies in bed with their hair still in pins, and a greasy nose.’
It i s precisely these kind of women, she said, who were ‘astonished when their husbands, who see them looking so unpleasant, fall out of love and run away with another woman.’
And women really did take this sort of advice to heart.
A 28- year- old middle- class housewife from Tiverton, Devon, outlined her own recipe for marital harmony to the Fifties social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer.
‘After marriage, it’s harder to keep a man than before because, really, you should try to be as attractive as the day he married you,’ she said.
‘Always have his meals ready, a nice clean house and home; listen to all his troubles about what a horrid day he’s had, even if yours has been dreadful. Above all, look clean and attractive yourself.’
So deep was the dread of being abandoned by a husband and provider that a woman might raid the housekeeping money to make herself look more attractive.
As Gorer commented drily, after doing hundreds of interviews: ‘For some reason, which I confess to finding obscure, a permanent wave is considered particularly efficacious in bringing a straying husband back to the fold.’
But what did Fifties men want most from their wives? Gorer’s survey of their views makes for particularly depressing reading.
Topping the list, 29 per cent of men were looking primarily for a good housekeeper. Love came fourth. At least it was above ‘good cooking’, which was sixth.
Repeatedly, the men Gorer spoke to returned to the theme of mealtime punctuality. A married man from Leeds said that he insisted on having his dinner on the table at noon and his tea at 5.18pm.
Why so precise? Because that’s when he arrived home from work each day on his motorbike.
AdApted from perfect Wives In Ideal Homes: the Story Of Women In the 1950s by Virginia Nicholson, published by Viking at £16.99. © Virginia Nicholson 2015. to order a copy at £14.44 (offer valid to March 10) visit mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0808 272 0808 (p&p free for a limited time only).
‘Always have his meals ready and a clean home’