Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T23:28:15.476Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Uncovering the Lives of Women in Post-War Oxfordshire: An Oral History Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2008

ANGELA DAVIS
ANGELA DAVIS*
Affiliation:
St. Cross College, Oxford, OX1 3LZ, UK
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Writing in 1960 Margaret Stacey asserted that, ‘Women, compared with men, tend to show group characteristics regardless of other social factors like class. Their training from childhood sets them apart from boys and together as potential wives and mothers.’ This article will question whether Oxfordshire women did indeed believe that there was a commonality in their experiences at this time, irrespective of the locality in which they lived or the class to which they belonged, or whether these differences were more significant than their shared gender. The first objective of this article is therefore to analyse the role class played in determining women's experiences of life in Oxfordshire at this time. Leading on from this, the second objective is to investigate the importance of locality upon lived experience, and to engage, in Charles Phythian-Adams' words, in the process of ‘unravelling localized identities’ (1987). Using Oxfordshire as a case study it is possible to examine a range of communities: rural, urban and suburban. This article will demonstrate how the nature of these different communities affected women's experiences of living within them. The third objective is to discuss the ways in which the women I interviewed expressed their experiences of rural living through the oral history interview, and how their accounts relate to contemporary debates and existing historical interpretations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , April 2008 , pp. 105 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 Stacey, M., Tradition and Change: A Study of Banbury (Oxford, 1960), p. 136.Google Scholar

2 Robert Millar's optimism exemplifies the positive view. ‘In the socially-fluid society of the Sixties new lines are being drawn which owe little to the old criteria of accent, social behaviour and family background.’ Millar, R., The New Classes (London, 1966), p. 19Google Scholar; John Goldthorpe et al. thought this was not the case. There was no assimilation of the working class into the middle class but at most a less dramatic process of convergence. Goldthorpe, J.Lockwood, D.Bechofer, F. and Platt, J., The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (Cambridge, 1969), p. 26.Google Scholar

3 Tina, BE3.

4 Hiller, P., ‘Continuities and Variations in Everyday Conceptual Components of Class’, Sociology, 9 (1975), 255–87, p. 255CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Moorhouse, H. F., ‘Attitudes to Class and Class Relationships in Britain’, Sociology, 10 (1976), 469–96, p. 469.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Slater, E. and Woodside, M., Patterns of Marriage (London, 1951), p. 255.Google Scholar

6 Bourke, J., Working-Class Cultures in Britain 1890–1960: Gender, Class and Ethnicity (London, 1994), p. 4.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., p. 4.

8 Phythian-Adams, C., Re-thinking English Local History (Leicester, 1987), p. xii.Google Scholar

9 Sarah Williams and Margaret Houlbrook have found that the influence of religion in regulating behaviour was strong in London, but women in Oxford did not report this as being the case. The role of religion in regulating behaviour seemed to be stronger in Oxfordshire's villages and small towns than larger urban and suburban areas. Williams, S., Religious Belief and Popular Culture in Southwark, c.1880–1939 (Oxford, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; M. Houlbrook, ‘Rite Out of the Past: The Churching of Women in the Twentieth Century’, Social History Society 31st Annual Conference, University of Reading, 2006.

10 Rowntree, B. Seebohm, How the Labourer Lives: A Study of the Rural Labour Problem (London, 1917), p. 336.Google ScholarKuchemann, C.F.Boyce, A.J. and Harrison, G.A., ‘A Demographic and Genetic Study of a Group of Oxfordshire Villages’, in Drake, M., ed., Applied Historical Studies (London, 1973), p. 211.Google Scholar

11 Williams, W.M., A West Country Village: Ashworthy (London, 1963), pp. 181–2.Google Scholar

12 Bell, C., Middle Class Families: Social and Geographical Mobility (London, 1968), pp. 93–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Willmott, P. and Young, M., Family and Kinship in East London (London, 1957).Google Scholar

14 Todd, S., Young Women, Work and Family in England 1918–1950 (Oxford, 2005), p. 11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Sked, A. and Cook, C., Post-war Britain: A Political History (London, 1993).Google Scholar

16 Birmingham Feminist History Group, ‘Feminism as Femininity in the Nineteen-Fifties?’, Feminist Review, 3 (1979), 48–65, p. 49.

17 Spencer, S., Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 9–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 K. Fisher, ‘An Oral History of Birth Control Practice c. 1925–50: A Study of Oxford and South Wales’, (unpublished DPhil thesis, Oxford University, 1997), p. 40.

19 K. Field, ‘Children of the Nation? A Study of the Health and Well-being of Oxfordshire Children, 1891–1939’, (unpublished DPhil thesis, Oxford University, 2001), p. 103.

20 Summerfield, P., Reconstructing Women's Wartime Lives (Manchester, 1998), pp. 1–42.Google Scholar

21 Field, ‘Children of the Nation’, pp. 104–5.

22 The recordings and transcripts of the interviews are held by the author.

23 Bertaux-Wiame, I. ‘The Life History Approach to Internal Migration: How Men and Women came to Paris between the Wars’, in Thompson, P. ed., Our Common History: The Transformations of Europe (London, 1982), pp. 186–200.Google Scholar

24 Geiger, S., ‘Women's Life Histories’, Signs, 11 (1986), 334–51, p. 348.Google Scholar

25 Chanfrault-Duchet, M.-F., ‘Narrative Structures, Social Models and Symbolic Representation in the Life Story’, in Gluck, S. Berger and Patai, D., eds., Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (New York And London, 1991), p. 89.Google Scholar

26 Thomson, A., Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend (Oxford, 1994).Google Scholar

27 Kate Fisher provides one such defence in the introduction to her DPhil thesis, which includes a comprehensive review of the literature and appraisal of critical debates within the field. Fisher, ‘Oral History of Birth Control Practice’, pp. 31–80.

28 Portelli, A., The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Albany, 1991), p. 50.Google Scholar

29 Maud, interviewed by author, 30th January, 2006.

30 Maud, interviewed by author, 30th January, 2006.

31 Madge, interviewed by author, 27th January, 2006.

32 Ingrid, interviewed by author, 4th February, 2005.

33 Phyllis, interviewed by author, 26th January, 2006.

34 Bobbie, interviewed by author, 31st January, 2006.

35 Doris, interviewed by author, 26th June, 2004; Tina, interviewed by author, 26th June, 2004.

36 Tina, interviewed by author, 26th June, 2004.

37 Peggy, interviewed by author, 5th July, 2005.

38 Megan, interviewed by author, 8th January, 2006.

39 Willmott, P. and Young, M., Family and Class in a London Suburb (London, 1960), p. 80.Google Scholar The incidence of middle-class women phoning their mothers for advice on childcare was discussed in the chapter on antenatal education.

40 Kerr, M., The People of Ship Street (London, 1958), p. 40.Google Scholar

41 Willmott and Young, Family and Kinship, p. 84.

42 Maud, interviewed by author, 30th January, 2006.

43 Gloria, interviewed by author, 15th June, 2004.

44 Theresa, interviewed by author, 6th September, 2005.

45 Liepmann, K., The Journey to Work (London, 1944), p. 83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Bott, E., Family and Social Network: Roles, Norms and External Relationships in Ordinary Urban Families (London, 1957), pp. 184–6.Google Scholar

47 Willmott and Young, Family and Kinship, p. 112.

48 Although Peter Willmott and Michael Young characterise it as a middle-class suburb, Josephine Klein argued that Woodford offered a, ‘vivid picture of the upward-moving working-class family.’ Klein, J., Samples from English Cultures (London, 1965), p. 328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Willmott and Young, Family and Class, p. 128.

50 Ibid., p. 105.

51 Fiona, interviewed by author, 27th July, 2004.

52 Agnes, interviewed by author, 8th December, 2004.

53 Glenda, interviewed by author, 24th January, 2006.

54 Peggy, interviewed by author, 5th July, 2005.

55 Rita, interviewed by author, 20th January, 2006.

56 Willmott and Young, Family and Class, pp. 101–8.

57 Judy, interviewed by author, 18th November, 2004.

58 Rose, interviewed by author, 17th December, 2004.

59 Hannah, interviewed by author, 20th December, 2004.

60 Kelly, interviewed by author, 9th December, 2004.

61 Marilyn, interviewed by author, 13th June, 2004.

62 Siobhan, interviewed by author, 7th June, 2004.

63 Lindsay, interviewed by author, 23rd February, 2005.

64 Claudia, interviewed by author, 12th January, 2005.

65 Rose, interviewed by author, 17th December, 2004.

66 Gloria, interviewed by author, 15th June, 2004.

67 Camilla, interviewed by author, 7th April, 2005.

68 Stacey, Tradition and Change, pp. 11–4.

69 Agnes, interviewed by author, 8th December, 2004.

70 Diana, interviewed by author, 6th September, 2004.

71 Diana, interviewed by author, 6th September, 2004.

72 Jackie, interviewed by author, 31st January, 2006.

73 Peggy, interviewed by author, 5th July, 2005.

74 Doreen, interviewed by author, 26th June, 2004.

75 Alice, interviewed by author, 13th February, 2006.

76 Florence, interviewed by author, 13th October, 2004.

77 Gloria, interviewed by author, 15th June, 2004.

78 Karen, interviewed by author, 8th February, 2005.

79 Rebecca, interviewed by author, 29th April, 2005.