Girl Trouble

About the author

Carol Dyhouse is a social historian and currently a research professor of history at the University of Sussex. Her most recent book,
Glamour: Women, History, Feminism
, was published by Zed Books in 2010. Longer-term, her research has focused on gender, education and the pattern of women's lives in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain. Her books include
Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England
;
Feminism and the Family in England, 1890–1939
;
No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities, 1870–1939
; and
Students: A Gendered History
.

GIRL TROUBLE

PANIC AND PROGRESS IN THE HISTORY OF YOUNG WOMEN

Carol Dyhouse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zed Books

LONDON | NEW YORK

Girl trouble: panic and progress in the history of young women
was first published in 2013 by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London
N
1 9
JF
,
UK
and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York,
NY
10010,
USA

www.zedbooks.co.uk

Copyright © Carol Dyhouse 2013

The right of Carol Dyhouse to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

Set in Monotype Plantin and ffKievit by Ewan Smith, London
NW5

Index:
[email protected]

Cover design:
www.kikamiller.com

Cover photograph © Bert Hardy/Getty Images

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data available

ISBN
978 1 78032 556 9

CONTENTS

Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1
   White slavery and the seduction of innocents

2
   Unwomanly types: New Women, revolting daughters and rebel girls

3
   Brazen flappers, bright young things and ‘Miss Modern'

4
   Good-time girls, baby dolls and teenage brides

5
   Coming of age in the 1960s: beat girls and dolly birds

6
   Taking liberties: panic over permissiveness and women's liberation

7
   Body anxieties, depressives, ladettes and living dolls: what happened to girl power?

8
   Looking back

Notes

Sources and select bibliography

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1
  Innocent victim of the white slave trade

1.2
  The white slaver disguised as a helpful gentleman approaching an unwary young lady

1.3
  May Day at Whitelands College

1.4
  May Queen in 1911

2.1
  Girl suffragette in Trafalgar Square

3.1
  The modern girl discussed in
Girl's Favourite

3.2
  Pyjama-clad, cigarette-smoking flapper

3.3
  Amy Johnson, aviator

3.4
  Girls inspired by Amy Johnson

3.5
  Factory girls in Walthamstow modelling carnival hats

3.6
  ‘Miss Modern' resplendent in her cutting-edge swimsuit

4.1
  Scene from the controversial film
Good Time Girl

4.2
  Betty Burden helping her mother with the weekly wash

4.3
  Young women working in a clothing factory in Leicester

4.4
  Schoolgirls show off their cake-making skills

5.1
  Poster advertising the film
Beat Girl

5.2
  Mandy Rice-Davies

5.3
  Trendy teenagers at Brad's Club, London

5.4
  The lure of the jukebox

5.5
  Beatles fans outside Buckingham Palace

5.6
  Katharine Whitehorn photographed for
Picture Post
alone in a bedsit

5.7
  Dolly birds on the King's Road

6.1
  A young Marianne Faithfull looking innocent

7.1
  Rotherham punk Julie Longden and friends pose in a photo-booth

8.1
  Girls leaping with joy at their exam successes

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe thanks to the many librarians and archivists who have facilitated the research on which this book is based. In particular, I would like to record my appreciation of the helpfulness of staff in the British Library (both at St Pancras and at the newspaper division in Colindale), in the Library of the University of Sussex, and in the National Archives. Thanks also to staff at the County Record Offices in Warwickshire and East Sussex. Archivists at the Salvation Army Heritage Centre, the Women's Library, and Tower Hamlets Local History Library guided me towards some rich material. At Whitelands College, now part of the University of Roehampton, Gilly King was exceptionally hospitable and enthusiastic in explaining Ruskin's legacy and the history of the college.

The team at Zed Books has once again turned the publication process into a pleasure. My thanks to all of them. I am grateful to Pat Harper for her meticulous copy-editing and to Ewan Smith for his skills in production. Warm thanks, also, to Maggie Hanbury and her colleagues at the Hanbury Agency.

For permission to reproduce images I am indebted to the British Library, Whitelands College at the University of Roehampton, Getty Images, Tom Phillips, Tony Beesley and Julie Longden, Gabriel Carnévalé-Mauzan, PA Wire, and IPC+Syndication. Every effort has been made to trace and to acknowledge copyright holders of the illustrations reproduced in this book. The author and publisher apologise for any unintended errors or omissions in this respect. If brought to their attention, any such errors will be corrected in future editions.

This book is the product of research that I have carried out over a long period of time. It isn't an easy matter to compile a list of all the people who have helped me to bring the work into shape over the years, so I have to be selective, and to hope that anyone who feels left out will forgive me. As ever, my fondest debt is to my
immediate family: to Nick and to our daughters Alex and Eugénie von Tunzelmann. Their positive thinking, their critical intelligence, and their encouragement in the face of my tendency to quail have been both heartening and indispensable. Then there are friends whose generosity and support I value immensely: most of these are scholarly types and they have always been ready to discuss ideas with me. My thanks to Jenny Shaw, Marcia Pointon, Claire Langhamer, Lucy Robinson, Pat Thane, Hester Barron, Naomi Tadmor, Selina Todd, Lesley Hall, Penny Summerfield, June Purvis, Penny Tinkler, Hera Cooke, Stephanie Spencer, Lucy Bland, Joyce Goodman, Ruth Watts, Sally Alexander, Anna Davin, Jane Martin, Ulrike Meinhof and Amanda Vickery. Thanks also to Ros McLintock and Monica Collingham, both of whose friendship and support go back for many years. Monica's enthusiasm for local history in Tower Hamlets led me to the riches of the Edith Ramsay Collection. Colleagues at the universities of Sussex and Brighton continue to be important in so many ways: as well as those already mentioned, I have profited from discussions with, and encouragement from, Ian Gazeley, Jim Livesey, Paul Betts, James Thomson, Vinita Damodaran, Saul Dubow, Beryl Williams, Ben Jones, Becca Searle, Lucy Noakes, Maurice Howard, Vincent Quinn, Sian Edwards, Lesley Whitworth, Jill Kirby, Sian Edwards and Chris Warne. As well as making insightful comments, Owen Emmerson reminded me about the depiction of white slavery in
Thoroughly Modern Millie
. Thanks to Miriam David, Gaby Weiner and Alexandra Allan for helping to keep me in touch with recent work in gender and education. Andy Smith was generous in lending some hard-to-get books. James Thomson put up with me in a shared office and helped me to negotiate in French with copyright holders. I must also thank the staff in the University of Sussex's IT Centre, without whose support I simply could not have managed. They were unfailingly brilliant when I panicked over technical stuff. So, thanks to Paul Allpress, and particularly to Alex Havell and Claire Wallace, Luke Ingerson, Miles Dymott and Neil Forshaw. Gill Powell patiently explained the tricky business of how to get the bibliography to follow the endnotes.

INTRODUCTION

Are girls better off today than they were at the beginning of the twentieth century? Conditions vary widely across the globe. In parts of the world girls suffer disproportionately from poverty, lack of education, and appalling levels of sexual violence. But there can be no doubt that in some countries, at least, they have more opportunities, more choices and infinitely more personal freedom than ever before. Does this mean that we can afford to be optimistic about the impact of modernity on girls? Have young women emerged as winners rather than losers in modern history?

These are large questions and beg larger ones. This book is more modest in its remit and focuses primarily on Britain, although it is informed by writing and ideas about girlhood from North America, Australia and Europe. Many of the issues and themes which are dealt with will be familiar to readers outside these regions: controversy about whether girls should be seen as the victims or beneficiaries of ‘progress' have had a very wide currency.

In what ways are girls better off in Britain now than they were in Victorian times? Whereas in the past girls were schooled for home duties and pushed into domestic service, they are now educated along much the same lines as boys. And they do extremely well in education, at both school and university levels. As far as work opportunities go, young women have many more options than their mothers had, and certainly vastly more choice than their grandmothers. Many liberties are taken for granted:
political rights, the freedom to move about the city, to drive cars, to operate bank accounts, to enter into contracts, to take out loans and to manage financial affairs. All this would have been unimaginable in the 1890s, and even in the 1950s and 1960s bank managers (then all male) routinely refused to grant young unmarried women the mortgages that would have allowed them to own their own homes. Up until the 1970s, opportunities for sexual self-expression were limited. Girls were generally assumed to be in pursuit of husbands. They were expected to remain chaste before marriage, and anything else – especially unmarried pregnancy – brought social shame and a prospect of doom. Today, most girls in Britain have much more control over their bodies and their sexuality.

This is not, by any means, to assert that everything in the garden is rosy. Young women today face many problems. Some of these are new, and some are depressingly familiar. There are still ‘double standards' of sexual morality, for instance. Boys have more licence, and they get away with much more. Young women suffer more than men do from bullying, and from sexual violence. And girls are too often expected to be perfect in every way: at school, in work and behaviour, and in the way they look. Subjected to such pressures, they can turn their anger and a sense of powerlessness, or lack of control inwards, resulting in eating disorders and depression.