Nationalising Femininity Culture, Sexuality and British Cinema in the Second World War

The Second World War was unprecedented in the changes it demanded in the contours of British life. Work, the family, social policies, and the media were all transformed, blurring the boundaries between private and public life and challenging class and gender divisions. In particular, women were called on to play a range of new roles which threw into question traditional conceptions of femininity and national identity. What was the relation between gender and nation when the waiting woman was displaced by the mobile woman and homes were flattened by bombs? What happened to notions of femininity, sexual difference, and class as women moved into the workplace and donned dungarees, military uniforms, and utility clothing? Such questions are explored in this groundbreaking collection of new essays which for the first time bring together the work of prominent feminist researchers in film, media studies, and social history. Case studies examine competing definitions of feminism circulating in cinema, women's magazines, social policies, government pamphlets, fashion, and broadcasting.

Christine Gledhill is Professor of Media Studies in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at the University of Sunderland. Gillian Swanson is Reader of Cultural History at the University of the West of England.

Prologue: mobile femininity * Mobile women: change and regulation * 'The girl that makes the thing . . . ': discourses of women and work in the Second World War * 'Bombs don't discriminate!' Women's political activism in the Second World War * 'So much money and so little to spend it on': morale, consumption and sexuality * Good wives and moral lives: marriage and divorce 1937-51 * Fashioning the national self: cultural practices and representations * 'Pulling our weight in the call-up of women': class and gender in British radio in the Second World War * Putting the black women in the frame: Una Marson and the West Indian challenge to British national identity * Women's magazines: times of war and management of the self in Woman's Own * The Family Firm restored: newsreel coverage of the British monarchy 1936-45 * Fashioning the feminine: dress, appearance and femininity in wartime Britain * Nationialising femininity: the case of British cinema * Cinema Culture and femininity in the 1930s * The years of total war: propaganda and entertainment * 'An abundance of understatement': documentary, melodrama and romance * Disguises and betrayals: negotiating nationality and femininity in three wartime films * The female audience: mobile women and married ladies * Stepping out or out of step? Austerity, affluence and femininity in two post-war films * Two weddings and two funerals: the problem of the post-war woman