A path-breaking account of the women involved in various aspects of the evacuation process. The book is a rich mixture of analytical precision and personal testimony, presenting a compelling story of the women involved in each stage of evacuation: from mothers waving goodbye to their children, to the women who helped smooth their way, to the women who struggled with the challenges of bringing up other women’s children, through to the—mainly female— teachers who acted in loco parentis.

Midland History Journal

[<i>Women and Evacuation in the Second World War</i>] makes an important and necessary contribution to the historiography of evacuation and will undoubtedly become a key text for those interested in the social history of Britain during the Second World War.

Histoire sociale/Social History

This is an engaging account that brings to life the impact of the Second World War’s evacuation experiences on adult women and especially on mothers with empathy for its subject and a keen awareness of why these stories matter. It makes a valuable contribution to the history of women in this war and in modern Britain more generally.

Susan R. Grayzel, Professor of History, Utah State University, USA

Groups of young evacuees, standing on railway stations with gas masks and cardboard suitcases have become an iconic image of wartime Britain, but their histories have eclipsed those of women whose domestic lives were affected. This book explores the effects of this unparalleled interference in the domestic lives of women, looking at the impact on everyday experience and on ideas of femininity, domesticity and motherhood. Maggie Andrews argues that wartime evacuation is important for understanding the experience and the contested meanings of domesticity and motherhood in the 20th century. As this book shows, evacuation represents a significant and unrecognised area of women's war work, and precipitated the rise of competing public discourses about domestic labour and motherhood.
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Introduction1. Myths, Memories and Memorials of Evacuation2. Femininity, Domesticity and Motherhood 1900-19393. Nationalising Hundreds and Thousands of Women: A Domestic Response to a National Problem4. The Challenges of Enforced Intimacy: Looking after Evacuees5. Mothers Encouraged to Wave Goodbye6. Women's Organisations and Evacuation7. Women Were Paid to Care: Teachers, Social Workers and Psychologists8. Afterword: The Post-war Idealisation of the Family in the Wake EvacuationBibliographyIndex
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Explores the effects of evacuation on ideas of domesticity and motherhood.
The first analysis to explore evacuation from the perspective of women's and gender history

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781350196162
Publisert
2021-03-25
Utgiver
Vendor
Bloomsbury Academic
Vekt
336 gr
Høyde
234 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Aldersnivå
U, 05
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
256

Forfatter

Biographical note

Maggie Andrews is Professor of Cultural History at the University of Worcester, UK.