Trousers and tiaras: Audrey Hepburn,a woman's star

Audrey Hepburn is one of cinema's most stylish and enduring icons, and has embodied an ideal of femininity for generations of women. Using textual analysis, archival research and audience accounts of ‘Doing the Hepburn Look’, I argue that Audrey Hepburn, as a star clearly addressing a female audience, offered a flexible image which was enabling to young women through dress in relation to exigencies of gender, class and national identity. The paper draws on research conducted as part of a larger project investigating Hepburn's ongoing appeal for young British women from the 1950s to the 1990s.     

Gendering transnational radio: women listeners and the BBC Empire and Overseas Services, 1932–1967

ABSTRACT

The BBC World Service, today a respected broadcaster on the global stage, had its origins in the BBC Empire Service of the 1930s. Shortwave radio broadcasts from London explicitly targeted isolated white men in the geographically dispersed British colonies and dominions, with the intention of strengthening them in their imperial endeavours. BBC staff positioned women at the margins of programming and scheduling decisions. Yet for some women listeners radio was a crucial constitutive element of their multi-sensory empire (and post-empire) experience. This paper draws on the BBC Written Archives collection to explore the neglected topic of gender in relation to international broadcasting, focusing on how white women ‘exiles’ and settlers used and understood radio in their daily lives from the 1930s to the 1960s. BBC Overseas broadcasting, as the Empire and later General Overseas Services, provides a fruitful channel into further exploration of the gendered nature of the transnational domain, illustrating women's agency in the complex webs of empire.     

“So distant and wild a scene”: language,domesticity and difference in Hannah Kilham's writing from West Africa, 1822-1832

Abstract

Hannah Kilham (1774-1832), a Sheffield Quaker, was involved in philanthropic, educational and missionary work with women in Britain, Ireland and West Africa in the early nineteenth century. In this article the author focuses upon Hannah Kilham's. engagement in the religious and domestic education of African girls and women in the 1820s and 1830s. Through representations of African women as in need of her ‘civilising influence’, Kilham was able to construct a powerful role for herself, and for other white middle-class British women, in the colonial/missionary enterprise. The article explores the significance of notions of gender, domesticity and the Protestant family to the construction of ideas about Africa's ‘difference’ and, through this, British national identity.     

Bridging cross-cultural feminisms: annie besant and women's rights in England and India, 1874-1933

Abstract

Annie Besant was a Victorian radical whose outspoken views included advocacy of women's rights and opposition to British imperial policies. In her mid-forties she went to live in India. Contesting British attempts to Westernize Indian society, Besant found herself in the seemingly anomalous position of defending traditional Indian patriarchy and resisting efforts to reform the status of Indian women. Such conservatism brought on Besant criticism not only from Western liberals and Christian missionaries, but also from many Indian social reformers. When she gradually shifted her views and voiced her support for Indian women's rights, Indian nationalists condemned her as a British imperialist. The conflict between loyalty to national heritage and opposition to traditional patriarchy is one that colonized women have commonly experienced. By examining how an anti-imperialist British feminist responded to the question of women's reform in India, this paper offers another perspective on the complexities of this dilemma.     

Feminising Empire? British Women's Activist Networks in Defending and Challenging Empire from 1918 to Decolonisation

ABSTRACT

This article addresses female activism spanning the Empire and creating interconnected networks linking the local and global dimensions of Britain's imperial mission in an era of increasing uncertainty. The transition from empire to commonwealth and, ultimately, independence was marked by anti-colonial challenges from within Britain and in the colonies and threats to empire from international developments post-1918. This era also witnessed a more proactive role for women as both defenders and critics of empire who had an influence on shaping a new discourse of welfare and development, purportedly a ‘feminisation’ of empire. Continuities existed between female activism pre- and post-1918 but also significant differences as the late imperial era witnessed more nuanced and diverse interventions into empire affairs than the ‘maternalist imperial feminism’ of the era before the First World War.     

“I am myself it”: comparative national identity formation in the lives of Vera Brittain and Edith Stein

Abstract

This is a study of the tranformational impact of their World War One experiences on the national identities of two eminent feminist intellectuals, Vera Brittain and Edith Stein, each a volunteer Red Cross nurse on opposing warfronts. The essay examines how their gender, ethnicity, social class, and feminism intersect within this identity. To assess the War's impact, the author first probes – through extensive research in unpublished and recently published documents – the nature and evolution of Brittain and Stein's pre-war national identities, identities featuring a complex and ambiguous interplay of European and national consciousness. Through analysis of the tension between national and European identity in Brittain's and Stein's lives, the essay highlights key questions with regard to national similarities and differences in women's wartime experiences, as well as revealing critical factors vital to wider analysis of the War's impact on female national identity, particularly among educated middle-class German and British women.     

Eileen Power's Asian journey, 1920-21: history,narrative, and subjectivity

Abstract

This article analyses the travel writings of the British medieval historian, Eileen Power (1889-1940), during her year-long journey around the world in 1920-21 as the first and only female awarded a travel fellowship administered by the Trustees of the University of London in the years following the First World War. Drawing upon a comparative reading of her official Report to the Trustees and her private diary record of her ‘Tour du Monde’, we examine the various dimensions of subjectivity and identity evident in her narrative of the journey, interrogating the difference which gender makes in the relationship of European travellers to empire. In addition, we examine how the narrative of her journey and subsequent historical narratives were part of those Orientalist forces/discourses which produced and were produced by the West's relationship to the East in the first half of the twentieth century.     

From Settlers to Strays: white Zimbabwean women,historical memory and belonging in the diaspora c.1980–2010

ABSTRACT

Based on interviews with thirty women, this article examines white attitudes to the coming of Zimbabwe's independence in 1980. As it details, many of the interviewees construct problematic versions of the past, foregrounding what Annie E. Coombes has termed the ‘deceptively benign’ nature of settler colonialism. Through an examination of the context in which the interviews were conducted, the article comments on the mobilisation of certain post-colonial narratives regarding Zimbabwe's recent past. By examining the voices of some of Southern Africa's ‘orphans of empire', it engages with existing literatures on white women and empire, settler colonialism and diaspora studies.     

adventurers,foreign women and masculinity in the Colombian Wars of Independence

This paper examines changing conceptions of honour and masculinity during the Colombian Wars of Independence in the early 19th century. It explores the position of the foreign women who accompanied British and Irish expeditions to join the war against Spanish rule, and shows how colonial, imperial and republican conceptions of masculinity were affected by the role that women played in these volunteer expeditions and in the wars in general. The paper considers women's experiences during war and peace, and examines their experiences in the light of changing conceptions of masculinity at home, in the British empire and in Hispanic America in the early nineteenth century. The social mobility of the Wars of Independence shifted the ground on which these concepts rested for all groups involved. The participation of foreign women alongside male adventurers was a further ingredient in this disorientating period.     

Imperialist Women and Conservative Activism in Early-Twentieth-Century Britain: the political world of Violet Milner

While elite women's imperialist activism in early-twentieth-century Britain is now well recognised, little attention has been paid to how this female imperialism was integrated into broader right-wing politics. The adherence of many right-wing women to a conventionally ‘masculine’ model of empire is also under-researched. This article explores the connections between imperial and wider right-wing politics, the new forms of Conservative activism for women they generated, and the ‘masculinist’ gender model of this imperial Conservatism, through an investigation of the political life of Violet Milner (1872–1958). It emphasises the impact of the South African war in forming imperial ideologies which influenced attitudes to ‘domestic’ as well as imperial politics; highlights the degree to which elite women participated in the campaigns of the Edwardian radical right over tariff reform, national service and Ulster, and in the interwar ‘diehard’ campaigns over India; and traces the enduring influence of turn-of-the-century imperial attitudes into the post-war era as demonstrated by her revival of the ‘Milner religion’ and her editorship of the National Review.     

Gendering the union: imperial feminism and the ladies’ land league

The Act of Union of 1800, establishing Westminster control over Irish affairs, had important repercussions for the development of feminism within nineteenth-century Ireland, as well as contributing towards adifferentiation of Irish from British feminism. Feminism within Ireland was shaped by class, religion and racial identification: one strand followed theBritish model of Protestant philanthropy, while the other was concerned with asserting women's right to take part in nationalist political struggle. ‘Imperial’ feminists in Britain and Ireland, concerned with establishing their right to take part in the affairs of the ‘nation’, perceived those Irish who rejected British imperial rule as uncivilised, reserving sympathy for those whose economic position was threatened by the activities of those who campaigned against the landlord system. The period of the Land War of 1879–82 illustrates these conflicting discourses. The subsequent decline of imperial power in Ireland can be traced through a gradual change within Irish feminism from an initial support for the Union to a later embrace of nationalism, as young middle-class women, many from Catholic backgrounds, became involved in the movement     

‘Too Many’

The statement that Australia has ‘too many abortions’ often circulates with intensity in times of increased worry over the vulnerability of white demographic and sociocultural dominance in Australia. Contrasting two such periods—the 1970s (with 1979 as the apex point) and the mid-2000s (2002–2008)—this article will show that, in times of national crisis, debates over abortion can become a site where politicians, journalists and other influential social commentators displace and assuage anxieties regarding the size and constitution of Australia's future population. The statement that Australia has ‘too many abortions’ carries the imperative for white women to reproduce the nation. This demand is made perceptible through a history of maternal citizenship for white women, which reverberates in the present, and the articulation of the desire to eradicate abortion (amongst white women) alongside other key biopolitical technologies—the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty and the exclusion of non-white immigrants from the nation. The figure of the aborting woman thus stands alongside other bodies perceived as threats to white sociocultural hegemony in Australia and one of its key institutions—the white, hetero-family. In the 1970s, such figures included the communist, the divorcee and the (non-white) immigrant, and in the 2000s, the lesbian mother, the single mother and the boatperson. The association of aborting women with other threats to the security of white sociocultural hegemony in Australia produces her as an object of fear for the nation, re-affirming the goal of white reproduction as a national duty and social good.     

Citizens on the Shop Floor: Negotiating Class,Citizenship and National Identity in a Turkish State Factory

ABSTRACT

This paper examines discourses on citizenship and nation at shop floor level through Bak?rköy Cloth Factory – a state-owned factory in Istanbul, Turkey. Founded as a private enterprise in 1850, Bak?rköy became the State Industrial Office’s property in 1932 and of Sümerbank, the young Turkish state’s bank and industrial holding company in charge of textile production in 1933. Having survived such a drastic regime change, the factory’s first two decades under Sümerbank were shaped by the ruling classes’ zealous and simultaneous efforts of nation-building and industrialization. In the ruling classes’ popular projection, the alleged conversion of an unproductive industrial relic of the imperial past into an example of Republican hard work and patriotism provided opportunities for workers to repay their debt to the nation and its forefathers. In the context of the displacement and mediation of class conflict via nationalist discourses, this study explores how this industrial national space became the site of discursive struggles on national belonging and citizenship. Material from parliamentary debates and media coverage is linked with workers’ files to offer a micro-historical perspective on the interactions between class and nation.     

Heterosexual Love in the British Women's Liberation Movement: reflections from the Sisterhood and After archive

The question of how to be a heterosexual feminist has long vexed women's liberationists. This article is interested in how a set of British activist women in the 1970s dealt with the challenges of heterosexual love. The article's source for this is the Sisterhood and After archive, the relatively untouched tranche of interviews with leading activists in the women's liberation movement (WLM), compiled between 2010 and 2013 and held at the British Library. Through these intimate and often enigmatic sources, the author sets out to explore the space between the theory of loving men and its practice among a handful of women liberationists. In doing so the author emphasises the importance of a supra-political space, the private, in the composition of these narratives. In addition, the socialist complexion to the British women’s movement is considered in the context of the wider political moment of the 1970s.     

Feminism,imperialism and orientalism: the challenge of the ‘Indian woman’

Abstract

This article examines the content and process of imperialist discourse on the ‘Indian woman’ in the writings of two North American women, one writing at the time of ‘first wave’ feminism, the other a key exponent of the ‘second wave’ of the movement. By analysing these writings, it demonstrates how the content of the discourse was reproduced over time ith different but parallel effects in the changed political circumstances, in the first case producing the Western imperial powers as superior on the scale of civilisation, and in the second case producing Western women as the leaders of global feminism. It also identifies how the process of creating written images occurred within the context of each author's social relations with the subject, the reader and the other authors, showing how an orientalist discourse can be produced through the author's representation of the human subjects of whom she writes; how this discourse can be reproduced through the author's uncritical use of earlier writers; and how the discourse can be activated in the audience through the author's failure to challenge established cognitive structures in the reader.     

Empire,Gender and the ‘Home Front’ in Fascist Italy

This article considers the ways in which Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and the subsequent League of Nations sanctions shaped the tasks assigned to women within the Fascist Party. During the period of sanctions and, indeed, after their ending, right up until the Second World War, empire and women’s contribution to it became a core theme in Fascist propaganda. Female party members were mobilised for the imperial cause both as producers and as consumers and this led to a new emphasis on their importance to the nation. The activities of the Fascist women’s groups expanded considerably to include a range of new tasks such as running training courses on how to fight waste in housework, ‘autarkic cookery’ and so on. This article also discusses how young Italian women were prepared for a role in Italy’s ‘place in the sun’ through special courses created to train them for a future as colonial wives.     

‘The Women's Branch of the Commonwealth Relations Office’: the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women and the long life of empire migration

ABSTRACT

This article concerns the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women from its formation in 1919 to its closure in 1964 upon the withdrawal of the Treasury grant that provided the bulk of its funding. Describing the imperial network of voluntary organisations and migrants, through which the Society operated, it shows continuity in its activities, geographical remit and personnel from the interwar period despite efforts, especially by the 1960s, to reframe the Society's imperial mission with the rhetoric of Commonwealth and development. It highlights the persistence of imperial institutions and networks after the Second World War.     

Europe's Northern Periphery and the Future of Women in the Travel Narratives of Ethel Tweedie

Among the writers who defined the European northern periphery for British readers towards the end of the nineteenth century, Ethel Brilliana (Mrs Alec) Tweedie was a significant figure. In addition to numerous articles about various aspects of Fenno-Scandinavian culture, she published three book-length narratives based on her northern journeys, A Girl's Ride in Iceland (1889), A Winter Jaunt to Norway (1894), and Through Finland in Carts (1897). Though almost forgotten today, these books were widely read at the time, and Tweedie came to be regarded as an authority on the north. What makes Tweedie's Nordic travel narratives unique and of interest today is their conflation of discourses of northernness and female emancipation.

This article outlines two different and apparently contradictory representations of the European north in Tweedie's travel narratives of the 1890s. On the one hand, they primitivize Fenno-Scandinavia by emphasizing the arctic climate and the area's distance both culturally and geographically from metropolitan European centres. On the other hand, Tweedie's Nordic travel narratives give the peripheral countries of Fenno-Scandinavia a symbolic centrality in the development of Europe. In some respects, particularly women's participation in social life, the northern nations are represented as models of progress. My focus is on Tweedie's final and most ambitious Nordic travel narrative, Through Finland in Carts, which equates northernness with modernity and the future of women. Compared to this exemplary north it is Britain that lags behind, and the contrast implies a fundamental critique of British culture at the fin de siècle. Finally, I trace the personal circumstances informing Tweedie's interest in Finnish women and discuss why they are deliberately concealed in the text itself.     

‘White Already to Harvest’: South Australian Women Missionaries in India

In 1882, the South Australian Baptist Missionary Society sent off its first missionaries to Faridpur in East Bengal. Miss Marie Gilbert and Miss Ellen Arnold were the first of a stream of missionary women who left the young South Australian colony to work in India. Scores of women from other Christian denominations and from other Australian colonies also went to India and indeed to other mission fields in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As with other western women missionaries, these women intended to save souls and to bring India's daughters to Christ, often by means of medical work. But unlike their British sisters, these women came from the edge of empire to intervene in another, but different, colonial site. These missionary ventures coincided with efforts of the Australian settlers to elaborate for themselves an identity separate from and against that of the metropolitan centre. Within these debates, contestations over the meaning of ‘the colonial girl’ and ‘the Australian girl’ played a key role. The article explores why the women were drawn to India rather than to working with Aboriginal people in Australia. It begins to investigate how in seeking to reconstruct Indian womanhood they elaborated for themselves a separate colonial, Australian identity and how much in their missionary endeavours they affirmed an identity as white, Christian and ultimately British.     

Gender, nation, landscape and identity in narratives of exile and return

This article is concerned with issues of nation, landscape, and identity in narratives of exile and return. It is based on the oral testimonies and written narratives of German Jewish Marxist women who were driven out of their homeland by German fascism, yet returned after the end of World War II, dedicated to the building of socialism, or more precisely to realising the dream of a society free of prejudice and discrimination. What interests me here is to elicit a sense of the complex ways in which people construct their sense of identity in relation to notions of nation and belonging. In particular, I am fascinated by what impelled this largish group of refugees from Hitler's Germany to return, and how they felt about Germany as “their” country (Vaterland), their “homeland” (Heimat), or at the very least their country of origin. Nor was this relationship static. This is a group of women who have “migrated” twice in one lifetime: the first time fleeing their homeland in a forced migration to escape persecution and death; the return a voluntary “re-migration” in the name of an ideological commitment. Their narratives present both exile and return in retrospect. Thus, their subjective identifications with notions of nation are also retrospective, relating to Germany first from the perspective of involuntary exile, or second, towards the end of their lives, from the vantage point of a united Germany, achieved at the expense of the death of the socialist dream in whose service they returned. This means that they have been forced—through moments of historical crisis—to renegotiate both their own identities and their relationship to Germany multiple times during a single lifetime. The intimate inter-relationship of the personal and the political in these women's lives, and the retrospective reworking of their historically driven life decisions makes these women's narratives on the issues of landscape and homeland particularly rich sources on the subject of identity and belonging.