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A RE-EVALUATION OF JOYCE GRENFELL AS SOCIO-POLITICAL COMMENTATOR by Jane Emma CoomberSewell Canterbury Christ Church University Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2020 Contents Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ 4 Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter 2: Theoretical Literature Review and Methodological Framework ................................... 39 Chapter 3: Historical and Contextual Literature Review ................................................................ 73 Chapter 4: Grenfell’s Working Women Warriors ........................................................................... 99 Chapter 5: Reactive Relatives: Women working in unpaid roles .................................................. 156 Chapter 6: Belonging, Class, Space and Place............................................................................... 202 Chapter 7: The Time of My Life: Grenfell and the Second World War .......................................... 231 Chapter 8: Grenfell as herself: influencer, committee member, and public figure ...................... 270 Chapter 9: Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 304 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 316 Page 2 of 361 Acknowledgements I wish to thank a wide range of people for their support and guidance in the completion of this thesis. I am of course grateful to my supervisors, Dr Andrew Butler and Dr Stefania Cioccia, as well as Professor Caroline Oulton who was part of the team in the early days. I am thankful every day for the presence in my life of my wife, Joyce CoomberSewell, particularly for her never-ending faith in me and her ability to cut through my procrastination and academic grumpiness. There are a team of people who have proofread, critiqued and contributed; Sylvia and Francis Coomber, Jason Hodgson and Sue Vickers-Thompson being the principal but not sole members. I express deep gratitude to my Canadian connections for their support, particularly Nathan Pascoe and Nadean Schryer for supplying dynamic and intelligent translation, often at short notice. I am grateful to the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive, The Keep, University of Sussex, for permission to reproduce small excerpts from the collection. I express my thanks to the President and Fellows of Lucy Cavendish College for access to the College Archives. I am appreciative of the support and advice I have received from Dr Jill Sullivan of the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, in addition to access to the archives there. I am indebted to the National Archives, Kew, for access to their collection. Finally, I am grateful for the excuse to re-connect with my undergraduate supervisor, Professor Emerita Helen King, a considerable support through many years of education and now, my friend. Page 3 of 361 Abstract The objective of this thesis is to re-evaluate Joyce Grenfell and her monologues as socio- political commentary set within what the Wave Model of Feminism considers a dormant period. The challenges of the Wave Model are addressed, encompassing other models such as the Kaleidoscope model, in an attempt to reconcile the issues of the Wave Model with the realities of a splintered but active set of feminisms throughout Wartime and Reconstruction Britain. This proposition is underpinned by a literature review covering feminism from the 1920s to the 1970s. This reveals a faulty acceptance in the record that feminism was dormant from the achievement of women’s suffrage in the UK and America until the mid-1960s. While I acknowledge that theory-based feminist writing from an Anglo-American perspective was lacking during this time, the record of women working in new fields, challenging the marriage bar and taking other activist steps suggests that this period is a time of activity that is currently overlooked; women doing feminism by acting upon and widening the opportunities available. The theoretical framework and methodology have been refined throughout the analytical process. Using the 1953 translation of De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex as a primary feminist resource, and coming from an interpretivist standpoint, the research is framed by Foucauldian interpretations of power/knowledge and discourse analysis. An in-depth analysis of Grenfell’s creations concludes that her work is a socio-political commentary of great value to feminists and historians of feminism. It concludes that Grenfell was an astute observer, thinker and commentator with an awareness of women’s issues, who can be framed within a broad and strong feminist reading. Page 4 of 361 Chapter 1: Introduction The objective of this introduction is to outline the aims and background to this thesis and to provide biographical information on the primary subject of this study, Joyce Grenfell, OBE (1910-1979). There will then follow a literature review in two sections, the first (Chapter 2) outlining the literature and processes, leading to the theoretical framework and analytical approaches used throughout. The second part (Chapter 3) concentrates on the literature providing a historical viewpoint on late 1920s to 1970s feminism, contextualising it against Grenfell’s life, experience and performances. In subsequent chapters, I shall use the work of Simone De Beauvoir and Michel Foucault to examine Grenfell’s sketches by concentrating first on those where all the women are in paid work of some form (Chapter 4), and then those where they are in unpaid work roles, caring for family, friends, or being the power behind the throne of important leaders (Chapter 5). After discussing some pieces addressing socio-political issues of class and belonging (Chapter 6), I shall then examine these elements of Grenfell’s work which directly relate to the Second World War, set against her relationship with her soldier fans, their families, and the impact her war work had on her outlook long term (Chapter 7). Her roles on the Pilkington Committee (1960-62) and in the Bow Dialogues between 1968 and 1977 are then examined (Chapter 8). I shall consider whether there are any clear definitions or differentiations to be made between her socio-political stances as a performer and her other work as herself. Grenfell was an entertainer whose career began in Revue in 1938 and encompassed radio and film work as a comedian and actor, and television and radio work as herself. She is Page 5 of 361 perhaps best remembered for her monologues, and it is these that are the focus of the discursive field throughout this thesis. There is a school of thought in academia that Feminism was dead, or at least in hibernation between the later 1920s and the early 1960s. In her article, ‘The Women’s Movement Took the Wrong Turning’, Julie Gottlieb (2014) posits that women who had been active in feminism in the 1920s and who would have been the next generation of feminists in the 1930s and 40s were diverted either into pacifism or the war effort through that period. As the likelihood of war increased, Gottlieb poses the question, ‘Where did individual women, and particularly those who had spent the two preceding decades in the forefront of the feminist pacifist movement, position themselves during the Munich Crisis [1938], and how did they “arm” themselves for a war against Nazi Germany?’ (Gottlieb, 2014, p. 442). She argues that historians of diplomacy have ‘yet to rise to the challenge of gendering their topics’ (Gottlieb, 2014, p. 442). Gottlieb discusses the role of the feminist movement and notes that as the spectre of war grew, many, such as Maude Royden, who had previously been actively pacifist saw, in the rise of Hitler, something that even the passive resistance techniques seen as so effective at the time could not overcome. Thus, many who had been pacifist feminists took on the mantel of patriotic feminism. Finally Gottlieb argues that in the concentration on war, young women missed the opportunities to promote the feminist cause while also supporting the war effort. However, one only has to look at recent well researched historical dramas such as Home Front, which ran on BBC Radio 4 from 2014 until 2018 and Land Girls, another BBC production running 2009 to 2011, to see that during both World Wars, in Britain and beyond, thousands of women did not have time to be feminists because they were too Page 6 of 361 busy doing feminism. Therefore, it is the intention of this study to address alternative models and visualisations of feminism to highlight some of the feminist activity under way during this period. A very well-known public figure throughout this period, Grenfell worked, spoke and lived in ways previously earmarked for men; the public stage, political service in her roles on the Pilkington Committee, her input into public religious debate as part of a male majority roster in the Bow Dialogues among other appearances. However, she was in many respects an ordinary working woman who, like hundreds of other women from all classes, found her life significantly altered by the impact of the Second World War. As such,