Romance, Marriage, and Divorce in British Home Front Films of the Second World War
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Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Theses Department of History 12-16-2015 A Couple That Fights Together Stays Together: Romance, Marriage, And Divorce In British Home Front Films Of The Second World War Idit Kolan Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_theses Recommended Citation Kolan, Idit, "A Couple That Fights Together Stays Together: Romance, Marriage, And Divorce In British Home Front Films Of The Second World War." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2015. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_theses/102 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A COUPLE THAT FIGHTS TOGETHER STAYS TOGETHER: ROMANCE, MARRIAGE, AND DIVORCE IN BRITISH HOME FRONT FILMS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR by IDIT KOLAN Under the Direction of Ian C. Fletcher ABSTRACT The impact of total war on the British home front from 1939 to 1945 was profound. In particular, military and economic mobilization disrupted gender relations. Men and women of different class and national backgrounds encountered each other, sometimes forming romantic relationships that strained the institutions of marriage and family. This disruption was heavily depicted in wartime British cinema, especially in feature films devoted to the home front experience. Differences of class, gender, and nationality were downplayed in order to construct a solidaristic meaning for wartime social experience, fitting for “the People’s War.” My thesis examines romantic relationships and marriages depicted in numerous British home front films. While many films featured unconventional couples of mixed class or nationality, they did not always offer happy endings. I argue that these films evince the problems of marriage in wartime Britain and foreshadow the rise in divorce that came with peace in 1945-46. INDEX WORDS: Britain, Second World War, Film, Home Front, Gender, Marriage, Divorce A COUPLE THAT FIGHTS TOGETHER STAYS TOGETHER: ROMANCE, MARRIAGE, AND DIVORCE IN BRITISH HOME FRONT FILMS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR by IDIT KOLAN A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2015 Copyright by Idit Kolan 2015 A COUPLE THAT FIGHTS TOGETHER STAYS TOGETHER: ROMANCE, MARRIAGE, AND DIVORCE IN BRITISH HOME FRONT FILMS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR by IDIT KOLAN Committee Chair: Ian C. Fletcher Committee: Denise Z. Davidson Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University December 2015 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ....................................................................................................................... vi 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 1 2 “Oh, isn't it like an Englishman to niggle about a thing like that?”: Foreigners and Romance .......... 14 2.1 The Made-in-Hollywood American ............................................................................................ 15 2.2 The Practical Russian .................................................................................................................. 21 2.3 The French Lover ........................................................................................................................ 28 2.4 The Neutral Irish ......................................................................................................................... 33 2.5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 39 3 “The world’s rather made up of two kinds of people; you’re one sort and I’m the other”: Cross-Class Romance ..................................................................................................................................................... 45 3.1 An Officer and a Gentleman ....................................................................................................... 46 3.2 Working-class Pride .................................................................................................................... 53 3.3 Beware of Strangers .................................................................................................................... 63 3.4 An Americanized Middle-Class .................................................................................................. 72 3.5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 82 4 “I want the wife I left behind, not something different”: Disrupted Marriage, Forced Separation, and Divorce ........................................................................................................................................................ 89 4.1 “I’m still a respectable married woman” .................................................................................... 90 4.2 “I wish I didn’t have to keep reminding myself you are a married woman” .............................. 97 4.3 “A fear of becoming forgotten men” ........................................................................................ 103 4.4 “You must stay with him” ......................................................................................................... 108 4.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 113 5 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 117 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................. 122 v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1. I Live in Grosvenor Square: the People discuss the Americans .................................................. 18 Figure 2. Tawny Pipit: aggressive Soviet femininity .................................................................................. 25 Figure 3. Johnny Frenchman: a deglamorized female in a realist setting ................................................... 31 Figure 4. I See a Dark Stranger: a damsel in distress ................................................................................. 36 Figure 5. English Without Tears: a gentleman’s apprenticeship ................................................................. 50 Figure 6. Millions Like Us: good-time girl Phyllis ..................................................................................... 58 Figure 7. Piccadilly Incident movie poster: Beware of Strangers............................................................... 68 Figure 8. Mrs Miniver: glamorous middle-class femininity ....................................................................... 73 Figure 9. Mrs Miniver: stoic resolve facing the enemy .............................................................................. 75 Figures 10a-b. Perfect Strangers: gloomy blackout couple transforms via light ........................................ 95 Figure 11. Waterloo Road: the decadent world of nighttime London ...................................................... 100 Figure 12. The Captive Heart: Falling in love through pretence .............................................................. 106 Figure 13. The Years Between: New MP Diana creating “quite a stir” .................................................... 109 vi 1 Introduction When I started watching British feature films made during or immediately after the Second World War, I was particularly interested in plots dealing with everyday situations that depicted the everyman’s and everywoman’s response to a prolonged total war. I watched these films through the lens of gender, paying close attention to roles and relations. In films about the home front, it soon became apparent that men’s and women’s love interests and relationships provided an endless array of real-life situations to explore. My thesis investigates the plot patterns and cultural significance of heterosexual romance and marriage in British home front films. Film as a means of entertainment is very much a product of its time. It is a negotiation with social reality, sometimes reproducing real-life situations, especially in the realist genre, sometimes recreating a parallel, wished-for reality. The war disrupted British society on many levels, including gender relations. Films made at that time responded to the current preoccupations of the British people and tried to construct a meaning out of the experience of a total war. Contemporary gender discourse both shaped these films and, in turn, was shaped by them. Cinema is a perfect medium to appreciate the social and cultural discourse of a nation, because it is collectively produced and consumed.1 Therefore it is not surprising that many feature films made during the war conveyed the new possibilities opened up in the British courting world: conscripted men and mobile women going out of the house, the mixing of classes as well as sexes in war industries and in the armed forces, and the encounters