Examining the Emotional Experiences of Canadian Servicewomen During the Second World War
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“OH! IT’S ALL ONE BIG HAPPY TIME”: EXAMINING THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES OF CANADIAN SERVICEWOMEN DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR DANICA RENKE Bachelor of Arts, University of Lethbridge, 2017 A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in HISTORY Department of History University of Lethbridge LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA, CANADA © Danica Renke, 2019 “OH! IT’S ALL ONE BIG HAPPY TIME”: EXAMINING THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES OF CANADIAN SERVICEWOMEN DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR DANICA RENKE Date of Defence: August 29, 2019 Dr. Amy Shaw Associate Professor Ph.D. Thesis Supervisor Dr. Lynn Kennedy Associate Professor Ph.D. Thesis Examination Committee Member Dr. Kristine Alexander Associate Professor Ph.D. Thesis Examination Committee Member Dr. Christopher Burton Associate Professor Ph.D. Chair, Thesis Examination Committee Abstract This thesis explores the emotional experiences of Canadian servicewomen during the Second World War and their reactions to service life. Almost two years after entering the war, the Canadian government concluded that enlisting women in the military freed up more men to fight while allowing the services to maintain regular operations. As women moved into these traditionally male roles, the government and military tired to direct them in how they should act and feel while in service. This was demonstrated in propaganda and popular media, such as newspapers, that depicted the lives of servicewomen. In response, this thesis considers how servicewomen fit or broke with these emotional standards set out for them, all while in the context of trying to maintain morale. iii Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank my committee, Dr. Amy Shaw, Dr. Lynn Kennedy, and Dr. Kristine Alexander, for providing me with valuable feedback and guidance. Their steady encouragement made this project seem realistic at times when it felt very half-formed. A thank you must be given to the staff at Library and Archives Canada and the Canadian War Museum for their patience and kindness in helping me find the sources that became the foundations of this project. To my friends, thank you for being there for me and understanding when I disappeared for longer than normal. Thank you for your kind words, laughter, and baking when I needed them the most. I am very blessed to have you all. To my family, especially my mother, thank you for never failing to pick up the phone and talk me though the good and hard times during this process. Without your support I do not think I would have made it these last two years. I loaf you and am forever grateful that you are in my life. Thank you to our dogs, Lando and Heinz, for always being happy to see me. Finally, I want to dedicate this thesis to my grandmother, Adeline Ziegenhagel, who first showed me the value of history and always believed in me no matter what. iv Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Targeting Women’s Emotions on an Official Level 25 Chapter 2: Positive Emotions 68 Chapter 3: Negative Emotions 104 Conclusion 135 References 141 v Introduction “On Wednesday, the 18 of November, civilian Lamb offered herself unwillingly and willingly, willy nilly, to the C.W.A.C…I’ve never known so much misery.”1 These words of Molly Lamb Bobak, considered by the Canadian government as Canada’s first female war artist, capture the mixed emotions of women who entered one of the Canadian armed forces that opened to them during the Second World War. On the tenth of September 1939, Canada officially entered the War and many new opportunities opened up for women across Canada. Women found themselves entering previously male-dominated work spaces as the need for men to serve overseas grew. Initially, the work that was offered to women was similar to that in the First World War, such as jobs in production factories or the traditional female role of nursing. It soon became apparent, however, that allowing women in the military to cover positions that were similar to those they were already doing outside the services, such as secretarial work, would also release many more able-bodied men to fight overseas. To this end, it is estimated that around 50 000, mostly young, women joined one of Canada’s armed forces during the Second World War.2 Many of those women, like Molly Lamb Bobak, felt mixed emotions about their time in service, captured in their personal diaries and letters. Historians have focused on examining the changing roles of women and the meaning and maintenance of femininity in Canada’s wartime society, but they have largely neglected how women viewed and recorded their own experiences. For example, research on propaganda and marketing aimed at women during this time period 1 Molly Lamb Bobak, “Girl Takes Drastic Step,” November 22, 1942, W110278: The Personal War Records of Private Lamb, M., 1942–45, R5336-20-1-E, Library and Archives Canada. 2 “Canada Remembers Women at War,” Veterans Affairs Canada, https://www.veterans.gc.ca/pdf/cr/pi- sheets/women.pdf, 2. 1 demonstrates some of the struggles the government and wider Canadian society faced in allowing women into male-centered spaces while attempting to maintain previous standards of femininity. What this research does not consider is whether or not women chose to conform to these standards.3 It also does not consider how women were responding to the war or their place within it, including how servicewomen reacted to entering a previously male dominated sphere. This study specifically seeks to examine the emotional expressions of servicewomen because they found themselves moving into military roles that had never been opened up to women, unlike some areas of the civilian workforce. Studying their diaries and letters provides a means to understand if their experiences fit with emotional narratives presented in propaganda and media coverage that demonstrated how servicewomen should be acting. The government used and influenced these types of sources in order to try and have people behave in certain ways, especially ways that helped strengthen morale. Because of this type of content, these sources provide good insight into how the government expected servicewomen to behave as they entered the military. Additionally, this thesis will show that servicewomen were aware of what was emotionally required of them, and they actively worked to maintain these emotional standards, believing that keeping up the morale of themselves and those around them was of utmost importance for the success of the war effort. By examining servicewomen’s diaries and letters it is possible to demonstrate that even though many of the emotions and opportunities promised to women became a reality, such as overseas 3 Ruth Roach Pierson, “They’re Still Women After All”: The Second World War and Canadian Womanhood (Toronto: McClelland and Steward, 1986), 133. Here she is referring to domesticity, particularly what is seen as the naturalized position of women within the home, rather than the workplace public sphere. 2 work, only some of them were recorded by women with the same level of importance as had been placed on them in propaganda and media. Examining the effort to influence women’s emotions through the media, in propaganda posters, or newspapers, sheds light on how the government thought women should be feeling about their service, and what constituted “correct” displays of emotion. “Correct” displays of emotion in this instance will refer to women responding emotionally to their lives in ways that were seen as desirable for keeping up morale and not harming the war effort. As sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild argued in 1979, society can try and control emotions and their expression, and people living within that society both perform “emotion work” and “feeling rules.” This analysis suggests that emotions can be socially learned by creating regimes that construct and direct rules and constraints.4 These regimes consist of people actively altering the “degree or quality of an emotion or feeling,” trying to fit to the expected guidelines of how they think they should be feeling and attempting to conform with social conventions already in place.5 In this way, servicewomen tried to “fit” their emotional displays with what was seen as correct for them during their time in the services. For example, an official press release for the Royal Canadian Air Force Women’s Division (RCAF WD) noted that “they take the orders happily, for throughout the service there is a feeling of oneness and espirit de corps, of working with and for one another, and the Air Force, that cannot be denied.”6 It 4 See here William Reddy’s notion of “emotional regimes” in The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), xiii. 5 Arlie Russell Hochschild, “Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure,” American Journal of Sociology 83, no. 3 (Nov. 1979): 561-4. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 6 Royal Canadian Air Force, “The Women’s Division” Article No. 4, Library and Archives Canada, 181.009 D87 box 40. 3 was correct for women to feel happy with their servicewomen position, moreover, it was expected. An examination of their letters and diaries is a useful means of examining how sentiments like these were expressed in the words of women themselves. It also shows when, why, and how they might have deviated from these correct displays of emotion, and how they reacted to having “incorrect” emotional responses. Because the maintenance of support of war, through high morale, is perhaps the most important emotional focus of the government and military in wartime, morale will be a key focus of this thesis.