Australian Girl Readers, Femininities and Feminism in the Second World War (1939-1945): a study of subjectivity and agency. A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY from UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG by ROSEMARY FERGUSON WEBB, BA, MA. History and Politics 2004 Table of Contents Table of Contents ii List of Figures iv Abstract v Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Chapter One: Theoretical Perspectives 28 Chapter Two: Elementary School Classroom Reading and Voice 65 Chapter Three: Elementary School Library Reading and Public 100 Struggle Chapter Four: Secondary School Examination Reading and 138 Feminine Service as Leaders and as Followers Chapter Five: Secondary School Library Reading and 175 Natural Feminine Choice Chapter Six: Approved Reading in the Home and Moral 211 Choice Chapter Seven: The Pattern of Approved and Disapproved Magazine Reading in the Home and the Autonomous Group 252 Conclusion 292 ii Appendix Background Information on Participants 298 Bibliography 307 iii List of Figures Chapter Two Figure 1 opposite p 74 Figure 2 opposite p 75 Figure 3 opposite p 76 Figure 4 opposite p 77 Figure 5 opposite p 78 Figure 6 opposite p 79 Figure 7 opposite p 80 Chapter Three Figure 1 opposite p 117 Figure 2 opposite p 121 Chapter Four Figure 1 opposite p 159 Chapter Seven Figure 1 opposite p 271 Figure 2 opposite p 272 iv Abstract The thesis argues that in the unique society of second world war Australia girls had agency and used this agency so that the meaning of both the idea of ‘girl’ and the idea of ‘young femininity’ were altered. They did this in ways which made their experience of girlhood and young womanhood more satisfying. Furthermore, their agency created a notion of youthful femininity which would subsequently form a foundation for the emergence of second wave feminism in Australia in the early second half of the twentieth century. Using Foucauldian notions of the way power works in modern western societies, the thesis traces the relative contributions of the authorities responsible for shaping girls and of the girls themselves to the emergence of a new discourse of girlhood by 1945. The thesis focuses on six qualities of girlhood recognised by both authorities and girls by the end of the war. It demonstrates the way these qualities challenged the idea of ‘girl’ the authorities had at the beginning of the war even while girls were coming to see the same qualities as part of girlhood. It also charts the developing acceptance by Australian society of these qualities as part of femininity. To do this it looks at the way reading was understood by wartime authorities as a tool for shaping the ideal social subject. The thesis also, through reader response and memory theory, deploys memories of reading as an instrument which allows the researcher to uncover how girls themselves understood their relationship to the world and to others. In order to do this it draws on a specially constructed archive of the memories of both authoritatively approved and disapproved wartime reading as it was experienced by one hundred and thirty two women. These women were girls between the ages of twelve and eighteen at some time during the second world war. v Acknowledgments This thesis could not have begun, nor would its development have been sustained, without the contributions of many others. It is very satisfying to have the opportunity to recognise them here. Firstly, to my supervisor, Dr Catriona Elder, whose simultaneous encouragement and exhortations to think harder and write more clearly ensured the development of my skills as a historian, thank you. I also thank Dr John McQuilton of Wollongong University’s School of History and Politics. His breadth of historical vision meant that when I originally approached him with this project he understood its value and encouraged me to undertake it. Thanks, too, must go to those appreciators of reading who kindly shared their memories of wartime reading with me and so opened a window into ‘the world of girls’ in wartime Australia. I compared the readers’ memories with wartime reading authorities’ ideas of girlhood in order to trace the girls’ contribution to emerging notions of girlhood and I could not have done this without help from the following. The skills and support of some truly dedicated librarians and archivists in state libraries, education department libraries, high schools, state elementary schools, private schools and Catholic schools gave me access to documents containing authorities’ ideas. Wollongong University Library deserves a special mention for giving a home to, and so making available, the comprehensive collection of Australasian education department school magazines originally started by Doris Chadwick and on which Chapter Two depends. A remarkable resource! I also recognise the valuable assistance of book collectors and dealers in my construction of the archive of wartime books and magazines referred to by the participants and the authorities. Here I especially thank John and Barbara who directed my footsteps towards many of less accessible texts in the early days of this project when the lack of such texts was becoming a real stumbling block. I also acknowledge the memory of Ralph Suters, most conversible of book dealers and kindest of guides into the world of the Australian Catholic reader. Thank you to my colleagues, Dr Ian Willis and Nigel Judd, who offered opportunities for discussion during the long and often lonely task of researching and writing the thesis. Ian kindly read a draft of the thesis for me, as did John McQuilton who shared valuable editing techniques. Chapter One benefited from Dr Georgine Clarsen’s reading. I also wish to pay tribute to my family and domestic supporters. To Denise whose support gave me the opportunity to be a wife and mother as well as a worker and a post-graduate student, thank you. To my sister, Susan, who put me up and put up with me while I was researching the UK editions of American-style romance magazines in the British Library, thank you. To my son, Richard, who has never faltered in his belief in his mother, thank you. To my daughter, Anna, whose skills produced from some very battered old texts the clear figures which illustrate this thesis, thank you, my girl. And to my husband, Mont, whose steadfast support and practical help with computers have been a foundation of this project, my thanks. vi Introduction In any remaking of social orders and power relations, there must be two stages: first the telling of stories (the creation of myths) that make it possible to think new things, and then the painstaking transferral of thoughts into actions. Marianna Torgovnick.1 At the outbreak of the second world war thirteen-year-old Edith was the eldest healthy daughter in a family of six living on a hardscrabble, Australian farm. She appeared to be a respectable girl living a recognised social identity. For six hours each day she was being educated to the minimum legal level in a one-teacher country school. Before and after this time she cared for her brother and sisters and helped her mother in the feminine farm activities associated with dairy management.2 Her roles as country schoolgirl and farm daughter were preparing her for her future service of local marriage and maternity. However, this notion of Australian girlhood was already splitting apart under the dominant groups’ development of late capitalism with its demands for new femininities and the concomitant struggle of patriarchal interests to retain traditional masculine power in the gender relationship. These were also pressures that were soon to be intensified by the contingencies of war. Furthermore, respectable Edith was herself not only contributing to this rupture of the accepted notion of youthful femininity but also to the emergence of another idea of girlhood, one which she would find more satisfying than the identity authorities currently approved for her. By applying Torgovnick’s notion of the role of stories to Edith’s life at this time we can see this girl’s effect as an agent in the emergence of a new idea of youthful femininity. In 1939 Australia was a modern, literate society.3 As a girl Edith was reading in a regulated way at school. She also read in a less-directed way at home and through friendships. She read traditional conservative stories and she also read newer, popular texts. All this reading was accepted as part of girlhood. Edith was influenced in her ideas of the place of girls in the world by this material and through these reading 1Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives, p 69. 2Lake, The Limits of Hope, pp 177-178; Alston, Women on the Land, pp 33-34. 3For mass literacy as a given in modern British societies see Altick, The English Common Reader; Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy. In the Australia in the first half of the twentieth century, Lyons and Taksa, Australian Readers Remember. 1 relationships, as well as by the immediate conditions of her life beyond reading. In order to make sense of this multiplicity of often-conflicting ideas she drew on all these experiences in telling herself stories of how to be a girl. Of course, in these stories she chose those aspects of the experiences which most pleased her. Such stories don’t exist only inside one’s head. They are formulated as a precursor to being acted. Across the years of the second world war, Edith’s notions of girlhood were expressed in her daily life. Here the conditions of Australia as a modern, wartime state influenced the way in which her ideas were received.