Singled Out How Two Million British Women Survived Without Men After the First World War

by Nicholson, Virginia

• ISBN13: 9780195378221
• ISBN10: 0195378229
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-10-29
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Almost three-quarters of a million British soldiers lost their lives during the First World War, and many more were incapacitated by their wounds, leaving behind a generation of women who, raised to see marriage as "the crown and joy of woman's life," suddenly discovered that they were left without an escort to life's great feast. Drawing upon a wealth of moving memoirs, Singled Out tells the inspiring stories of these women: the student weeping for a lost world as the Armistice bells pealed, the socialite who dedicated her life to resurrecting the ancient past after her soldier love was killed, the Bradford mill girl whose campaign to better the lot of the "War spinsters" was to make her a public figure--and many others who, deprived of their traditional roles, reinvented themselves into something better. Tracing their fates, Nicholson shows that these women did indeed harbor secret sadness, and many of them yearned for the comforts forever denied them--physical intimacy, the closeness of a loving relationship, and children. Some just endured, but others challenged the conventions, fought the system, and found fulfillment outside of marriage. From the mill-girl turned activist to the debutante turned archeologist, from the first woman stockbroker to the "business girls" and the Miss Jean Brodies, this book memorializes a generation of young women who were forced, by four of the bloodiest years in human history, to stop depending on men for their income, their identity, and their future happiness. Indeed, Singled Out pays homage to this remarkable generation of women who, changed by war, in turn would change society.

Author Biography

Virginia Nicholson studied at Cambridge University and lived in France and Italy, then worked as a documentary researcher for BBC Television. Her books include the acclaimed social history Among the Bohemians--Experiments in Living 1900-1939. As a granddaughter of Vanessa Bell, grandniece of Virginia Woolf, and daughter of Quentin Bell, she garners major media attention with Bloomsbury aficionados.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Introduction	p. xi
Where Have All the Young Men Gone?
Two women	p. 1
The crown and joy	p. 10
Deeply loved and sadly missed	p. 13
A world without men	p. 19
Surplus Two Million	p. 22
'A world that doesn't want me'
The twilight state	p. 28
Odd women and Ann Veronicas	p. 33
The spinster problem	p. 42
Destiny and the devil	p. 46
The more of us the merrier	p. 53
On the Shelf
Husbands	p. 60
Mr Wrong	p. 66
Heart-to-heart chats	p. 73
A buyers' market	p. 77
'But who will give me my children?'	p. 92
Business Girls
War, work and wives	p. 103
Palaces of commerce	p. 109
A rotten hard life	p. 121
Miss All-Alone in the classroom	p. 125
Miss All-Alone on the wards	p. 138
Caring, Sharing ...
Lonely days	p. 146
Companions, consolations	p. 151
Other people's babies	p. 166
Lonely nights	p. 173
The blessed fact of loving	p. 180
A Grand Feeling
A cause, a purpose and a passion	p. 188
The Well	p. 201
The urge	p. 209
Finding happiness as a 'bach'	p. 216
Surviving the night	p. 226
The Magnificent Regiment of Women
The challenge of loss	p. 233
We are not downhearted	p. 238
A good strong character	p. 245
Doing things that matter	p. 250
'You loved him'	p. 268
Notes on Sources	p. 273
Select Bibliography	p. 285
Acknowledgements	p. 293
Index	p. 299
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