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#1: Girls: Girls who were needed at home Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 1:27 pm
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The examples are numerous. Lots of the CS girls returned home after school because they were 'needed' there. This almost included Joey, who claimed that Madge would need her help with the large Die Rosen nursery, and that this was why she couldn't go to Elisaveta. All of the early prefects (Gisela, Bette, Gertrud, Wanda, Bernhilda) return home for a period before having early engagements. Luigia returned home until she became a nun. Stephanie returned home to take care of her ill mother. Later on in the series, Elfie returns home after her mother has died, to take up the reins of housekeeping. Mary Burnett left school a term early for the same reason. The phrase 'needed at home' is a common one in the conversations of the sixth-form girls when talking about their futures.

What are your opinions on this phenomenon? Were the girls genuinely needed at home? Should some of them have chosen other paths, such as Simone did? Did these girls lack ambition? Was it a class tradition? Were there reasons behind their stay at home, such as introducing them to the correct pool of marriageable men? Was it simply that these girls were naturally domestically-minded and that EBD wanted to give them as much respect and airtime as those girls who weren't?

Please join in the discussion by posting below Very Happy

#2: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 2:04 pm
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I suppose that in the 1920s/early 1930s girls from middle/upper-class families, e.g. Gisela, Wanda, etc, would generally not have gone on to further education or looked for a job unless they'd desperately wanted to, so they would just have "gone home". When Frieda says that she "must go home" I think she just means that she's going to go home, rather than that her family need her at home, if that makes sense! Frieda, for example, has no ambition other than to get married and have her own home, but by the standards of her time and class I don't think that that was unusual.

As for people who were "needed" at home, the idea of girls going/staying at home to be companions to widowed mothers was common enough - Queen Victoria's daughter Beatrice, who lived with her mother even after her own marriage, and Queen Alexandra's daughter Victoria, are two of the best-known examples.

However, with most of the CS girls who were "needed at home" the circumstances were different. Madge already employed a housekeeper and a nanny and didn't need Joey as well - I think Joey was just making excuses not to look for a job Laughing

- and the same with Blossom whom I can't imagine did much on a practical day-to-day basis to help look after her little brother.

Some of the girls seem to be put-upon. Elfie and (when Mollie was ill) Peggy both unselfishly offered to stay at home, but their families could have afforded to employ housekeepers -although, to be fair, Dick didn't want Peggy to drop out of finishing school. And poor Amy Dunne was pulled out of school because her mother - who sounds like a right selfish cow! - was apparently distraught at the fact that Amy's elder sister had got married and couldn't cope without having at least one of her daughters with her.

#3: Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 2:42 pm
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Alison H wrote:

However, with most of the CS girls who were "needed at home" the circumstances were different. Madge already employed a housekeeper and a nanny and didn't need Joey as well - I think Joey was just making excuses not to look for a job Laughing

- and the same with Blossom whom I can't imagine did much on a practical day-to-day basis to help look after her little brother.

But you see, I think there is an element here of "being needed at home" really meaning "being a companion for my mother" - accompanying her on visits, helping her run the house (and therefore learning to do so, before setting up your own home), being The Daughter Of The House, being taken to functions, meeting eligable young men of the right class when being chaperoned by your mother. And then getting married.

Not many of the CS girls seem to Come Out as such - only Deira that we really hear about - but essentially this period at home seems to fulfill the same function as being a Debutante - making your debut in local society as an adult, hopefully meeting a suitable mate, and learning to be a useful member of the society that your parents move in (Good Works, perhaps, or Accomplishments).

And I guess there is an element of the child being subordinate to the wishes of the adults here (something that we have largely lost) - these girls go home because they are expected to or because they are told to. Most of them seem quite happy to do so, too. Maybe this is indicative of a lack of ambition, but....

#4: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 3:03 pm
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Then there were people like Enid Sothern who took the view that girls whose fathers could afford to support them shouldn't "take jobs" that might otherwise have gone to people who needed the money - another view that seems odd now but wouldn't have done then.

#5: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 4:18 pm
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I think Elfie and Peggy were genuinely needed in the short term, for emotional support as much as anything else. But once the immediate crisis was past they were able to pick up their own lives again.

One factor in girls just staying at home after leaving school I think is the limited range of opportunities, for young men as well as young women up to the 1970s, really. Many fields, such as IT for example, or radio and tv, didn't exist in the past.

Shopwork would be regarded as a bit beneath CS girls. For most girls of average intelligence the options would be teaching, nursing or a bank or an office. Not everyone is suited to teaching or nursing, and why slog away in an office if you don't have to? Men had no choice but to stick with boring jobs because they were expected to be the breadwinners and support themselves and eventually their wives and children.

Some girls no doubt did find life tedious when they came home to help mother - see the other discussion about not having many friends in your home town when you've been away at boarding school. But I expect others filled their time with social work, study, sport etc.

#6: Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 8:39 pm
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I have recently re-read "Gerry goes to School", and found myself feeling very sorry for Margaret, the oldest sister, who is no longer at school and obviously rather bored at home. She ends up, probably predictably, engaged to the curate! Not that there's anything wrong with that particular curate - he's not ancient or anything, but rather fun and plays chess with the oldest boy and so on, but even still....

It must have been so dull for them to go from a world of intellectual, and perhaps physical, stimulation to just railing around at home. Not a lot to get up for in the morning!

#7: Author: Pat, Location: Doncaster

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 9:07 pm
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I think they would probably have just accepted that that was the way things were. It's not easy to understand the acceptance unless you've been in a situation where other people 'don't understand how you can accept it'. For example, unless you've been through a March Out from a service Married Quarter, and lived as the wife of a serviceman it's very hard to understand how women put up with it. You do - because that's the way things are! You may grumble about it, mainly to people who understand, but it's a fact of life. For these girls, going home after school would come into the same sort of category.

#8: Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 9:13 pm
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But it wasn't the path that *all* the girls took - just some of them. Simone, as I mentioned already, was of the same group of girls as above yet she went and read mathematics at the Sorbonne. Joey tried the idea of staying at home, as Madge 'needed' her to help with the nursery etc, but she found it boring and unfulfilling. So not all girls wanted it and not all girls accepted it.

#9: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 9:29 pm
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I find the conversation between 5 close friends - Joey's Quartette and Mary Burnett - about their futures (I think it's in Eustacia) really interesting, because they have such different ideas. Marie and Frieda have no career plans and are focusing on getting married and having homes and families. They're genuinely surprised that neither Mary nor Joey want to get married - although both of those two eventually change their minds, and Marie has evidently already twigged that Jack Maynard has his eye on Joey. Simone says that she wants to earn money to help her parents: she's about the only girl in the early/Tyrol years who says something like that. Mary has a genuine vocation for teaching and really wants to have a teaching career and feels that it will make her happy. And Joey is just vague! It's just interesting - and realistic - to see how people of the same (ish) age and educational background have such different views.

#10: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 9:41 pm
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I think Simone needed to earn her own living, which the others didn't.

Rosalie Dene could have stayed at home but chose not to, because she thought she and her stepmother would get on better if they weren't living under the same roof.

#11: Author: KB, Location: Melbourne, Australia

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 10:27 pm
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Yes, the fact that Simone's parents are coming to the Sonnalpe to open a hotel, as well as the fact that Mademoiselle Lepattre has been paying for both Simone and Renee's educations shows that they didn't have much income and were probably of a lower class than people like the von Eschenaus or the Mensches. I half-wonder that Thekla didn't find out and refuse to speak to Simone, except that I can't imagine EBD having to explain that one of Jo's great friends is of a somewhat lower class. That is acceptable for one of Jo's classmates, perhaps, but not her closest friend!

#12: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 2:56 am
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I think I would equate 'going home' after finishing school to the modern practice of a recently graduated student attending university with no idea what they want to to major in or do after they graduate - it's what you did unless you had other strong ambitions or because that was what your parents told you to do.

There are girls who are getting training because they need to support themselves, because they feel they should help their parents out or because they don't really want to return to their parents or step-parents home, or because they no longer have a home - Simone, Grizel, Rosalie and Gillian being examples. Then you have girls who have definite ambitions for what they want to do, like Mary Burnett. Girls like Frieda and Marie are doing what was normal for girls of their class. They didn't need the money, and their ambitions was early marriage to an appropriate man and a household and family, so they were preparing for what they wanted. Joey is a bit of an oddball, as she doesn't really want to return home (and claims she doesn't want to marry), isn't really needed to help out, but doesn't have any other strong plan, aside from a vaguely stated desire to write and practice her singing.

Then there are girls who have to give up an ambition *because* they are needed at home, like Elfie, which is seen more as a girl self-sacrificing for the good of her family, and a proper virtue.

For more upper class girls, and girls whose fathers were things like clergy, there would also be the element of social duties - entertaining and visiting, volunteer work, sitting on committees, managing the estate, organising the parish and so on, which are work, just a very different sort than we are used to.

Actually, Elfie is the one I would really feel for, as it is very hard for her to give up her ambitions. She's also not that good at academic work, and was leaving school at sixteen, so I'm not sure she would have been able to make up the work later, so leaving the CS could easily have spelt the end of her career plans.

#13: Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 7:19 am
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Jennifer, I think that's a really good summary - thanks!

And I love the idea that in those days, going home was the default option (unless you had a strong need or desire to do something else) whereas now going to university is the default option (again, unless you have a strong need or desire to do something else).

#14: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 8:58 am
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Jennifer said

Quote:

For more upper class girls, and girls whose fathers were things like clergy, there would also be the element of social duties - entertaining and visiting, volunteer work, sitting on committees, managing the estate, organising the parish and so on, which are work, just a very different sort than we are used to.

Although it's not spelled out in the books, a lot of the things the girls did at school would be training for this type of work.

Prefects' meetings = sitting on committees
The Sale = arranging fetes and bazaars
Saturday evening shows = arranging/performing in charity concerts and parish entertainments
Music = playing for concerts, dances etc
The Chaletian = parish magazine
Guides = Guides
Supervising younger girls = helping out with Sunday School, other girls' organisations
Folk dancing = teaching folk dancing, if you happen to stray into an EJO story

In the 1930s especially, before the NHS and Social Services, this type of work was regarded as essential, and any woman who wasn't in paid employment or occupied with a young family would be expected to do something.

I think it's in one of DFB's Springdale books, when the girls are talking about what subjects they're going to specialise in to work towards their future careers, one of the girls says that she won't need to work as her family is well off, but she's going to take subjects that will help her in voluntary work. I think the was going to learn shorthand and typing. She was preparing for it as if it was a career.

#15: Author: Mia, Location: London

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 9:19 am
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Maybe the Lecoutiers were genteely impoverished rather than working class or lower middle.

I think Rosalie Way also came out - I think the girls talk about her being launched into Society with a capital S.

#16: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 12:36 pm
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In 'Gerry Goes To School', parish visiting was something done by the whole vicarage family.

Helen and the younger ones go for a walk to the village, taking Gerry with them, and whilst some are shopping, Helen goes to visit a woman with a new baby. One of her brothers asks whether its a baby or an illness, and when he finds out that it's a baby, he won't go in because the mothers all expect him to hold the baby.

#17: Author: Joan the Dwarf, Location: Er, where am I?

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 3:59 pm
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I can't remember where, but Tom also talks about doing parish work, including visiting and arranging treats for the children, during one Christmas holiday.

#18: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 4:08 pm
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Presumably Madge did that sort of thing after settling in Llan-y-Penllan: Joey says something somewhere about her opening fetes and being involved with the WI.

#19: Author: joyclark,

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 7:57 pm
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Joan the Dwarf wrote:

I can't remember where, but Tom also talks about doing parish work, including visiting and arranging treats for the children, during one Christmas holiday.

I won't give any spoilers, but there's a lovely chapter about this in the Christmas book.

#20: Author: Mia, Location: London

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 9:24 pm
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joyclark wrote:

Joan the Dwarf wrote:

I can't remember where, but Tom also talks about doing parish work, including visiting and arranging treats for the children, during one Christmas holiday.

I won't give any spoilers, but there's a lovely chapter about this in the Christmas book.

Seconded, I really enjoyed this one! (Well done KB, I think it was you Very Happy

)

#21: Author: KB, Location: Melbourne, Australia

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 10:31 pm
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Embarassed

Aw, thanks! Embarassed

#22: Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 3:02 pm
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Thirded! I, too, loved that chapter.

#23: Author: Lolly, Location: Back in London

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 3:39 pm
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JayB wrote:

Rosalie Dene could have stayed at home but chose not to, because she thought she and her stepmother would get on better if they weren't living under the same roof.

I'm not very good at remembering what happened to which character, and I haven't read all the books, but wasn't it Rosalie Dene's mother who felt sorry for Grizel because of the situation with her stepmother in School At? When did she turn into a wicked stepmother herself?

Sorry thats a bit off topic but I'm curious

#24: Author: Mia, Location: London

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 4:09 pm
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Oh no she doesn't, it's just that Rosalie seems to recognise that they get on better when not under each others' feet, I think.

ETA: I mean her stepmother, when she aquires one! isn't totally wicked. I didn't read your post properly Embarassed

Last edited by Mia on Fri Oct 26, 2007 6:02 pm; edited 1 time in total

#25: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 4:18 pm
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She died and Mr (Canon?) Dene remarried. At least, that's the assumption. I don't think EBD ever spells it out, but Mrs Dene doesn't change from a mother to a stepmother between one book and the next, so it's not an EBDism, more something that happened "offstage". I can't remember which book, but at some point Rosalie has much younger stepbrothers.

#26: Author: macyrose, Location: Great White North (Canada)

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 6:39 pm
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It's in Reunion where Rosalie is talking to Jo:

Quote:

I adore Dad and my stepmother is a poppet. Oh, I don’t say that if I’d stayed at home we shouldn’t have got across each other. We probably should. As it is, we’re real friends. I think a lot of young Peter and Robin and they’re quite fond of me. In fact, believe it or not, Peter tells me all about his latest girl and even asks my advice – which I never give, incidentally.

It sounds like Peter and Robin are stepbrothers although I suppose it's possible that Rosalie could have had actual brothers who were just never mentioned before.

#27: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 8:03 pm
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Actually, I'm guilty of doing an EBD, because when I said stepbrothers above I really meant half brothers. But they could equally be stepbrothers.

#28: Author: Holly,

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 3:20 pm
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Alison H wrote:

Then there were people like Enid Sothern who took the view that girls whose fathers could afford to support them shouldn't "take jobs" that might otherwise have gone to people who needed the money - another view that seems odd now but wouldn't have done then.

It's not that long ago that there was an actual rule in the public service in Ireland that when a woman got married she had to retire rather than taking up a job that someone else "needed more that she did" now that she had a husband to support her - which would be hard on a lot of people, especially if the woman had been earning more than the man.

If my mom had married a few years earlier, that rule would have applied to her.

#29: Author: Kate, Location: Ireland

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 3:25 pm
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Yup, the marriage bar existed in Ireland until 1973, although it was lifted earlier for teachers - 1958. There were similar laws in other places too. In the UK, it was lifted in 1946 (so would have applied when Enid Sothern's father was speaking) and in Australia, it was lifted in 1966.

#30: Author: Fiona Mc, Location: Bendigo, Australia

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 10:36 pm
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There was a similiar rule like that in Australia. Mum can remember that being a rule at her job. I don't know how long it was enforced for because she was married early 60's.

#31: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 3:38 am
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Plus the idea that for a woman, if you didn't really need to work (in an economic sense) it was bad to take work away from someone who could use it more, either another woman, or more likely a man.

My impression of Rosalie's situation was that her mother died offstage, and her father remarried.

In Wrong, we're told that she had to leave school at age 17, due to the sudden death of her mother, and that she kept house for her father until he married again. However, she leaves school at the end of Head Girl, with no mention of her mother dying, and she is mentioned as coming to work at the Sonnalpe in Exploits, just two years later. In Wrong it also says that her brother is more than 20 years younger than her, which is at least six or seven years off.

Then in Reunion she talks about her stepmother and father, and how she really likes her, but they're all happier if she's not at home. Then she mentions Peter and Robin as her half-brothers.

In Wrong:

Quote:

She was very fond of her stepmother and the small brother who was more than twenty years younger than herself, but she had always felt that she was wise to be away from home for all but the holidays. The second Mrs Dene might have resented a grown-up daughter of the house who was there most of the time.

#32: Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK

Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 6:48 pm
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I remember reading one of the sequels to The Flame Trees of Theka, where the author, whose name escapes me - Elspeth Huxley, that's it - got married but didn't want to have to give up her job (I think she was in the Civil Service, but can't remember), so just didn't tell them that she was getting married, went on using her maiden name and so on!

Last edited by Mrs Redboots on Mon Oct 29, 2007 7:09 pm; edited 1 time in total

#33: Author: meerium, Location: belfast, northern ireland

Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 12:52 pm
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JayB wrote:

Actually, I'm guilty of doing an EBD, because when I said stepbrothers above I really meant half brothers. But they could equally be stepbrothers.

Brothers by marriage, perhaps?!!

#34: Author: Hannah-Lou, Location: Glasgow

Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 2:36 pm
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Mrs Redboots wrote:

I have recently re-read "Gerry goes to School", and found myself feeling very sorry for Margaret, the oldest sister, who is no longer at school and obviously rather bored at home. She ends up, probably predictably, engaged to the curate! Not that there's anything wrong with that particular curate - he's not ancient or anything, but rather fun and plays chess with the oldest boy and so on, but even still....

It must have been so dull for them to go from a world of intellectual, and perhaps physical, stimulation to just railing around at home. Not a lot to get up for in the morning!

Funnily enough, I just re-read Gerry too, and I saw Margaret as being quite happy in her role at home. She really seemed to have a place in the running of the family, and was respected and treated as an adult by her parents. I found myself thinking "so that's what Joey's life would have been like when she left school. It's more of a defined role than I thought!". Actually, I can see Joey being quite happy in that life, with time to write, frequent visits to friends, and doing her bit for the children. If she hadn't married I think it would have quite suited her.

#35: Author: Holly,

Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 12:48 am
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Mrs Redboots wrote:

I remember reading one of the sequels to The Flame Trees of Theka, where the author, whose name escapes me - Elspeth Huxley, that's it - got married but didn't want to have to give up her job (I think she was in the Civil Service, but can't remember), so just didn't tell them that she was getting married, went on using her maiden name and so on!

Clever!... unless, of course, she was found out.

#36: Author: abbeybufo, Location: in a world of her own

Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 12:02 pm
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The whole idea of not taking a job if you could afford to live without one [ie had a private income, or had a father who could support you] because it would deprive someone else who needed the income is stressed in EJO as well.
I think it was something that was much discussed in the inter-war period, when women were having a more political and economic role in society - partly because of the war work they had done in the Great War - but even if they wanted to do something outside the home, the social responsibility of not taking the bread out of someone else's mouth was strongly emphasised. [Even to the extent of not being a professional musician if it took a job from someone who 'needed' it].
And whether they really believed it or were paying lip service to the idea, both EBD and EJO continued preaching that particular gospel well into the days post-WW2 when most women really did need to earn their keep.

#37: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 1:32 pm
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abbeybufo wrote:

The whole idea of not taking a job if you could afford to live without one ... because it would deprive someone else who needed the income is stressed in EJO as well.
I think it was something that was much discussed in the inter-war period when women were having a more political and economic role in society ... but even if they wanted to do something outside the home, the social responsibility of not taking the bread out of someone else's mouth was strongly emphasised.

It was the time of the Great Depression too, of course, with high levels of unemployment, and with many men out of work sometimes the women were the main breadwinners in the family.

A well to do girl who had no professional training or qualifications, and was just going into office work or similar, might be competing with girls who were helping to support their families by paying the rent, for example.

Plus, this was before the NHS or publicly funded Social Services existed. A girl who didn't need to earn her living would be expected to devote time to voluntary work in those areas, which would be more useful and rewarding than many jobs.

#38: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 1:54 am
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I think there was also a social element as well - during the war periods women, even the more upper class variety, moved considerably outside of what was considered a 'proper' role. They took on the jobs men normally did because the men were at war, and showed themselves as well as others that they *could* do all these things that weren't supposed to be women's work.

Then the men came home and stepped into their usual roles, and women were supposed to go back to their proper roles, but didn't necessarily want to go back to the place they were before.

I think it's a common historical thread that periods of great upheaval or threat, like major wars, are often followed by more conservative movements.

#39: Author: jeni, Location: Sheffield

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:12 pm
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My grannie - who in 1935 would have been 20 - talks about having to be at home 'because my mother needed me' - but when pressed to describe this in more detail - it seems to have meant doing a variety of jobs, such as making trousseaux, or 'helping' in a cake shop - I think she was also a matron for a short while - but in reality she was waiting to get married. I think that she was permitted to take these jobs as they weren't seen as serious and were more a way of entertaining herself rather than etablishing any sort of career.

It's only now that she says that she wishes she could have had a career, but that it just wasn't seen as an option for girls - whereas her brothers were trained in professions.

So would Joey's quartett have had different plans for their future if the options had been there?

#40: Author: linda, Location: Leeds

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 11:56 pm
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My gran who was born in 1889 desperately wanted to be a teacher, but her father refused as he said would not allow his daughters to work at all. However, during the first World War, she was allowed to do some work for the local council (I'm not sure exactly what she did!) as this was considered 'suitable war work'. His attitude always seemed strange to me as her mother was a teacher until she married in 1871!!!

#41: Author: Lottie, Location: Humphrey's Corner

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 12:12 am
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I think one of the reasons for not allowing your daughters to work, is that it implies that you cannot afford to keep them if they have to go out to work. Similarly, it would not look good if your wife has to go out to work.

Presumably Linda's great-grandfather had a better income and standard of living than his father-in-law had had, so there was no need for his daughter to work in the way that his wife had had to before her marriage.

I know that was why I was not allowed to advertise for babysitting jobs when I was a teenager. My father had some very Victorian attitudes and he was horrified that the neighbours might think he couldn't afford to give me what I needed.

#42: Author: LizB, Location: Oxon, England

Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 1:18 pm
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jeni wrote:

So would Joey's quartett have had different plans for their future if the options had been there?

Freida - I can see her as a nursery/primary teacher or special needs assistant, or something like that.

Simone - shewas a teacher, but I think given a wider choice she'd have chosen something else - perhaps studying for longer and pursuing an acadmic career.

Marie - a model perhaps? The 'face' of some big brand?

Joey - I guess if she had to earn her keep before becoming an author she might have tried journalism or something along those lines. Or she might have run a St Bernard breeding farm Laughing

#43: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 2:02 pm
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Marie - not academic, but has good looks, languages, good social skills - maybe a tour guide or 'lady courier', or 'front of house' at a big hotel?

Jo - if she'd had to earn her own living, I think she probably would have been a teacher. She knew her own subjects well. Girls liked her and she could keep order. When she was required to do some teaching at the CS on various occasions, she wasn't wildly enthusiastic about it, but she did it competently enough.

#44: Author: patmac, Location: Yorkshire England

Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 4:31 pm
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In the 1930s - and much later, 'girls' were not given the chance to progress in most professions or even in most trades. As late as 1958, my boss refused my request to take Articles (the usual route, then, to accountancy qualifications which was really an apprenticeship with part time study and lasted 5 years) because I was a girl and was bound to get married and have children and so he would be wasting his money. This, added to the fact that working hours were long, with poor holidays would have put a lot of girls off.
Also, 20% of the workforce was unemployed during the depression so where were the jobs to come from?

A lot of the service industry jobs and careers had not started and, for instance, banks were staffed mainly by men - at least where customers saw them.

I do think, to some extent, the emphasis today on planning a career before leaving school can be counter-productive. Some people will know what they want to do (see thread on vocations) but most are not at all sure and, though their answers in a discussion would be different, an awful lot of 6th formers don't really know what they want to do.

#45: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 1:47 am
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patmac wrote:

I do think, to some extent, the emphasis today on planning a career before leaving school can be counter-productive. Some people will know what they want to do (see thread on vocations) but most are not at all sure and, though their answers in a discussion would be different, an awful lot of 6th formers don't really know what they want to do.

I think the emphasis should be on having *a* plan, of some sort, on leaving school. The plan can be "I'm going to get a job and work while I decide what I want to do". I see a lot of kids who graduate from high school and have absolutely no idea what they want to do next, so they go to university with a very general major, switch a few times, end up taking a degree that is so general it really doesn't mean much, and finish four (or five, or six, with the changes of major) years of expensive university without anything that can be used to get a job, or any better idea of what they want to do. They'd have been much better out working for a few years while they figure out what they want, and at the same time saving some money for their education and getting useful practical experience in living.

I agree that career choices were very limited for girls in those days - teacher, nurse, secretary, marrying, going home to help your parents. The professions, even if a girl could get the university training, were heavily slanted against women getting anywhere, partially based on the "oh, they're just going to get married anyways" argument.

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