A HOME OF ONES OWN - WOMEN AND DOMESTICITY IN ENGLAND 1918-1950

This article investigates working-class women's consciousness of their domestic role at a specific moment in England when that role was in t he process of reformulation. Working-class women defined themselves no t only in terms of their gender but also in terms of their difference from and antagonism to other social classes. The social relations betw een women were to a considerable extent constructed and manifested in the system of domestic service; hence, the changing nature and eventua l demise of domestic service in the period 1918-1950 were to have far- reaching implications for women's understanding of themselves in relat ion both to the class system and to women's domestic role. Parallel wi th the changes in domestic service were growth in home ownership and o ccupation and the development of a consumer market offering a range of products targeted at the housewife. It was only in the first half of the 20th century that the term 'housewife' came to signify an apparent ly homogenous group of women who could be addressed as having common i nterests by the media, by politicians, and by the designers and produc ers of domestic technology, and it is the purpose of this project to e xplore the ways in which women experienced, adapted, and appropriated the category 'housewife' as a means of defining identity in terms of b oth class and gender in the context of such changes. In the 1920s and 1930s the idea of the housewife was offered as a highly valued and 'mo dern' role for women albeit a conservative one, focusing as it did on women's traditional functions in the family and thereby reproducing th e limitations of a single role and self-identity. Yet, as the author a rgues, such conservatism, reformulated as 'modern,' offered working-cl ass women possibilities for self-definition which were potentially emp owering and democratic in terms of class, if not gender. How far these possibilities could be realised is one of the questions the article a ttempts to answer.