Taking Work Home: the private secretary and domestic identities in the long 1950s

ABSTRACT

This article explores how the role of the private secretary informed domestic identities in the long 1950s, arguing that as a highly visible figure in social commentary and popular culture she became an important icon around which discussions of feminine ideals circulated. Using archived television news film it is possible to open up a discussion of the visual themes surrounding the female secretary in the second half of the twentieth century and also to begin to study the secretary as a speaking subject. ‘Taking work home’ refers to the complex relationship between women's workplace and domestic identities and how they operated together in shaping women's participation in television news and resonated with changes in women's status at large. Thus the media archive becomes a valuable source for examining the changing place of paid work in women's lives and how this was being accommodated and articulated in popular culture.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as a Collaborative Doctoral Award with the Centre for Urban History at the University of Leicester and the Media Archive for Central England.

Notes on contributor

Gillian Murray is a post-doctoral researcher at Glasgow Caledonian University. Correspondence to: G. Murray, Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health, Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Rd, Glasgow, G4 0BA, UK. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 Helen Gurley Brown (1964) Sex and the Single Girl (London: Four Square), p. 103.

2 Caitriona Beaumont (2013) Housewives and Citizens: domesticity and the women's movement in England, 1928–64 (Manchester: Manchester University Press); Judy Giles (2004) The Parlour and the Suburb: domestic identities, class, femininity and modernity (Oxford: Berg).

3 Selina Todd (2009) Domestic Service and Class Relations in Britain 1900–1950, Past and Present, 23, pp. 194–207; p. 181; Gerry Holloway (2005) Women and Work in Britain Since 1840 (Abington: Routledge), p. 196; Sue Bruley (1999) Women in Britain Since 1900 (London: Macmillan), p. 124; Penny Summerfield (1994) Companionate Marriage and the Double Burden, in Peter Caterall (Ed.) Understanding Post-War British Society (London: Routledge), p. 63.

4 Dolly Smith Wilson (2006) Postgraduate Essay Prize Winner for 2005: A New Look at the Affluent Worker: the good working mother in post-war Britain, Twentieth Century British History, 17(2), pp. 206–229.

5 Sonya O. Rose (1993) Gender and Labour History: the nineteenth-century legacy, International Review of Social History, 38, pp. 157–162.

6 Vicky Long (2011) Industrial Homes, Domestic Factories: the convergence of public and private space in interwar Britain, The Journal of British Studies, 50(2), pp. 434–464.

7 Delphine Gardey (2001) Mechanizing Writing and Photographing the Word: utopias, office work, and histories of gender and technology, History and Technology: An International Journal, 17(4), p. 331.

8 George Joseph (1983) Women and Work: the British experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 6.

9 Fiona McNally (1979) Women for Hire: a study of the female office worker (London: Macmillan), p. 25.

10 Ibid. p. 43.

11 Ibid. pp. 50–52.

12 Mary Kathleen Benet (1972) Secretary: enquiry into the female ghetto (London: Sigwich & Jackson).

13 Rosemary Crompton (1988) The Feminisation of the Clerical Labour Force since the Second World War, in Gregory Anderson (Ed.) The White-Blouse Revolution: female office workers since 1870 (Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 124.

14 Giles, The Parlour and the Suburb, pp. 117–120.

15 Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens.

16 Janet Finch & Penny Summerfield (1991) Social Reconstruction and the Emergence of Companionate Marriage, 1945–59, in David Clark (Ed.) Marriage, Domestic Life & Social Change: writings for Jacqueline Burgoyne (1944–88) (London: Routledge), p. 10.

17 Elizabeth Roberts (1995) Women and Families: an oral history, 1940–1970 (Oxford: Blackwell)

18 Finch & Summerfield, ‘Social Reconstruction’, p. 17.

19 Margaret Lane (2014) Not the Boss of One Another: a reinterpretation of working-class marriage in England, 1900 to 1970, Cultural and Social History, 11(3), pp. 441–458.

20 Angela Davis (2012) Modern Motherhood: Women and Family in England, 1945–2000 (Manchester: Manchester University Press), pp. 142–176.

21 Alva Myrdal & Viola Klein (1956), Women's Two Roles: home and work (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).

22 Penny Tinkler (2006) Smoke Signals: women, smoking and visual culture (Oxford: Berg), pp. 5–11; Giles, The Parlour and the Suburb, p. 109; Jenny Hammerton (2001) For Ladies Only? Eve's film review Pathé Cinemagazine 1921–33 (Hastings: The Projection Box), p. 66.

23 Penny Tinkler (2011) ‘When I as a girl … ’: Women talking about their girlhood photo collections, in A. Freund & A. Thomson (Eds) Oral History and Photography (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 45–60; Erika Hanna (2014) Reading Irish Women's Lives in Photograph Albums: Dorothy Stokes and her camera, 1925 to 1953, Cultural and Social History, 11(1), pp. 89–109.

24 Maggie Andrews (2012) Domesticating the Airwaves: broadcasting, domesticity and femininity (London: Continuum).

25 Christopher Morley (1939) Kitty Foyle (Philadelphia: JB Lippincott).

26 Andrews, Domesticating the Airwaves, p. 342.

27 Ibid. p. 331.

28 Alistair Thomson (2013), Tied to the Kitchen Sink? Women's lives and women's history in mid-twentieth century Britain and Australia, Women's History Review, 22(1), pp. 126–147.

29 Rosemary Pringle (1988) Secretaries Talk: sexuality, power and work (London: Verso), p. 9.

30 Ibid. p. 12.

31 Julie Berebitsky (2006) The Joy of Work: Helen Gurley Brown, gender, and sexuality in the white-collar office, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 15(1), pp. 89–127.

32 Luke McKernan (2009) Newsreels: form and function, in Richard Howelles & Robert Matson (Eds) Using Visual Evidence (Maidenhead: Open University Press), pp. 95–106.

33 The Perfect Secretary [online video, ID: 1044.25] (British Pathé, first broadcast 4 January 1932), http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-perfect-secretary/query/perfect+secretary (accessed 2 May 2013).

34 Benet, Secretary, pp. 53–54.

35 Claire Langhamer (2013) The English in Love: the intimate story of an emotional revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 38.

36 Wanted Alive [online video, ID: 1503.22] (British Pathé, first broadcast 1957) http://www.britishpathe.com/video/wanted-alive/query/typist (accessed 29 April 2015).

37 Electric Portable Typewriter [online video, ID: 73.37] (British Pathé, first broadcast 1958) http://www.britishpathe.com/video/electric-portable-typewriter-aka-worlds-first-elec/query/typist (accessed 29 April 2015).

38 Quick Fingers [online video, ID: 974.12] (British Pathé, first broadcast 1933), http://www.britishpathe.com/video/quick-fingers/query/typist (accessed 29 April 2015).

39 Fastest Typist Competition held in Lewis's store in Midlands News [online video, ID: 29101959] (ATV, first broadcast 29 October 1959), http://www.macearchive.org/Archive/Title/midlands-news-29101959-fastest-typist-competition-held-in-lewiss-store/MediaEntry/3381.html (accessed 2 May 2013).

40 Pringle, Secretaries Talk, p. 3.

41 Secretaries Conference at PERA in Midlands News [online video, ID: 10061964] (ATV, first broadcast 10 June 1964), http://www.macearchive.org/Archive/Title/midlands-news-10061964-secretaries-conference-at-pera/MediaEntry/7175.html (accessed 2 May 2013).

42 Ibid.

43 Crompton, ‘The Feminisation of the Clerical Labour Force’, p. 132.

44 Ibid.

45 The Perfect Secretary in Midland Montage [online video, ID:17091959 ] (ATV, first broadcast 17 September 1959), http://www.macearchive.org/Archive/Title/midland-montage-17091959-the-perfect-secretary/MediaEntry/36545.html (accessed 2 May 2013).

46 Michael Roper (1994) Masculinity and the British Organisation Man since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 161–162.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

49 Dr Robert Simpson (1967) Wife and Comforter, in Getting Married (A Family Doctor Publication by The British Medical Association), p. 91.

50 Mini Skirts in ATV Today [online video, ID: 08021979] (ATV, first broadcast 1979), http://www.macearchive.org/Archive/Title/atv-today-08021979-mini-skirts/MediaEntry/30358.html (accessed 2 May 2013).

51 Secretaries and their Bosses in ATV Today [online video, ID: 19041967] (ATV, first broadcast 19 April 1967), http://www.macearchive.org/Archive/Title/atv-today-19041967-secretaries-and-their-bosses/MediaEntry/33214.html (accessed 2 May 2013).

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid.

54 Should Secretaries Repeat Office Gossip to bosses in ATV Today [online video, ID: 21101971] (ATV, first broadcast 1971), http://www.macearchive.org/Archive/Title/atv-today-21101971-should-secretaries-repeat-office-gossip-to-bosses/MediaEntry/16524.html (accessed 2 May 2013).

55 Ibid.

56 Langhamer, The English in Love, p. 208.

57 For further discussion see Gillian Murray (2014) Regional News and the Mid-Twentieth-Century ‘Housewife’: television in Midlands news programmes in the 1950s and 1960s, Critical Studies in Television, 9(2), pp. 54–73.