A housewife in April 1959 sitting down for a well earned break from the domestic round, might have picked up the latest edition of Housewife, a monthly glossy magazine from Hulton press, who also published Picture Post, Girl, and Eagle. Housewife offers an insight into the concerns of the woman behind the nostalgic stereotype, beloved of current media gurus. William Beveridge, author of the Welfare State, built his plan on the premise that a married couple formed a ‘team’ where a wife would stop paid employment in order to care for the family, and thereafter, if she returned to the workplace at all, would work for ‘pin money’. The male breadwinner maintained his side of the bargain by bringing in the family wage while his wife despite, domestic duties remained if we believe the magazines, immaculately groomed and fashion conscious.
There does seem to be a basis for our current image of the 50s housewife. It is easy to be seduced by the apparently leisured middle-class world of the woman portrayed in the magazine. Advertisements ranged from a ‘Marcusa’ dresses in pure silk ‘for your special dates’ to Brettle nylons ‘fashioned for loveliness’ and ‘Rose Queen’ ‘a dramatic new range of foundation garments whose impeccable fashion styling is streets ahead of anything you have ever dreamed of’. However the range of copy in just this one issue offers us a more complex picture of the 1950s woman which demanded a range of skills in a rapidly changing world and hinted that all was not well with the cosy domesticity of the advertisements.
A glance at the contents page reveals nothing startling; there was a familiar mix on offer of features, stories, home and garden, cookery, mothercraft, beauty, competitions, reviews, shopping and readers’ services. Yet three of the pieces reflect some of the unresolved tensions that faced women in the 1950s and perhaps demand that we respect, rather than smile, at the juggling act performed by our mothers and grandmothers. A new serial ‘First Love’ hooked readers into buying the next issue; John Allen May offered a column on ‘Your money and You’ and the cookery pages advised on ‘Take one Tin of Corned Beef’ and ‘Cookery for the Bride’.
‘First Love’ sets the scene for the long running serial. The reader is introduced to a nice middle-class home with a rather overpowering mother ‘Julia Reddington was a well-built pleasant-looking woman in her early forties. She was one of the type that is soon elected president of the local Women’s Institute or Townswomen’s Guild. Her friends agreed that Julia knew her own mind’. Her daughter Claire arrives back unexpectedly having been expelled from university after being found in man’s room. The reader is left to guess what activities were taking place but we learn that the man in question is a visiting lecturer of 43. Our heroine is devastated ‘I’ve been sent down. That means I can’t take my degree. All the money that’s been spent on my education has been completely wasted…this will cut me off from most of the professions’. Julia’s reaction is foreseeable ‘Julia staggered and flopped into a chair … “Oh Claire how could you do this? Whatever shall I say to everybody now”’. In a short fictional passage the generations clash, young aspiration is thwarted by the strong social niceties of 1959. Perhaps we might regard Julia as the typical reader of Housewife and Claire as the younger woman torn between true love and domesticity and the possibilities of a professional identity and career.
John Allan May in number 8 of a series ‘Your money and You’ explains ‘How to read the stock page’. May’s advice includes buying the Investors’ Chronicle and the Financial Times, ‘Even if you never intend to buy shares, you can have fun investing “in theory”.’ Our Housewife reader was no shrinking violet when it came to spending the money earned by the breadwinner, ‘women are in many ways better equipped than men to judge investments. Women are the ones who know which are the best washing machines, the most go-ahead stores, the new things they are most determined to have’. Women’s domestic role is presented as integral to the growing consumer society where economic growth was increasingly dependent on the buying habits of the stay at home wife.
But what could ‘Claire’ look forward to, now that career plans were thwarted by love? In April 1959 the housewife was advised on how to paint and hang wallpaper, how to plan a small kitchen, how to knit a dress and sew a ‘sleek line in linen’. Once that was achieved she could indulge in some ‘books worth reading’ (including The Marriage ‘middle-aged Amy setting up a studio, with flashbacks to explain why this step should destroy their marriage’) and ‘films worth seeing’ (including Room at the Top ‘of interest mainly to students of the seamier side of the contemporary scene’). In more serious mode a long article discussed the opening of CRUSE the charity which provides help for the recently bereaved.
And of course cookery featured strongly for the housewife adrift in a sea of complicated love lives and new technology. These fork biscuits were a family favourite (now I know where my mother found the recipe!) although I have changed the measurements to metric.
100g unsalted butter, 50 g icing sugar; 75g plain flour; 1 dessertspoon cocoa; ½ tsp vanilla. ‘Cream together butter and sugar; gradually work in the flour and cocoa sifted together. Knead until smooth, then divide into small balls and roll between the hands. Place the balls on a greased baking tray, then flatten with a wet fork. Bake 10-15 minutes until firm in oven 170-80 until firm. Makes 16 cookies’.
The byline to the ‘young bride’ proclaimed:
‘What could be more satisfying than to produce delicious cakes and biscuits in your own new kitchen?’. Reading between the lines, life was not quite that simple.
Dr Stephanie Spencer is the author Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s (Palgrave, 2005). She recommends trying the recipe!
