This comparative essay will explore the lives of women during 1920s Britain through the use and comparison of two sources: The 1920s Girl, published in The Times in 1920 and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, published in 1929. In addition, this essay will assess how useful these sources are in content and type to the historian. Britain in the 1920s recovering from a period of extreme change. The suffragette movement paired with working women during World War One reshaped the way women saw themselves, as political and perhaps social equals to men. This essay will specifically look at younger women who were unable to marry, due to excessive male deaths caused by World War One, and left as ‘surplus’ women. The word ‘surplus’ was often used
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Both sources give evidence that women who strayed from a women’s traditional path were heavily criticised and are often portrayed as being selfish. Shakespeare’s sister is selfish because she does not wish to marry but pursue her talent as a poet. This could relate to women being forced to give up their jobs after marrying due to workplace protocol and law. However, A Room of One’s Own does not explicitly say this, although it does speak often of unmarried women being unable to support themselves due to a lack of funds. Furthermore, The 1920s Girl shows these ‘surplus’ women as ‘irresponsible’ and ‘undisciplined’. The newspaper is hypocritical in its claims that unmarried women are at fault because if they are ‘surplus’ it is because there are too many women for the amount of men present in Britain. Women are both the victim and the cause in this article, this could relate to the hypocritical way ‘surplus’ women are held to multiple standards during this period. However, there is no way to tell this from the newspaper source alone. Both sources must be analysed through their use of language. The 1920s Girl makes its opinion on women clear through by describing young women as being of a ‘reproductive age’ because they are only valuable through having more children, and the word ‘surplus’. Skardal believes that literature is useful because the language it uses and attitudes which are portrayed help reflect the period they were written in. She has done various research on Scandinavian-Americans this way and found that their literature held ‘true’ against other
Both sources give evidence that women who strayed from a women’s traditional path were heavily criticised and are often portrayed as being selfish. Shakespeare’s sister is selfish because she does not wish to marry but pursue her talent as a poet. This could relate to women being forced to give up their jobs after marrying due to workplace protocol and law. However, A Room of One’s Own does not explicitly say this, although it does speak often of unmarried women being unable to support themselves due to a lack of funds. Furthermore, The 1920s Girl shows these ‘surplus’ women as ‘irresponsible’ and ‘undisciplined’. The newspaper is hypocritical in its claims that unmarried women are at fault because if they are ‘surplus’ it is because there are too many women for the amount of men present in Britain. Women are both the victim and the cause in this article, this could relate to the hypocritical way ‘surplus’ women are held to multiple standards during this period. However, there is no way to tell this from the newspaper source alone. Both sources must be analysed through their use of language. The 1920s Girl makes its opinion on women clear through by describing young women as being of a ‘reproductive age’ because they are only valuable through having more children, and the word ‘surplus’. Skardal believes that literature is useful because the language it uses and attitudes which are portrayed help reflect the period they were written in. She has done various research on Scandinavian-Americans this way and found that their literature held ‘true’ against other