The Meanings of Home in Postwar Britain

Abstract

This article explores the meanings of ‘home’ in postwar Britain: how was home situated in public discourse and what was the relationship between public perception, individual desire and material reality? It considers the extent to which the British home was re-made in these years asking whether domesticity 1950s-style was distinct from previous models and exploring the degree of penetration achieved by a home-centred model. The article draws upon life history sources and social survey materials that allow access to subjective understandings of ‘home’. In particular, it employs evidence collected by the pioneering British social investigative organization, Mass-Observation, to explore both historically-sited meanings of home and recently-solicited memories of the postwar period.

Negotiating the Modern Cross-Class “Model Home”: Domestic Experiences in Basil Spence’s Claremont Court

“…Here, architect Basil Spence presented the modern kitchen as a room for family living, indicating the beginning of change in social attitudes towards Victorian codes of use (Jeremiah, 2000), which were still 'broken only under some strong imperative' (Ravetz & Turkington, 1995, p.149). Therefore, the 'cross-class' ideal of modern domesticity (although originated before the second world war) was a dream rather than a reality for a significant number of households in the early 1960s (Langhamer, 2005). Nevertheless, alongside home exhibitions, post-war housing manuals addressed people's domestic dreams by featuring the fundamental spatial ambitions of modernity, namely having a modern kitchen; and having two main rooms.…”

Television—the Housewife's Choice? The 1949 Mass Observation Television Directive, Reluctance and Revision

“…The meanings of home collected by MO in 1942 reveal a differentiated picture of home for women and men (Langhamer, 2005). When asked 'what does home mean for you' more men than women described home as a 'pivot of their life', whilst women were concerned with the way in which a home needs to be run: 'It matters more to the ordinary woman that her home should be aesthetically furnished, that it should be light and be practical to run.'…”

“…Whilst television might indeed contribute to the husband's increasing sense of the home as leisure, we can also detect a certain degree of resentment towards that here. The brokering of physical public/private space therefore is also tied to the series of tensions around the home as leisure and labour and echoes Langhamer's (2005) broader discussion of the meanings of the post-war home where 'revision and negotiation, rather than acceptance and acquiescence are perhaps the most helpful way of understanding gender relations in this period. ' (2005, 356) A preference for drama and an appreciation of sport There is a common held assumption, which has been confirmed by contemporary audience research about the gendering of taste distinctions, that women have a preference for drama whilst men have a preference for factual programmes.…”

Breadwinners and Dependants: Working-Class Young People in England, 1918–1955

“…Having a home of one's own was, as Langhamer has shown, imbued with status and independence both before and after World War II -but was increasingly realizable by the early 1950s. 114 For most young working-class people, marriage remained the most viable and attractive financial and emotional opportunity for independence and status.…”