2011 Theses Bachelor's

Skirting the Issue: Interweaving Dress into Sociopolitical Histories

Schwartz, Jessica

“What she actually wanted were real things, real entities, things she materially lacked, things that a culture and a social system withheld from her, ” writes Carolyn Steedman in 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘎𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘞𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯. Reflecting back on her childhood in 1950s Britain and her mother, Steedman’s part biography, part autobiography, illustrates the frustration working class women felt in the post-war world. Despite their marginal status in society, these women refused to suffer quietly in post-war Britain; they mobilized in protest against government control of consumer goods. As Steedman explains, “when the world didn’t deliver the goods, she (Steedman’s mother) held the world to blame. In this way, the story she told was a form of political analysis, that allows a political interpretation to be made of her life. Steedman’s memoir demonstrates that government regulations pertaining to goods did not prompt a mere housewife’s complaint. Although women’s grievances regarded domestic matters in large part, women did not confine their protest to that private world. Instead, “the problems of the housewife became a major issue of contemporary debate as women registered their dissatisfaction in protests and, more importantly, through the ballot box, as historian Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska explains. Thus, working class women became the Conservative party’s least likely allies who helped enable the political group’s victory in 1951, reversing Labour party dominance over the previous decade. These consumer goods, so greatly coveted, speak


This thesis seeks to provide the social history that brought about such voices as (Steedman’s mother’s) in post-war Britain, through the analysis of dress that such women wore and aspired to purchase following the end of the war. As the shoppers and makers for their families, working class women like [Steedman’s mother], especially felt the restrictions imposed by austerity measures and government policies. I argue a deeper understanding of how these citizens, who had generally supported the Labour government during the war, came to vote for the Conservative party following the end of the Second World War, can be reached by examining clothing in the same manner in which historians analyze critical texts. Because, even before citizens could use the 1951 elections to punish the Labour party for its failure to deliver the better Britain it had promised during the war, British working class women had already taken a stance: Christian Dior’s New Look skirt.