Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived Without Men After the First World War
Virginia Nicholson, 2008
Oxford University Press
328 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780195378221
Summary
Almost three-quarters of a million British soldiers lost their lives during the First World War, and many more were incapacitated by their wounds, leaving behind a generation of women who, raised to see marriage as "the crown and joy of woman's life," suddenly discovered that they were left without an escort to life's great feast.
Drawing upon a wealth of moving memoirs, Singled Out tells the inspiring stories of these women: the student weeping for a lost world as the Armistice bells pealed, the socialite who dedicated her life to resurrecting the ancient past after her soldier love was killed, the Bradford mill girl whose campaign to better the lot of the "War spinsters" was to make her a public figure—and many others who, deprived of their traditional roles, reinvented themselves into something better.
Tracing their fates, Nicholson shows that these women did indeed harbor secret sadness, and many of them yearned for the comforts forever denied them—physical intimacy, the closeness of a loving relationship, and children. Some just endured, but others challenged the conventions, fought the system, and found fulfillment outside of marriage. From the mill-girl turned activist to the debutante turned archeologist, from the first woman stockbroker to the "business girls" and the Miss Jean Brodies, this book memorializes a generation of young women who were forced, by four of the bloodiest years in human history, to stop depending on men for their income, their identity, and their future happiness.
Indeed, Singled Out pays homage to this remarkable generation of women who, changed by war, in turn would change society. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1955
• Where—Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, UK
• Education—Cambridge University
• Currently—lives in East Sussex, England
Virginia Nicholson was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1955. Her father was the art historian and writer Quentin Bell, acclaimed for his biography of his aunt Virginia Woolf. Her mother Anne Olivier Bell edited the five volumes of Virginia Woolf’s Diaries.
Virginia grew up in the suburbs of Leeds, but the family moved to Sussex when she was in her teens. She was educated at Lewes Priory School (Comprehensive). After a gap year working in Paris she went on to study English Literature at King’s College Cambridge.
In 1978 Virginia spent a year living in Italy (Venice), where she taught English and learnt Italian. Returning to the UK in 1979 she re-visited her northern childhood while working for Yorkshire Television as a researcher for children’s programmes. In 1983 she joined the Documentary department of BBC Television.
In 1988 Virginia married screenwriter and author William Nicholson. Following the birth of their son in 1989, Virginia left the BBC and shortly afterwards the Nicholsons moved to East Sussex. Two daughters were born in 1991 and 1993.
Living in Sussex, Virginia became increasingly involved with the Trust that administered Charleston, home of her grandmother the painter Vanessa Bell, in due course becoming its Deputy Chairman. Her first book (co-authored with her father) Charleston: A Bloomsbury House and Garden was published in 1997. In 1999/2000 she made a ten-city tour of the USA to promote the book and Charleston itself.
In November 2002 Viking published Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939 to critical acclaim. Its publication in the USA in February 2004 was followed by a sell-out lecture and publicity tour round five American cities.
Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived Without Men After the First World War, was published in August 2007. In this latest book Virginia Nicholson has set out to tell the stories of a remarkable generation of women forced by a historic tragedy to reinvent their lives. Singled Out received a spate of enthusiastic reviews which applauded it as a pioneering and humane work of social history. The work on this book was combined with her continuing commitment to the Charleston Trust. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The women Nicholson celebrates changed our culture. They turned the Victorian spinster into the modern career woman. But, she believes, they were also different from modern women. Like anyone who has lived through a war, they had lower expectations of happiness and a stoicism and dignity that were all their own. Her book applauds the celebrities but does not forget the obscure.... Powerful.... Inspiring.
John Carey - Sunday Times (London)
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Singled Out:
1. Talk about the moment when the senior mistress at Bournemouth High School for Girls announced the "terrible fact" that "only one out of 10 of you girls can ever hope to marry." Having been raised in the Edwardian era, when marriage was all women were prepared for...and expected to attain...how must those young women at Bournemouth have felt? How would that pronouncement have made you feel?
2. Consider the public's treatment of the so-called "War Spinsters." Why would the Daily Mail have labeled them "a disaster to the human race"? What made their own country-men and -women turn against them...even to the point of suggesting that they be exported to Canada? If you had been one of those women, would you have remained in the UK...or headed out to Canada or Australia?
3. What about those who deigned to give the women advice for landing a husband? Funny...condescending...insulting...?
4. Talk about the "survivor's guilt" that some women experienced—Gertrude Caton-Thompson, among others. How did they cope?
5. What difference did socioeconomic class make in how the women redefined (or did not) their lives as single women?
6. Discuss the many paths the women chose to support themselves and find fulfillment. Which of the women's stories do you find most impressive—in terms of obstacles overcome or achievements? Are there any for whom you feel particular sympathy, or whose stories make you most angry, or sad?
7. How did the women find sexual fulfillment—or did they? What about Marie Stopes' responses to letters she received from women? What about Radclyffe Hall and her championship of lesbianism?
8. What was the cultural and historical impact of the "war spinsters"? The thrust of Nicholson's book is to show not just how the women coped, even thrived, but to hold them up as forerunners of the modern career woman. Do you agree? If they were pioneers, why did it take another 50 years (at least) for feminism—career and educational opportunities, equal pay, and widespread public acceptance—to take hold? Were they real pioneers...or simply anomalies of their time?
9. Singled Out is a scholarly work. Do you find it emotionally compelling or overly academic? Also, Nicholson packs a lot of women's stories into her book. Did you find it difficult to remember them and keep them straight?
10. How lonely were these women? Does a lifetime of engaging work and service to others compensate for a lack of husband and children?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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