Catherine Hall

Good and Mad Women: The Historical Construction of Femininity in Twentieth Century Australia

In many ways the story seems very famiZar to the story that has gradually been opened up by Bntiah feminist histonans of hidden and misunderstood aspecZs of Britiah culture: in the economy, the relative invisibility of women in the fotmal sectors until the 1960s; the place of trade unions in mlng womens work; the idea and the pracdee of the family wage; ideologically, the st on mothering, and the place of the experts whether in health, education or welfare in regulating matemal practices. But there are crucial differences too; differences which higldight the historical specMlcity of the AusSlian expenence of advanced industrial capitalism and the particular contradictions raised for women. Take the demographic data, for enple, which illustrates the statistical as well as the cultural dominance of men in Austlian society up to 1914, an imbalance which meant that in some respects women were highly valued. Or the fact that non-Abortinal Awtralia has always been a mWsnt society and that migrants (with the exception of domestic servants and female dependlarlts) have been defined as men. The overndilu concern with population which resulted from this produced, Jill Julius Matthews argues, a common sense preoccupied with the need for a large, healthy and ncially pure population themes that were clearly pswent in British society in the early twentieth century but never with the ne level of sitificance or power. The consequent emphasis on women as mothers contnbuted to the dominance of hetetwexuality and maxTiage as the only proper exp sions of both femininity and female sexuality. Only in the last twenty years, she maintains, has this popular ideology been replaced by one which focuses on penniive consumerism, claims that selffulfilment can be bought in the marketplace and argues avinst 3f[,^ ]X. I.1t. S .iMATrSE W S

Cradle of the Middle Class. The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865

Preface Introduction: locating domesticity 1. Family, community, and the frontier generation, 1790-1820 2. Family in transition: the revival cycle, 1813-1838 3. The era of association: between family and society, 1825-1845 4. Privacy and the making of the self-made man: family strategies of the middle class at midcentury 5. A sphere is not a home: womans larger place in the city at midcentury Conclusion Appendices Notes Sources and select bibliography Index.