“How are they at home?” community, state and servicemen's wives in England, 1939-45

Abstract

The wives of men in the fighting forces in the Second World War were allocated a status of dependency on the state in place of husbands and a function as potential war workers, but also bore the weight of society's fears about sexual laxity and family instability. Rhetoric and a system of financial support helped maintain fidelity and homes but also shepherded many working-class servicemen's wives into the factories. While public opinion and many men in the British Army were alarmed and outraged by stereotypes of weak-willed wives seduced by Home Front opportunities, wives' place in wartime localised urban communities is an alternative lens through which to study their Home Front experiences. Strong gendered ideologies of domestic and work structures survived intact among servicemen's wives and their communities in cities like Birmingham and Coventry, and despite the upheaval of bombing and war production, provided little basis for longer-term post-war changes in wives' statuses and roles.