the era urges, “And smile, smile, smile.” Following WWI, grieving shifted from a public ritual to a private observance.


“ Your job will be to find a very nice young man and marry him.”


The Conway children, born between 1895 and 1903, were raised with the expectation that the women would marry in their early twenties and settle into lives as middle class housewives. Men were to establish themselves in careers before marriage in order to provide for their wives and children.


Laws reflected these expectations. Women did not have the right to vote until 1918. Married women could not even own property until 1870, around the time Mrs. Conway was born.


Most members of Mrs. Conway’s generation believed that men and women were naturally fit for “separate spheres.” Men engaged in life outside the home, in paid work, politics, and leadership. Women were expected to manage the home, a strenuous undertaking in an era without modern conveniences. Homemaking was glorified in the press. Women who worked outside the home, even those who did so out of economic necessity, were accused of masculinity and weakening society through neglect of their families.


Popular magazines and social customs reinforced this image of ideal femininity. But educational reforms in the late nineteenth century changed the curriculum girls were taught. In addition to learning reading, writing, sewing, and the “ornamental arts” of French conversation, singing, drawing, and dancing, girls were taught literature, classics, science, history, political economy, and mathematics. While the goal was to prepare girls for lives as well-educated wives and mothers, the reforms actually created a critical mass of educated, ambitious women eager for careers and lives beyond their own doorstep. Many, like Madge Conway, went on to higher education at places like Girton College, part of the University of Cambridge.


“I was doing the modern working woman— a cigarette and a whiskey and soda . . .”


During WWI, women were recruited to work in jobs previously open only to men, though they were paid less. The percentage of women in the workforce jumped from


24% before the war in 1914 to between 38% and 47% in 1918, not including domestic servants.


After the war, the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act forced women to vacate their jobs so they could be given to returning soldiers. The “marriage bar” banned married women from working in many fields. But at the same time, a law was passed preventing the disqualification of women from certain professions on the basis of gender. Women over 30 won the right to vote in 1918, and all adult women gained the right in 1928. Many war widows and women whose husbands had been badly injured during the war remained in the workforce. Low wages and discrimination ensured that marriage remained the most financially secure option for women. Divorce law favored the husband in child custody matters, making it a difficult choice for women, even those in abusive situations.


The portrayal of women in popular culture changed after the war. Film stars, romance and adventure novels, advice columns, and fashion magazines presented young women with a new vision of femininity. Modern girls partook of the new consumer culture. They socialized outside the home and had more freedom of movement. They wore less restrictive clothing. They aspired to the glamour of their favorite movie stars. Though only 10% of married women worked outside the home in the era between WWI and WWII, how women saw themselves was changing.


“Lord!—it's grand to be back again, and not just on a filthy little leave!”


At the beginning of Time and the Conways, Alan and Robin have just returned from serving in the military in WWI. Those who served experienced the horrors of trench warfare: two armies, each living in mud trenches separated by only a few hundred yards, constantly shelling each other and engaging in small arms fire. 11.5% of British soldiers were killed. Army rations at the time included a portion of strong rum for each soldier serving in the trenches every day, in part to calm rattled nerves and improve morale.


Many soldiers who survived experienced “shell-shock,” the term given to what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While neither Alan nor Robin initially appear to have shell shock, their frontline experiences influence how they deal with stress, and how they perceive themselves as men, for the rest of their lives.•


TIME AND THE CONWAYS UPSTAGE GUIDE 15


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