The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

THE INVENTION OF THE FRIGID WOMAN
law, it will be observed, is heavily weighted in favour of the
woman, this is due to changes that have been made with
increasing effectiveness during comparatively recent times.’ 9
The result was, in his opinion, that woman had been given
freedom without responsibility, and the equilibrium of English
family life was unstable.
The development of new work opportunities meant that
women were less financially dependent upon men and marriage,
and feminist spinsters had been proclaiming the joys of
independence and hostility to marriage. Women’s new work
role in industry during the war created enormous anxiety
amongst antifeminsts of all persuasions. Charlotte Haldane saw
as the most significant ‘enemy’ of motherhood, the development
through the experience of war work of what she called the
‘warworking woman’, the ‘more or less unsexed or undersexed
female type’ or ‘intersex woman’: 10
the ‘warworking’ type of ‘woman’—aping the cropped hair,
the great booted feet, the grim jaw, the uniform, and if possible
the medals, of the military man. If this type had been
transitory its usefulness might be accorded, but it is not
doubtful, as I propose to show, that in a long run we shall
have to regret its social and political influence, much as we
may applaud its wartime works. 11
Haldane’s words are an example of the backlash against
independent women, spinsters and lesbians which was a
significant aspect of the campaign to promote marriage and
motherhood throughout the 1920s. The image of the warworking
woman also appeared in fiction. Radclyffe Hall’s solution to
the problem of the woman who became used to independence
and fulfilment through war work in the war years, when she
discovered that she was to be allowed no place in the ranks of
‘normal’ women after the war, was to have her discover that
she was really, deep down, a man. In Hall’s short story Miss
Ogilvy Finds Herself (1926) the warworking woman’s postwar
plight is examined with pathos and Miss Ogilvy discovers
that she has the soul of a prehistoric man. Hall did not choose
the feminist explanation of attributing the heroine’s troubles to
the limitations placed upon women’s lives under male
domination. She chose a mystical/biological explanation which
fitted in with sexological stereotypes of lesbians. 12
An important motivation behind the writings of the sex
reformers in the 1920s was the desire to shore up marriage.
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