Description
Book SynopsisHolly Allen explores popular and official narratives of forgotten manhood, fallen womanhood, and other social and moral archetypes during the Great Depression and the Second World War.
Trade ReviewAllen's incisive analysis of the New Deal’s gender politics are the strength of this book. She convincingly shows how the New Deal used conservative and traditional ideas about gender to assuage American’s fears concerning the expansion of government power and new ideas about social citizenship and responsibility.
-- Chris Wilhelm * H-Net *
Holly Allen offers a compelling analysis of how widely circulated narratives about diverse figures such as the 'forgotten man,' the 'nagging wife,' and the Kibei 'troublemaker' shaped ordinary men's and women's understanding of their relationship to the economic, political, and social upheavals of the Great Depression and World War II. Allen posits that these narratives also help us to understand the era's vast growth of federal power and the many structural inequalities inherent in the emergent welfare state. By analyzing in tandem a range of civic tropes and a variety of core New Deal–era government programs, Allen reveals in rich detail how the gender, racial, and sexual conventions of both the grassroots and federal policymakers forged a civic culture focused largely on preserving the authority of white male heterosexual breadwinners. This book is an important and fascinating contribution to multiple threads of scholarship on popular culture, race, gender, sexuality, and the growth of the federal state during the Great Depression and World War II.
-- Sarah Potter * American Historical Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction. "More Terrible than the Sword": Emotions, Facts, and Gendered New Deal Narratives1. The War to Save the Forgotten Man: Gender, Citizenship, and the Politics of Work Relief2. "Uncle Sam's Wayside Inns": Transient Narratives and the Sexual Politics of the Emergent Welfare State3. "Builder of Men": Homosociality and the Nationalist Accents of the Civilian Conservation Corps4. "To Wallop the Ladies": Woman Blaming and Nation Saving in the Rhetoric of Emergency Relief5. Civilian Protectors and Meddlesome Women: Gendering the War Effort through the Office of Civilian Defense6. The Citizen-Soldier and the Citizen-Internee: Fraternity, Race, and American Nationhood, 1942–46Conclusion. Stories of Homecoming: Deserving GIs and Faithless Service WivesNotes
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