How were female characters depicted in the 1950s literature?

[charlie48]

Were they "damsels in distress" or like Bond girls, more self-reliant?

[Pompey Bum]

It depends on the kind of fiction you are reading. In popular writing, women often lacked independence from men. Spirited women sometimes turned up in hard-boiled noir novels by writers like Ross MacDonald, Micky "Anyone who reads my books deserves them" Spillane, and John D. MacDonald (although many of his books were written in the early 1960s), but even those tough ladies were ultimately dependent on strong men to save them in the violent netherworlds they inhabited. Thy were, in fact, little more than men's ego fantasies. "Bond girls," however they behave today, were very much in that camp in the Ian Fleming novels.

But writers like Doris Lessing, Daphne Du Maurier, and Pearl Buck were also active to one extent or another in the 1950s; their female characters were more fully realized and didn't owe their existences to men.

Hope that helped.

[Jackson Richardson]

And utterly different and very, very 1950s, Barbara Pym. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Pym

Glass of Blessings is one of my favourite books. Here is a very, very respectable lady with no intention to be other than very, very respectable who in the 1950s finds gays not only unproblematic but considerably more fun than her boring civil servant husband.

Men are fascinating, but always unsatisfactory.

[charlie48]

Yes, thank you. It helped a lot :)
I don't know how about you but I always considered Mike Hammer to be more sexist (perhaps misogynist, even) than Bond. To me, despite what his critics say, Fleming created Bond as a modern romantic hero. Whereas, Spillane's protagonist was more like American action man. Thus, I always see Bond girls as his 'partners' or henchwomen. Unlike in Spillane's case where women are presented as submissive but pretending to be independent. Feel free to disagree.

Good point. What you wrote about Du Maurier made me think about Muriel Spark. True, she focused, mostly, on the topic of conversion to Roman Catholicism and religion in general. However, there were also books like Robinson in which the protagonist was a strong and independent woman.

[charlie48]

Thank you JonathanB. I have to admi, I haven't heard of Pym until now. However, the book sounds really good and I already put it on my literary bucket list.

[Jackson Richardson]

Barbara Pym is a Marmite author - love her or hate her. I love her. Some Tame Gazelle is her first work, and describes what seems very restricted lives. But it grew on me.

I thought of Muriel Spark and looked her up. In fact only her first two novels, (including Memento Mori) were published during the 50s. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is early 60s.

Three of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple books were in the 50s. A rather different sort of woman from Bond girls and a rather different sort of crime novel from Micky Spillane.

[Jackson Richardson]

I gather the Bond novels are rather different in emphasis than the movies. The woman in Moonraker is certainly Bond's equal. After facing death and atomic explosion together, the smarmy old Etonian reckons they are going to have it off. On the last page he gets to see her, with a handsome police officer suddenly nearby. "O" sez she, "we are getting married tomorrow" and walks off.

Moonraker was almost certainly parodied in Gravity's Rainbow, a work I don't care for at all.

[Pompey Bum]

I have to admit that my experience of Micky Spillane is fairly limited. I used to read some John D. and Ross MacDonald, though, when I was a teenager, and some of their female characters were--spunky is probably the best word. They usually got tied up, and if rescued at all, it was by the male protagonist. I also read some Ian Fleming in those days (as I recall the whole of The Spy Who Loved Me was set in New York State, and revolved around a girl who had her own scooter). My memory, for what it's worth, is that Bond girls were similar to noir girls--more sophisticated, maybe, but ultimately sex objects. Moneypenny, on the other hand, who was actually a working woman, was a something of a joke (in the movies, anyway--I don't remember her from the books). And even the hilariously named P*ssy Galore was a bit of a drag for thinking that women should fly small planes (or something). As I recall, her sinister feminism had to be tamed with a generous dose of little James.

I didn't like these books very much, by the way. I preferred Sherlock Holmes, which featured at least one independent woman (in only one story, it's true, but it was long before the '50s and '60s). My Dad (who gave me the noir books) used to take me to the early Bond films (at a drive-in, yet, where Ursula Andress' anatomy was really gargantuan). I think he wanted to see if I was going for girls--something fathers were supposed to do in those days. I thought the movies at least had a sense of humor, which was more than Ian Fleming usually managed. Girls turned out to be just fine the way they were, by the way. Not that Ursula wasn't a pal at the time. :)

[ennison]

Barbara Pym is an Excellent Woman

[kev67]

Jean Paget from A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute was a very strong woman. Not only self-reliant but a leader.

[charlie48]

I gather the Bond novels are rather different in emphasis than the movies. The woman in Moonraker is certainly Bond's equal. After facing death and atomic explosion together, the smarmy old Etonian reckons they are going to have it off. On the last page he gets to see her, with a handsome police officer suddenly nearby. "O" sez she, "we are getting married tomorrow" and walks off.

Moonraker was almost certainly parodied in Gravity's Rainbow, a work I don't care for at all.


That is very true. The films and the novels are two, almost, completely different images of what supposed to be one character. The best example, and the worst case of films brutal 'departure' from the books, is The Spy Who Loved Me. Originally it offered readers (or at least me) a powerful protagonist, Vivienne Michaels. Whereas in the movie... well, let's say they did not buy the concept.

[charlie48]

Jean Paget from A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute was a very strong woman. Not only self-reliant but a leader.


At first I've read Jean Piaget (the Swiss psychologist) which made me wonder what kind of book it may be.
Another new author to me. Thank you.

[charlie48]

I have to admit that my experience of Micky Spillane is fairly limited. I used to read some John D. and Ross MacDonald, though, when I was a teenager, and some of their female characters were--spunky is probably the best word. They usually got tied up, and if rescued at all, it was by the male protagonist. I also read some Ian Fleming in those days (as I recall the whole of The Spy Who Loved Me was set in New York State, and revolved around a girl who had her own scooter). My memory, for what it's worth, is that Bond girls were similar to noir girls--more sophisticated, maybe, but ultimately sex objects. Moneypenny, on the other hand, who was actually a working woman, was a something of a joke (in the movies, anyway--I don't remember her from the books). And even the hilariously named P*ssy Galore was a bit of a drag for thinking that women should fly small planes (or something). As I recall, her sinister feminism had to be tamed with a generous dose of little James.

I didn't like these books very much, by the way. I preferred Sherlock Holmes, which featured at least one independent woman (in only one story, it's true, but it was long before the '50s and '60s). My Dad (who gave me the noir books) used to take me to the early Bond films (at a drive-in, yet, where Ursula Andress' anatomy was really gargantuan). I think he wanted to see if I was going for girls--something fathers were supposed to do in those days. I thought the movies at least had a sense of humor, which was more than Ian Fleming usually managed. Girls turned out to be just fine the way they were, by the way. Not that Ursula wasn't a pal at the time. :)


I wonder how it would be like to go with my father to see From Russia With Love, for instance :) I got my first Bond book from my granddad. He was very interested in the spy novels, in general. At some point, the one when you ask someone "what are you reading?", he started to describe the book to me and then the history of that time. If it was not for him I'd still be thinking about Bond as Pierce Brosnan. Which is nothing bad, of course. I meant the gadgets, the tank in the middle of the city and the general sense of improbability.
Off topic, to whom it may concern - do you remember the first book you got from your parents, for example? or the first book you've read? I like going back to my old books, such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with my younger brother and experience them as an adult.

[Jackson Richardson]

The first book I ever bought myself was Enid Blyotn’s The Rockingdown Mystery (pub.1959) and I’ve been buying books (and often even reading them) ever since.

As it happens I’ve just re-read The Rockingdown Mystery this week. Diana and Roger spend the hols when their parents are away in a quaint old village with a mysterious old house nearby where there may be strange goings on. Enid Blyton wrote over 600 books and I bet that summary could apply to a high percentage of them.

When it comes to cleaning up the dusty rooms in the old house so one of the boys can spend the night there, it is Diana who does the dusting. I can imagine that being condemned as sexist stereotyping, but someone’s got to do the dusting and it is a necessary and demanding task. And it was written by a woman. Miss Pepper, their mother’s former governess, who is looking after them is no walkover.

[Pompey Bum]

The best example, and the worst case of films brutal 'departure' from the books, is The Spy Who Loved Me. Originally it offered readers (or at least me) a powerful protagonist, Vivienne Michaels. Whereas in the movie... well, let's say they did not buy the concept.

Yes, you're right, now that I remember it. It was her story and she was a woman in charge of her own life. Was I correct about the whole thing taking place in New York State, by thee way? I remember seeing the movie a lifetime later and laughing about how it had retained nothing but the name.


Off topic, to whom it may concern - do you remember the first book you got from your parents, for example? or the first book you've read? I like going back to my old books, such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with my younger brother and experience them as an adult.

Here's what I wrote on another thread in answer to a similar question:

The book whose unexpected appearance opened the gate for me was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, which I blundered upon in a 7th grade school book fair. Professor Challenger's dubious lizards made way soon enough for the unofficial consulting detective himself, followed in due course by the heaving bosoms of Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker. One day I happened to find myself in a tumbril (only dimly aware of what a tumbril was) when a little seamstress asked me to hold her hand. As the guillotine loomed up before us, I noticed a small miracle (for a 13-year-old boy) running down my face and silently dropping to the page. That doomed seamstress and I have kept a merry company ever since, but it has always been understood between us that what happens in the tumbril stays in the tumbril. :)

[prendrelemick]

Yes, you're right, now that I remember it. It was her story and she was a woman in charge of her own life. Was I correct about the whole thing taking place in New York State, by thee way? I remember seeing the movie a lifetime later and laughing about how it had retained nothing but the name.



Here's what I wrote on another thread in answer to a similar question:

The book whose unexpected appearance opened the gate for me was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, which I blundered upon in a 7th grade school book fair. Professor Challenger's dubious lizards made way soon enough for the unofficial consulting detective himself, followed in due course by the heaving bosoms of Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker. One day I happened to find myself in a tumbril (only dimly aware of what a tumbril was) when a little seamstress asked me to hold her hand. As the guillotine loomed up before us, I noticed a small miracle (for a 13-year-old boy) running down my face and silently dropping to the page. That doomed seamstress and I have kept a merry company ever since, but it has always been understood between us that what happens in the tumbril stays in the tumbril. :)

Ah yes , the same author has had me blubbing snottily on a couple of occasions - besmearing page, sleeve and environs with a mucus miracle.

[Emil Miller]

I thought the movies at least had a sense of humor, which was more than Ian Fleming usually managed.

Many many many moons ago, when I was less fastidious about what I read, I bought a book of spy stories written by various authors; including one by Ian Fleming that was absolute ******** and obviously written for the less than discerning. Flemyng was a pseudo-sophisticated writer for ingenuous readers who found his schoolboy approach to spying leavened with sex a turn on for their less than attentive appreciation of what they were reading. The most gripping story in the book was one from Ashenden by W.S.Maugham who had been a real secret agent and dispensed with schoolboy heroics and told it as it really is.
In fact, so accurate was Maugham's description that it was later used by the British secret service to train recruits.

[ennison]

I think you would need to read a wide range of books from the period (ten years is a long time to look for patterns) before you could say much in anything other than a vague and general way about the presentation of character. You might decide to narrow your selection a bit to say thriller writers, or a particular publisher, or English urban novelist. That way you might start spotting things more quickly. I would say that there was a very wide range of ways in which they were presented if you just take novels written in English of that period so if you thought of it in a narrower way it might be more productive.

[Pompey Bum]

Many many many moons ago, when I was less fastidious about what I read, I bought a book of spy stories written by various authors; including one by Ian Fleming that was absolute ******** and obviously written for the less than discerning. Flemyng was a pseudo-sophisticated writer for ingenuous readers who found his schoolboy approach to spying leavened with sex a turn on for their less than attentive appreciation of what they were reading. The most gripping story in the book was one from Ashenden by W.S.Maugham who had been a real secret agent and dispensed with schoolboy heroics and told it as it really is.
In fact, so accurate was Maugham's description that it was later used by the British secret service to train recruits.

I was not much impressed by Fleming during our brief adolescent association, but for the record, he was a navel intelligence officer during the Second World War. He must have had at least some idea of what he was writing about (if only the clubs).

[Jackson Richardson]

Bond has the same relation to Ashenden as P G Wodehouse's novels set in country houses have to, O I don't know, a realistic novel in the same mileu. (I can only think of Ivy Compton Burnett off hand - who was still writing in the 50s and never conventionally reaistic.) They are totally different, as were the spy novels of John le Carre. Fleming's books are fantasy.

[Pompey Bum]

Bond has the same relation to Ashenden as P G Wodehouse's novels set in country houses have to, O I don't know, a realistic novel in the same mileu. (I can only think of Ivy Compton Burnett off hand - who was still writing in the 50s and never conventionally reaistic.) They are totally different, as were the spy novels of John le Carre. Fleming's books are fantasy.

The way I got the story was that Fleming spent the war planning operations from his affluent London club. This qualified him in his own eyes (and presumably his publisher's) to write what amounted to espionage fantasies after the war; but it also accounts for the highlife persona of Bond himself. Unfortunately I was just unable to locate the the book in which I thought I had read that; so for the moment, it is only unconfirmed intelligence. :)

I have sometimes wondered if David Cornwell/John le Carre (who also worked for British intelligence, though apparently only briefly) didn't see himself in some ways as the "anti-Fleming." His early stories emphasize the sordid, non-glamorous aspects of the work; and George Smiley fits well as a sort of "anti-Bond."

[Jackson Richardson]

I'm sure he and his readers and Len Deighton thought of themselves in just that way. But both of them were 60s writers.

[Emil Miller]

The fact of the matter is that espionage is sordid and unglamorous; attempts to portray it as otherwise might go down well with the naive but anyone who has worked in a security capacity will know how silly Fleming's novels are.
They are essentially a rehash of the 'Evil genius being foiled in his attempt to take over the world by a true blue Britisher' genre that's as old as the hills.
For all the money that's been made from the films and merchandising of the James Bond brand, this is what spying
is really about thanks to John le Carre:

https://youtu.be/NmmWkJtuxz4

[Jackson Richardson]

Behind both Maugham and Fleming is John Buchan, I suspect. Maugham may be le Carre to Buchan, and Fleming may be camping him up in a very 50s, post bomb sort of way. But I haven't read John Buchan recently.

[Jackson Richardson]

I think you would need to read a wide range of books from the period (ten years is a long time to look for patterns) before you could say much in anything other than a vague and general way about the presentation of character..

Yes, quite so, but I'm having fun being superficial. (This is not meant as a putdown to ennison who has hit a nail on the head.)

From my examples, it is probably obvious that I read women novelists as much as men. I don't care for action novels really and have only read them to avoid being narrow minded. I like social comedy and am bored by both by sentimental romance and "thrilling" - snooze - adventures particularly with added bonking.

I note that this is a question about the presentation of women and I'm not sure any woman has replied.

[Pompey Bum]

The fact of the matter is that espionage is sordid and unglamorous; attempts to portray it as otherwise might go down well with the naive but anyone who has worked in a security capacity will know how silly Fleming's novels are.
They are essentially a rehash of the 'Evil genius being foiled in his attempt to take over the world by a true blue Britisher' genre that's as old as the hills.
For all the money that's been made from the films and merchandising of the James Bond brand, this is what spying
is really about thanks to John le Carre:

https://youtu.be/NmmWkJtuxz4

A great movie and a great book. "And suddenly, with the terrible clarity of one too long deceived, Leamas saw the whole ghastly trick."

It's interesting that Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, and John le Carre all worked in intelligence at one time or another. Compton Mackenzie, too, I think.

[Emil Miller]

I don't know about the others but in Maugham's case it was thought that his profession as writer would act as a good cover for his espionage activities. Another writer who was co-opted into British intelligence was Hugh Walpole who met Maugham in Russia in 1917 but the first writer of the spy novel was probably Erskine Childers whose book The Riddle of the Sands sought to warn Britain of the growing threat from Germany before WW1. Ironically, Childers later engaged in smuggling German weapons to Irish nationalists during the war and was later shot by those of them who accepted the partition of Ireland which Childers disagreed with.

[Jackson Richardson]

An important 50s literary phenomenon were the Angry Young Men, notably John Osbornes' play Look Back in Anger (which I've seen) and the novels John Braine's Room at the Top and Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, neither of which I've read. Although thought very iconoclastic at the time, both Osborne and Amis were progressively more reactionary as they grew older, I understand.

Certainly the concern for Angry Young Men is not matched by an interest in Put Upon Young Women, certainly in Look Back in Anger.

[Pompey Bum]

Angry young men--Lord Byron redux? On our side we had Jack Kerouac, who ran his Road for a time and then went away. Now we have hipsters, who are more or less Jack Kerouac redux. But they are not well read enough to know it.

I saw the Richard Burton film version of Look Back in Anger a few years ago (actually just the last 45 minutes or so on television). I was struck by how dated its social assumptions were about integrity and success. That didn't detract from its power, but it gave me pause to consider how much things have changed over the years. Even the hipsters have corporate dreams anymore. But Burton was great--as he was also in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

When I was in 8th grade, our English Lit teacher made us read Room at the Top and A Man of Property. I loathed them both: it bothered me that people could be so cruel to each other. I have since reread Galsworthy and have more respect for him than I did as a boy. My lingering memory of Room at the Top (which doesn't include much of the plot) is that the similes were really bad. About four years later I read Atlas Shrugged (to impress a girl :blush5:) and clearly remember thinking that it was the worst thing I'd read since Room at the Top.

[Emil Miller]

Angry young men--Lord Byron redux? On our side we had Jack Kerouac, who ran his Road for a time and then went away. We now have Hipsters, who are more or less Jack Kerouac redux. But they are not well read enough to know it.

I saw the Richard Burton film version of Look Back in Anger a few years ago (actually just the last 45 minutes or so on television). I was struck by how dated its social assumptions were about integrity and success. That didn't detract from its power, but it gave me pause to consider how much things have changed over the years. Even the hipsters have corporate dreams anymore. But Burton was great--as he was also in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

When I was in 8th grade, our English Lit teacher made us read Room at the Top and A Man of Property. I loathed them both: it bothered me that people could be so cruel to each other. I have since reread Galsworthy and have more respect for him than I did as a boy. My lingering memory of Room at the Top (which doesn't include much of the plot) is that the similes were really bad. About four years later I read Atlas Shrugged (to impress a girl :blush5:) and clearly remember thinking that it was the worst thing I'd read since Room at the Top.

The Angry Young Man literary blip appeared to me as youthful self-indulgence and it faded almost as soon as it began. Always suspicious of manufactured fads, whether by publishers or the entertainment industry, I did see Look Back in Anger but it didn't win me over to its anti-establishment viewpoint.
I also saw the film of Lucky Jim and didn't think it other than fitfully amusing. Kingsley Amis has always seemed to me to be a mediocre writer; in fact the 1950s and beyond, with a few exceptions, seems to be devoid of significant writing which is why I usually find myself returning to previous decades for reading material.

[Jackson Richardson]

The Angry Young Men were considered very cutting edge and significant at the time. One thing that has sunk them is feminism. What I remember most vividly are the images when the curtain rises on Act 1 & 3. Act 1 is a wet Sunday afternoon and Jimmy Porter is railing against the Establishment, in particuar as represented by his wife, Alison, from a more privileged social class, who is patiently doing his ironing.

Act 2 sees Jimmy throw over Alison for another posh girl. Act 3 the curtain rises on a wet Sunday afternoon and Jimmy Porter railing against the Establishment and the new girl at the ironing board.

Back to the OP. That was how women were portrayed in a seminal 50s work.

As it happens I'm writing this taking a break from ironing my own shirts.

[Emil Miller]

As it happens I'm writing this taking a break from ironing my own shirts.

Perhaps you should have married a posh girl.

[Jackson Richardson]

I iron my partner's shirts as well when he's doing the cooking.

Come to think of it, the best comment on Jimmy Porter is Lady Bracknell: Don't talk ill of society, Algernon. Only people who can't get into it do that.

[Jackson Richardson]

Just had supper. He's a wonderful cook.

[Emil Miller]

Just had supper. He's a wonderful cook.

I think I will stick to ironing my own shirts and cooking my meagre meals unless some attractive female hoves into view.

[Jackson Richardson]

Margery Allingham’s Tiger in the Smoke (1952) is very, very evocative of post war London with its fog and bomb sites. She was a 30s crime writer along with Agatha Christie. Like Christie she continued to write post WW 2, but unlike Christie she was not content to continue the same formula. Wiki gives a fair overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery_Allingham

Although the heroine of Tiger in the Smoke is captured by the villain, she is shown standing up to him in the final pages. It is her boyfriend who has spent most of the novel tied up in a cellar in the hands of a mysterious criminal gang.

[Jackson Richardson]

There's a nice article about Margery Allingham here: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/aug/19/fiction.shopping1

I'm going to re-read one of hers after I've finished What Maisie Knew.

[New Secret]

Believe it or not women were sexed up in the 1950s. In watching countless movies of that era with my grandfather I'd seen many a really hot scene filled with sexual tension. In remembering what few books I read that were first published in the 1950s I can remember the men were like Hardee Boys WWII type men and the women were portrayed as obedient damsels who needed help. Perhaps I wasn't reading the right books because they weren't nearly as sexy as what Hollywood was doing with women at the time. In fact I would say that the 1950s and 1960s were way sexier than movies in the 1980s or the 1990s. Definitely not since the end of the 1990s. Hot sexual depictions in movies has really died off these last 16 years and gone the other way.