"Singled Out" by Virginia Nicholson

In my review of the last book I read, ""The Great Silence 1918-1920: Living in the Shadow of the Great War"  by Juliet Nicolson, I noted: 

"The stories of the many women who were widowed or left without men to marry (and, subsequently, left without children) are also touched upon. (This is the subject of another book that's in my reading pile, "Singled Out" by Virginia Nicholson.  I'll be honest -- I thought both books were by the same author -- Nicholson/Nicolson -- close!!)"

Well, since I seem to be on a World War I-era kick right now, and since I mentioned it, and since it was another volume in my gargantuan to-be-read pile (albeit this one was on my e-reader...!), I decided "Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived without Men After the First World War" by Virginia Nicholson would be my next read. (Virginia Nicholson is the great-niece of Virginia Woolf -- the granddaughter of her sister, Vanessa Bell.)

I think I first heard about this book through Jody Day of Gateway Women, who has referenced it in her blog posts and talks and in her book, "Living the Life Unexpected."  Reading it, I was reminded of a scene in the TV series "Downton Abbey," in which middle daughter Edith, wanting to marry a man 25 years her senior, to the dismay of her family, bitterly reminds her father that all the young men of her own generation whom she might have married were gone, killed during the war. (I'm going by memory, so I think I've got those details straight? -- someone please correct me if I didn't!) 

Edith, of course, did become a mother (bearing a child out of wedlock) and (still!) managed to wind up marrying -- a marquis, no less!! (giving her a social ranking above the rest of her family, including her snobbish older sister Mary). Many of her real-life counterparts, however, were not so lucky. Some two million young women born in Britain around the turn of the century came of age during the Great War, only to see the young men of their generation -- brothers, friends, sweethearts, fiances, new husbands and potential husbands -- slaughtered on the battlefields. Quite simply, there were not enough young men to go around for all the women who wanted -- were raised to expect -- to marry and to have children. 

Early in the book, there's a rather stunning scene:  

In 1917 the senior mistress of Bournemouth High School for Girls stood up in front of the assembled sixth form (nearly all of whom were dressed in mourning for some member of their family) and announced to them: "I have come to tell you a terrible fact. Only one out of ten of you girls can ever hope to marry. This is not a guess of mine. It is a statistical fact. Nearly all the men who might have married you have been killed. You will have to make your way in the world as best you can. The war has made more openings than there were before. But there will still be a lot of prejudice. You will have to fight. You will have to struggle." One of her pupils, seventeen-year-old Rosamund Essex, was never to forget those words. It was "one of the most fateful statements of my life." When Rosamund, who never married, wrote her memoirs sixty years later, she accepted that her teacher's pronouncements had been prophetic: 

How right she was. Only one out of every ten of my friends has ever married. Quite simply, there was no one available. We had to face the facts that our lives would be stunted in one direction. We should never have the kind of happy homes in which we ourselves had been brought up. There would be no husband, no children, no sexual outlet, no natural bond of man and woman. It was going to be a struggle indeed. 

As the book blurb on Goodreads says, "they were forced, by a tragedy of historic proportions, to stop depending on men for their income, their identity and their future happiness."  Instead of wives and mothers, they became independent, self-supporting nannies, teachers, nurses, scientists, writers, politicians and more -- and lay the groundwork for the more equal rights women enjoy (and often take for granted) today. 

The book is chock-full of the personal stories of these "surplus women" -- some well known (Vera Brittain -- who did later marry and have children, and her friend, the writer Winifred Holtby, for example), but many not. Nicholson did a thorough job of researching this subject:  she found memoirs and other first-person accounts, and interviewed several elderly "bachelor girls" and their extended family members herself. She also unearthed contemporary literature (both fiction and non-fiction) that sheds further light on the world these women lived in and the lives they carved out for themselves. 

It can be wince-inducing to read some of the harsh, misogynistic things that were said and written about these women, who were living lives not entirely of their choosing, in roles that their families and educations had not prepared them for. You can see the roots of some of the negative attitudes that prevail today towards single/childless/free women. 

"Singled Out" was lengthy and detailed, a little slow, but absorbing. The last chapter reads a little like a laundry list of women's accomplishments in the mid-20th century -- but overall, the stories were enraging, fascinating, moving, and inspiring.  Whether or not you're single, if you're childless-not-by-choice, I think you will find something here that's relatable.  

4 stars. 

This was Book #24 read to date in 2022 (and Book #2 finished in May), bringing me to 53% of my 2022 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 9 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2022 tagged as "2022 books."  

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Personal postscript:  This book had me thinking about certain members of my family tree in an entirely new light. Reading about the large numbers of young "surplus" women (born around the turn of the century) who emigrated to the "colonies" in search of a new life (and, sometimes, a husband) brought to mind the youngest daughter of my great-great grandfather's youngest brother, born in 1902 in Scotland. About 10 years ago, through my genealogy research, I learned she had emigrated to Canada in 1923. The ship's manifest noted that her passage was paid for by the Salvation Army, that her intended destination was the Salvation Army in Toronto, and that her intended occupation was "domestic."

This piqued my curiosity, and I emailed the Salvation Army here in Toronto for more information. They were extremely helpful, sending me some information about how the Salvation Army ran emigration programs back then. They also found a record for this distant relative, indicating she had taken a position with a family in the city. Two years later, they learned she had resigned and gone to Cleveland. (!)  I could not find the Cleveland address provided on any map, and thought I had reached a dead end. 

New records continue to come online all the time, though, and a few years later, I found a marriage record for her! At some point, she did return to Toronto, and in 1929, age 27 and now working as a cook, she married a salesman in a church here. One of her older sisters (born in 1898) had also come to Toronto that same year and witnessed the ceremony. I still haven't been able to determine whether they had any children (and I haven't found any further information about the sister who witnessed the wedding either), but her husband died in 1957, she died in 1986, and they are buried together in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. In 1986, I had been married and living in Toronto for a year -- in an apartment building a stone's throw away from Mount Pleasant -- completely unaware that I had relatives in the city (however distant -- and she wasn't the only one!). It can be a very small world sometimes...! 

The oldest son of another (older) brother of my great-great-grandfather's had three children -- a boy and two girls, born in Scotland, but raised in northern England. The son, born in 1898, was killed in action in 1918 at the age of 19, and is buried in a war cemetery in France. One of my genealogist-cousins was able to find out what happened to his sisters, born in 1901 and 1904.  Both were unmarried and childless when they wound up emigrating to Australia, apparently as part of a teacher exchange program -- Sister #1 in 1934 at age 33, and Sister #2 in 1946 at age 42. Sister #1 married in Australia in 1937, when she was 36.  They had no children, and her husband passed away in 1948. There were several trips back & forth between Australia and England over the years. She died in England in 1982, age 80, and is buried there in her hometown. Sister #2 became headmistress at a school in Australia, married in 1953 (age 49), but divorced in 1958. She returned to England at some point in the next few years and died there in 1965, age 61.