488 BOOK REVIEWS

The Shadow of Marriage: Singleness in England, 1914–60, by Katherine Holden

(Manchester: Manchester U.P., 2007; pp. 257. £55).

This innovative and stimulating book attempts to recover the experiences of

the ‘never-married’ in England in the two generations after the First World
War, and thereby enhance the understanding of the ‘married/single divide’.
Katherine Holden’s claim that marital status is a ‘largely unexamined analytical
category for historians’ (p. 1) is perhaps an overstatement, but it is undoubtedly
true that spinsters and bachelors have rarely received attention commensurate
with their numbers in studies of modern Britain. At each census date between
1891 and 1931, after all, more than a third of adults over the age of fifteen had
not yet married, and while this proportion declined after the Second World
War, singleness was hardly uncommon. But the tendency to view marriage as

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the norm, coupled with the elusiveness of the never-married in many records,
has meant that the perspectives of single men and women have often been
marginalised. What is particularly impressive about this research is the wide
range of different sources that are employed to overcome these gaps and
silences. Holden moves smoothly and confidently between the public and
private to provide a rounded and nuanced study. The book examines debates
about welfare policies and laws affecting the unmarried; it analyses cultural
representations of singleness in novels, films, and magazines; and it provides
insights into personal experiences by using interviews and memoirs. These
individual recollections are particularly rich: Holden is a skilful interviewer
and teases out meaning from the words of her respondents sensitively.
The book’s most distinctive argument is that not only did the never-
married live in the ‘shadow of marriage’, they also played an important role
in maintaining its ‘power base’. Single people tended not to reject the
prevailing cultural discourses and practices that prioritised marriage and the
family, but rather tried to rework them so that they could find their own
place within them. Holden observes that ‘for a high proportion of single
women, service in the cause of the family became a primary focus for their
life’s work’ (p. 16). Much of the book is devoted to examining the unmarried
in these familial or caring roles: there is a chapter on being a ‘standby’ as
brother, sister, son or daughter, another on being an aunt or uncle, and
further ones on single parenthood, adoption and fostering, and paid work
with children. Many of these relationships brought rich personal rewards—
some felt their lives had been validated by the care they gave to family
members—but frustration and even humiliation was also a common
experience for those who did not fit into the conventions of the nuclear
family. A further organising theme is the comparison between men and
women. It was, unsurprisingly, far easier for bachelors than spinsters to pursue
an independent existence without provoking suspicion and sneering; in
particular, men had a far greater sexual freedom in a period when sex outside
marriage continued to be regarded with disapproval. On the other hand,
single men often had fewer opportunities than women to find satisfaction in
caring or parenting relationships. Holden offers a nuanced and complex
picture of the different experiences of unmarried men and women although
it is, as she admits, often more difficult to find evidence about single men’s
lives—not least because men do not change their title on marriage—and
therefore it is not always possible to sustain the comparative analysis.
EHR, cxxiv. 507 (April 2009)
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The book is perhaps less successful in drawing out patterns of change over
time. Holden suggests that there were ‘increasingly vicious attacks upon
spinsters in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s’ (p. 12), and points to a reinforcement of
the norm of marriage after the Second World War. Such claims are not
unreasonable, but they are not supported very fully, and the reader is given
little sense of why significant shifts would occur in attitudes to singleness after
1960. Given that the shadow of marriage looms over the analysis—Holden
contends that ‘the meanings of singleness are in a dialogue with the meanings
of marriage’ (p. 6)—it might also have been helpful to have been provided with
further detail about changing understandings of the conjugal relationship
across these decades. Overall, though, this is a rewarding work which will
encourage social and cultural historians to think differently not just about
singleness but the whole web of family relationships. In a personal and poignant

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conclusion, Holden—unmarried herself—admits that the book is ‘partly a
product of my own need to be remembered’. She has written a fine study
that is a fitting monument to the men and women who shared their stories
with her.
ADRIAN BINGHAM
doi:10.1093/ehr/cep061 University of Sheffield

EHR, cxxiv. 507 (April 2009)