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- Title
Visualising the Modern Housewife: US Occupier Women and the Home in the Allied Occupation of Germany, 1945–1949.
- Authors
de Matos, Christine
- Abstract
Thousands of Allied women arrived in occupied Germany after the Second World War as the wives of military and civilian men working in the occupation apparatus. Yet rarely have these women been seen as active agents of occupier power and knowledge. One way of understanding their role, or how it was imagined, is through images and textual representations. With a focus on the early years of occupation (1945–1949) and visual representations of US wives, this article examines the occupation household that was serviced by occupied domestic workers, in turn drawing comparisons to imperial contexts. Visual cues in selected photographs and caricatures suggest a presumed superior occupier modernity that was both performative and educative, mediated by a class-like asymmetrical relationship. These representations have been divided into three key themes: economic modernity, as through consumerism; domestic modernity in the home; and modern gender and family relations. Here, occupier women's bodies were contrasted against the occupied to signify the power, prestige and modernity of her nation as an occupying power, in turn revealing both the shape of everyday power relations in the home and the paradoxical aims of the occupation itself.
- Subjects
GERMANY; HOUSEWIVES; MILITARY spouses; WORLD War II; FAMILY relations; HOUSEHOLD employees; GENDER; MODERNITY
- Publication
Histories (2409-9252), 2024, Vol 4, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
2409-9252
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3390/histories4010001