| Title | 24. A Mum’s Book? |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Alison Twells(author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0461.24 |
| Landing page | https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0461/chapters/10.11647/obp.0461.24 |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Alison Twells |
| Publisher | Open Book Publishers |
| Published on | 2025-11-10 |
| Long abstract | Chapter 24: A Mum’s Book? This chapter explores the uses of history in our contemporary lives and the meaning of Norah’s story for me, as a historian and a feminist, her grand-niece, and a mother of girls. It opens with my realisation that my daughters and I are the same age as Norah and Milly when Norah first began corresponding with Jim and then fell in love with Danny. The chapter develops as a conversation which circles my question: what could Norah’s mother have done to protect her? We discuss my daughters’ answer -- talk about sex and relationships – and why, in a working-class family in 1941, this wouldn’t happen. We then move beyond the question of the individual – Norah’s mother – to explore issues of sexual ethics in the context of #MeToo and discuss questions of sex and shame, grooming and predation, desire and danger, that Norah could not ask in the mid-twentieth century. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the different paths that feminists have taken over the decades in relation to women and sex: the balance needed between stressing our vulnerability, the extent of male violence, the risk and the threat and the need to live our lives as sexual subjects. |
| Page range | pp. 253–262 |
| Print length | 10 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
Alison Twells is Professor of Social and Cultural History at Sheffield Hallam University. A widely published scholar, her work primarily explores 19th-century local and global history, with a focus on empire, antislavery and missions, and C19th and C20th women’s life-writing. Her academic publications include The Civilising Mission and the English Middle Class: the ‘heathen’ at home and overseas, 1792-1850 (Palgrave, 2009) and Women in Transnational History: Gendering the Local and the Global (Routledge, 2016)), and numerous articles and book chapters. Her recent publications include contributions to History Workshop Journal, The Historical Journal, and Women’s History Review, focusing on creative historical methods, servicemen’s letters and wartime intimacy, and explorations of emotion in ordinary pocket diaries. Always uneasy with academics writing only for each other, Alison is actively engaged in public and creative history initiatives. She has been a pioneer in developing community-facing history in UK universities and has written resources for history education in schools and a city walk about the life in late-C19th Sheffield of activist Edward Carpenter. She has talked about Norah, writing working-class lives, and history, fiction and life-writing, at various events. See www.alisontwells.com