GOODBYE TO INHIBITIONS
By Frances Ann Roper.
8 Stoke Abbot Court, Worthing.
(Written around 1945-6)
Those of us who are in the forties almost certainly grew up with more or less of
a hang-over from the Victorian period in which our parents were reared.
One of the most deep-rooted inhibitions was that of a “lady's age”.
Thanks to Mr. Bevin that particular inhibition is now as dead as mutton.
None of us is afraid to look our age in the face now that we have all had to
register blatantly in our age-groups, and have to give our age to little bits of
girls at the Food Office every time we put our noses inside the door.
And what fun we had when all our contemporaries were registering in their
age-groups; what violent mental arithmetic we indulged in; and what a delightful
opportunity it offered for honeyed remarks such as, “What, haven't you
registered yet? I registered ages
ago!” But it was not so good when we
saw that faded, dowdy Mrs. Next-door-but-one whom we had always taken to be
fifty if she were a day, turning up to register in the same age-group as
ourselves. Didn't we rush home and stare into the mirror, hoping to goodness we
didn't look that old!
Now that our age is common property we take a pride in it, and stray hairs no
longer loom as tragedies. We take a
pride in doing a full day's work in our ‘directed’ jobs, and standing up to it
as efficiently as we should have done twenty years ago.
Thank you Mr. Bevin, you have scotched one of the biggest bogies in the lives of
thousands of women.
Another inhibition which has gone, let's hope, for good, is that of carrying our
own shopping baskets home. Before the war we scorned to carry any parcel, except
perhaps a tiny one containing a yard or two of ribbon or a pair of gloves,
neatly and modestly wrapped up and dangling from our finger by a dainty loop.
Now we flaunt our shopping baskets before all the neighbours’ gaze, and if we
can display a lump of damp fish, hanging its tail out of a bit of soggy
newspaper, we know we shall be the object of pure envy.
The other day I staggered home up the main street of our town, from a visit to
my pet little junk shop, where, with luck, one can pick up incredible treasures.
An overflowing shopping basket, a second-hand waste paper basket, and a
lamp-shade, were somehow festooned on my left arm, while under my right arm was
tucked the prize treasure - a second-hand carpet sweeper!
Friends stopped to congratulate, strangers stared covetously, and an
entirely unknown lady stopped me to ask breathlessly, “Oh, do tell me where you
got that. I have been trying to find a carpet sweeper for ages!”
I had been feeling slightly self-conscious, and rather like a travelling
tinker’s donkey, but the open envy in the faces of friends and strangers alike,
completely restored my self-esteem, and bang went another inhibition.
The air-raids killed a whole host of inhibitions. After all, if you have waked
after a night in the shelter to find an unknown man asleep with his head in your
lap, and your own head resting on the shoulder of another man, equally unknown,
it is not much use coming all over self-conscious if the one is introduced to
you a few days later at a bridge party, or the other one appears at your door
delivering coals. A very charming friend of mine, who is completely devoted to
her soldier husband, takes a fiendish delight in telling her elderly aunts in
‘safe area’ hotels, that she spends the night with a different man every week;
omitting to mention of course, that it is on fire-watching duty under
circumstances of extreme discomfort in a beetle-ridden outhouse.
Yes, we ‘forties’ certainly have the best of both worlds in this war.
We stand between the two generations, and can enjoy to the full the
casting off of inhibitions, which is a pleasure unknown either to those younger
or older than ourselves. We have stepped back into youth, as we step out into
our new jobs. We can rejoice in a
new sense of freedom and adventure as we have pushed aside the ‘settled down’
atmosphere of middle age which was so surely creeping up on us before the war.
Of course there has been a price to pay, a price of upheaval and the giving up
of our comforts and easy pleasant home life; but how infinitely more we have
gained in mental and spiritual freedom and breadth of outlook.
Go to it, ‘forties’; forget you ever had any inhibitions, step out and grasp the
second youth which is offered to you, and be grateful that you are of the only
generation to which this gift has been given since the beginning of history.