Forgotten Men and Fallen Women: The Cultural Politics of New Deal Narratives

During the Great Depression and into the war years, the Roosevelt administration sought to transform the political, institutional, and social contours of the United States. One result of the New Deal was the emergence and deployment of a novel set of narratives—reflected in social scientific case studies, government documents, and popular media—meant to reorient relationships among gender, race, sexuality, and national political power. In Forgotten Men and Fallen Women, Holly Allen focuses on the interplay of popular and official narratives of forgotten manhood, fallen womanhood, and other social and moral archetypes. In doing so, she explores how federal officials used stories of collective civic identity to enlist popular support for the expansive New Deal state and, later, for the war effort.

These stories, she argues, had practical consequences for federal relief politics. The forgotten man, identified by Roosevelt in a fireside chat in 1932, for instance, was a compelling figure of collective civic identity and the counterpart to the white, male breadwinner who was the prime beneficiary of New Deal relief programs. He was also associated with women who were blamed either for not supporting their husbands and family at all (owing to laziness, shrewishness, or infidelity) or for supporting them too well by taking their husbands’ jobs, rather than staying at home and allowing the men to work.

During World War II, Allen finds, federal policies and programs continued to be shaped by specific gendered stories—most centrally, the story of the heroic white civilian defender, which animated the Office of Civilian Defense, and the story of the sacrificial Nisei (Japanese-American) soldier, which was used by the War Relocation Authority. The Roosevelt administration’s engagement with such widely circulating narratives, Allen concludes, highlights the affective dimensions of U.S. citizenship and state formation.

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Forgotten Men and Fallen Women: The Cultural Politics of New Deal Narratives

During the Great Depression and into the war years, the Roosevelt administration sought to transform the political, institutional, and social contours of the United States. One result of the New Deal was the emergence and deployment of a novel set of narratives—reflected in social scientific case studies, government documents, and popular media—meant to reorient relationships among gender, race, sexuality, and national political power. In Forgotten Men and Fallen Women, Holly Allen focuses on the interplay of popular and official narratives of forgotten manhood, fallen womanhood, and other social and moral archetypes. In doing so, she explores how federal officials used stories of collective civic identity to enlist popular support for the expansive New Deal state and, later, for the war effort.

These stories, she argues, had practical consequences for federal relief politics. The forgotten man, identified by Roosevelt in a fireside chat in 1932, for instance, was a compelling figure of collective civic identity and the counterpart to the white, male breadwinner who was the prime beneficiary of New Deal relief programs. He was also associated with women who were blamed either for not supporting their husbands and family at all (owing to laziness, shrewishness, or infidelity) or for supporting them too well by taking their husbands’ jobs, rather than staying at home and allowing the men to work.

During World War II, Allen finds, federal policies and programs continued to be shaped by specific gendered stories—most centrally, the story of the heroic white civilian defender, which animated the Office of Civilian Defense, and the story of the sacrificial Nisei (Japanese-American) soldier, which was used by the War Relocation Authority. The Roosevelt administration’s engagement with such widely circulating narratives, Allen concludes, highlights the affective dimensions of U.S. citizenship and state formation.

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Forgotten Men and Fallen Women: The Cultural Politics of New Deal Narratives

Forgotten Men and Fallen Women: The Cultural Politics of New Deal Narratives

by Holly Allen
Forgotten Men and Fallen Women: The Cultural Politics of New Deal Narratives

Forgotten Men and Fallen Women: The Cultural Politics of New Deal Narratives

by Holly Allen

eBook

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Overview

During the Great Depression and into the war years, the Roosevelt administration sought to transform the political, institutional, and social contours of the United States. One result of the New Deal was the emergence and deployment of a novel set of narratives—reflected in social scientific case studies, government documents, and popular media—meant to reorient relationships among gender, race, sexuality, and national political power. In Forgotten Men and Fallen Women, Holly Allen focuses on the interplay of popular and official narratives of forgotten manhood, fallen womanhood, and other social and moral archetypes. In doing so, she explores how federal officials used stories of collective civic identity to enlist popular support for the expansive New Deal state and, later, for the war effort.

These stories, she argues, had practical consequences for federal relief politics. The forgotten man, identified by Roosevelt in a fireside chat in 1932, for instance, was a compelling figure of collective civic identity and the counterpart to the white, male breadwinner who was the prime beneficiary of New Deal relief programs. He was also associated with women who were blamed either for not supporting their husbands and family at all (owing to laziness, shrewishness, or infidelity) or for supporting them too well by taking their husbands’ jobs, rather than staying at home and allowing the men to work.

During World War II, Allen finds, federal policies and programs continued to be shaped by specific gendered stories—most centrally, the story of the heroic white civilian defender, which animated the Office of Civilian Defense, and the story of the sacrificial Nisei (Japanese-American) soldier, which was used by the War Relocation Authority. The Roosevelt administration’s engagement with such widely circulating narratives, Allen concludes, highlights the affective dimensions of U.S. citizenship and state formation.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780801455834
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Publication date: 04/03/2015
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 272
File size: 3 MB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Holly Allen is Assistant Professor of American Studies at Middlebury College.

Table of Contents

Introduction. "More Terrible than the Sword": Emotions, Facts, and Gendered New Deal Narratives1. The War to Save the Forgotten Man: Gender, Citizenship, and the Politics of Work Relief2. "Uncle Sam's Wayside Inns": Transient Narratives and the Sexual Politics of the Emergent Welfare State3. "Builder of Men": Homosociality and the Nationalist Accents of the Civilian Conservation Corps4. "To Wallop the Ladies": Woman Blaming and Nation Saving in the Rhetoric of Emergency Relief5. Civilian Protectors and Meddlesome Women: Gendering the War Effort through the Office of Civilian Defense6. The Citizen-Soldier and the Citizen-Internee: Fraternity, Race, and American Nationhood, 1942–46Conclusion. Stories of Homecoming: Deserving GIs and Faithless Service WivesNotes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Eileen Boris

In Forgotten Men and Fallen Women, Holly Allen draws on an array of cultural theorists and digs deep into administrative archives to illuminate a series of gendered narratives about citizenship and civic belonging: the forgotten man, fallen woman, perverse hobo, and wandering youth. She highlights the working of affect for and against the state, underscores the significance of generation and heterosexuality as categories of analysis, and puts the study of representation at the center of the study of politics. By connecting the New Deal with World War II, she turns our attention to continuities despite changing circumstances.

Daniel E. Bender

Forgotten Men and Fallen Women is a marvelous book that should become a classic in the field and essential reading in the study of the Great Depression and World War II. Holly Allen's focus on particular government structures seems especially original and welcome insofar as it reveals a chronological trajectory of narratives of dispirited manhood and fallen womanhood within changing American civic culture.

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