It’s true. Australian women have been striving to have at all for decades — since as far back as the 1940s.
Or at least the media’s been promoting the message for that long, as coverage of what we might consider the ‘Gwyneth Paltrows‘ of the time show: well-known women with headline-making careers who’re raising kids at home, doing the cooking, writing books and somehow managing to look ‘put together’ at the same time.
In line with the relaunch of Melbourne-born author June Wright’s 1948 crime novel, Murder in the Telephone Exchange, published by Verse Chorus Press this month, we were alerted to some of the media coverage Wright received at the time and couldn’t help but draw comparisons with what we read today.
The novel is set around the scene of a murder in a central telephone exchange, a place Wright could write intimately about given her own experience working at the Melbourne Central Telephone Exchange from 1939 to 1941.
In this media piece Wright’s described first as a housewife, and then as a mother of four. The word ‘novelist’ doesn’t appear once, despite Wright being short-listed for a major international literary prize at the time.
The story describes the then 28-year-old as looking like a “French mannequin” who keeps a nine room house “bright and shinning” and does all the washing, ironing, cooking and sewing for her youngsters (thank god the latter has dropped off the list of domestic expectations)
It reminded me of an obituary on Yvonne Brill published in the New York Times last year that described her first as being the creator of a “mean beef stroganoff”, before going on to mention the fact she also happened to be a brilliant rocket scientist who invented a propulsion system to keep communications satellites in orbit. How things have changed over the decades.
But the 1948 report on June Wright is particularly telling regarding its focus on Wright being able to “do it all”, with the journalist seemingly bemused by Wright going out and actually pursuing her ambition despite her domestic ties.
“Asked how she managed to do all this, June simply said: ‘Well I always wanted to write a novel’ as though that settled the matter.
“Hundreds of girls have had the same idea but some took jobs, some got married and some raised families. June did all three.”
And after marrying her cost accountant husband, the story explains how Wright got really busy.
“When most girls would have been snowed under by domestic duties, while her eldest son Patrick was still a baby, and she was planning a layette for her second child Rosemary, June was busy with her first novel.”
While finalising her manuscript Wright became pregnant with twins, and so commenced the real juggle of modern motherhood. “Ever since then we have had to be a highly organised family,” she tells the journalists. “Modern husbands have to be useful and I don’t think they lose any dignity by it.” The last three paragraphs of the piece outline how Wright manages her week.
So there you have it. Women were being asked how they ‘do it all’ as far back as the 1940s and outlining their weekly diaries to prove they’re not neglecting any balls in the juggling act.
Wright’s debut novel was a best-seller in 1948, with sales even overtaking Agatha Christie at the time. She published another five mysteries over the next two decades, raising six children and still managing those domestic duties. She stopped writing once her husband was unable to work, taking another job in a telephone exchange. She died two years ago, at the age of 92.
Fiction historian Lucy Sussex, who interviewed Wright in the 1990s, describes Wright as “highly articulate, clever, toughened by the experience of the Great Depression and a World War, but doomed to the domestic sphere.” She wrote to keep her sanity, a form of self-expression that helped chronicle the then lives of Melbourne women.
Wright’s eldest son, Patrick, a now retired university lecture, sees his mother as a role model for his granddaughters. “Someone who had a dream, claimed their talent, and with courage, application, focus, hard work and resilience achieved their dream, something worthwhile.”
Someone who ‘did it all’, or at least found time for the tasks she really wanted to do. A woman who may have appeared to ‘have it all’, but was tied to the same assumptions regarding how she should and shouldn’t be spending her time as everyone else.
Verse Chorus imprint, Dark Passage, has republished all six of Wright’s books, as well as one previously unpublished manuscript.