Uncovering the Lives of Women in Post-War Oxfordshire: An Oral History Approach

Writing in 1960 Margaret Stacey asserted that, ‘Women, compared with men, tend to show group characteristics regardless of other social factors like class. Their training from childhood sets them apart from boys and together as potential wives and mothers.’ This article will question whether Oxfordshire women did indeed believe that there was a commonality in their experiences at this time, irrespective of the locality in which they lived or the class to which they belonged, or whether these differences were more significant than their shared gender. The first objective of this article is therefore to analyse the role class played in determining women's experiences of life in Oxfordshire at this time. Leading on from this, the second objective is to investigate the importance of locality upon lived experience, and to engage, in Charles Phythian-Adams' words, in the process of ‘unravelling localized identities’ (1987). Using Oxfordshire as a case study it is possible to examine a range of communities: rural, urban and suburban. This article will demonstrate how the nature of these different communities affected women's experiences of living within them. The third objective is to discuss the ways in which the women I interviewed expressed their experiences of rural living through the oral history interview, and how their accounts relate to contemporary debates and existing historical interpretations.