Representations of Single Motherhood in British Cinema, 1945-1970

本博士研究将探讨1945年至1970年英国电影中单身母亲的表现。在这一时期，单身母亲的形象变得尤为重要。由于堕胎法、避孕措施和1969年《离婚改革法》的改变，人们对单身母亲的态度发生了变化，离婚变得更加容易。虽然有关于单身母亲的历史研究，研究了单身母亲的生活经历以及她们与慈善机构和国家的关系，但历史学家在很大程度上忽视了流行文化和媒体中单身母亲的表现。因此，这个项目提出了一种研究单身母亲的新方法，包括研究电影中单身母亲的形象，以期揭示战后英国对单身母亲的“流行”态度，而不仅仅是“官方”态度。反过来，这将有助于更广泛地讨论电影和社会中“母性”的文化建构。这种方法将涉及基于档案研究的历史分析，对电影提供的单身母亲形象进行分析，同时评估这些形象如何与当时更普遍的政治和社会辩论相关联。通过对流行电影形象的考察，本研究将探讨单身母亲作为一个意识形态矛盾的人物的方式，既吸引社会的接受和同情，也吸引道德评判和“惩罚”。通过这种方式，这项研究将有助于英国电影研究，这在很大程度上忽略了这个人物，并通过揭示对流行图像的关注如何使我们对战后时期对性别，家庭，阶级和性的变化的规范和态度的理解复杂化，从而对女性的历史做出贡献。

This PhD research will explore the representation of single motherhood in British cinema from 1945 to 1970. This was a period in which the figure of the single mother became particularly important. Attitudes towards single mothers shifted as a result of changes in abortion law, contraceptive practices and the 1969 Divorce Reform Act, which led to divorce becoming more accessible. Although there have been historical studies of single motherhood, which examine the lived experiences of single mothers and their relationships with charities and the state, historians have largely neglected the representation of single motherhood within popular culture and the media. This project therefore proposes a new approach to single motherhood involving the study of the images of single motherhood provided by cinema, with a view to shedding light upon 'popular,' rather than just 'official,' attitudes towards single motherhood in postwar Britain. This, in turn, will contribute to discussions of the cultural construction of 'motherhood' in cinema and society more generally. This approach will involve a historically grounded analysis, based on archival research, of the images of single motherhood provided by cinema, along with an assessment of how such images spoke to the more general political and social debates of the time. Through the examination of popular cinematic imagery, the research will investigate the ways in which the single mother functioned as an ideologically ambivalent figure, inviting both societal acceptance and sympathy as well as moral judgement and 'punishment'. In this way, the research will contribute both to British film studies, which has largely neglected this figure, and to women's history by revealing how a focus on popular imagery complicates our understanding of the changing norms, and attitudes towards, gender, family, class and sexuality in the postwar period.