Prescriptions for Penelope: Literature on women's obligations to returning World War II veterans

Radio soap operas and domestic masculinity: The World War II Veteran comes home

“…This advice was not given lightly; Ima Phillips (1944) reported that she plotted her stories about wounded veterans with the assistance of the Office of War Information, the Veteran's Administration, and the Red Cross. These rehabilitation narratives function like the advice literature aimed at veterans' wives that Susan Hartmann (1978) analyzes; they reestablish male dominance by emphasizing the importance of female flexibility in accommodating the needs of the returning veteran. However, within the constraints of the established gender system, these stories were appealing because they were fantasies of power, both the power of domestic ideology, which was embraced even by veterans who initially rejected it, and the power of female characters, who could heal the veteran and bring him back into the domestic world.…”

Lesbian and Gay Marriage and Romantic Adjustment in the 1950s and 1960s United States

“…The federal government's endorsement of the male-dominated, breadwinnerhomemaker household resonated with advice literature, marriage counselling services, popular print media, and film. 34 But it was especially echoed and supported by psychologists. Psychoanalyst Therese Benedek, for example, explained in her 1946 book, Insight and Personality Adjustment: A Study of the Psychological Effects of War, 'The woman at home is the measure of the masculinity and emotional maturation of the man'.…”

“If He Comes Home Nervous”: U.S. World War II Neuropsychiatric Casualties and Postwar Masculinities

“…Given the wide range of subject matters, disciplinary approaches and apparent intentions, it is impossible to fully probe the wealth of gendered meanings in this extensive advice literature. Indeed, as Hartmann (1978) has shown, even while discussing the veteran and his needs, the advice given to wives and mothers contains rich messages about women's expanded social roles and regressive prescriptions for stabilizing the postwar gender order. Nevertheless, in the case of constructing the neuropsychiatric patient, the readjustment texts reveal some basic patterns.…”

“…Hartmann (1978) and Silverman (1992), for example, have examined women's central curative roles in restoring wounded veterans' masculinities and facilitating a return to a "normal" gender order. More recently, Gerber (1994Gerber ( , 2000, Serlin (2004), and Jarvis (2004) have analyzed the ways in which discourses surrounding the rebuilding of injured veterans' bodies via state-of-the-art prosthetic devices and medical procedures communicated the nation's strength and celebrated American triumphs in medicine, technology, and industry.…”

“…Although Pratt and many of his contemporaries saw veterans' rehabilitations as opportunities to repay the nation's debt to its citizen soldiers, historians, media critics, and gender studies scholars have viewed wounded veterans and their physical and emotional readjustments as privileged sites for exploring gender ideals and relations in the postwar period. Hartmann (1978) and Silverman (1992), for example, have examined women's central curative roles in restoring wounded veterans' masculinities and facilitating a return to a "normal" gender order. More recently, Gerber (1994Gerber ( , 2000, Serlin (2004), and Jarvis (2004) have analyzed the ways in which discourses surrounding the rebuilding of injured veterans' bodies via state-of-the-art prosthetic devices and medical procedures communicated the nation's strength and celebrated American triumphs in medicine, technology, and industry.…”