Angry Sentinels and Businesslike Women: Identity and Marital Status in 1950s English Library Career Novels

Much energy has been exerted on the ‘image problem’ in librarianship, and negative representations of library spinsters. This paper outlines a different formulation of these issues by focusing on identity and constructions of marital status. It is argued that marital status was critical for women workers in this sector due to the widespread use of the marriage bar which curtailed women's employment on marriage. Yet we illustrate that women's identity cannot be assumed to be constructed within normative discourses of heterosexuality, and an alternative discursive approach to identity formation is outlined. The exemplars used are from library career novels published in the 1950s and 1960s. This paper was delivered at the Library History Group's ‘Libraries and Identity’ Conference, held at the Library Association's Under-One-Umbrella 5 meeting at UMIST, 1-3 July 1999·