Visible Histories: Women and Environments in a Post-War British City.

Visible Histories: Women and Environments in a Post-War British City. Mackenzie, Suzanne. Visible Histories: Women and environments in apost-war British city. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen'sUniversity Press, 1989. Pp. xv, 217. Tables, index. In the early 1980s, Suzanne Mackenzie conducted 60 interviews withwomen in Brighton, the Regency seaside restore in southern England.These provided the data for Visible Histories. Mackenzie notes the waysin which Brighton, and the respondents, were both typical andidiosyncratic id��i��o��syn��cra��sy?n. pl. id��i��o��syn��cra��sies1. A structural or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group.2. A physiological or temperamental peculiarity.3. . Although she is at pains to credit them withindividuality, her major justification for the book is that the dataillustrate an important, and hitherto unexplored, development in thehistory of contemporary Britain, revealed in the way women exercisecontrol over their homes and neighbourhoods. The book is a humanhistorical geography Historical geography is the study of the human, physical, fictional, theoretical, and "real" geographies of the past. Historical geography studies a wide variety of issues and topics. , chronicling a series of "mercurial mercurial/mer��cu��ri��al/ (mer-kur��e-il)1. pertaining to mercury.2. a preparation containing mercury.mer��cu��ri��aladj. andpowerful women and environments." The core of Mackenzie's evidence is in the interviews whoseguiding questionnaires are reproduced in the appendix. Her respondentswere "working-class," a term she makes no attempt to definealthough she describes her interviewees in economic terms of income,household amenities and aids, as well as by their demographiccharacteristics. Through their responses, Mackenzie draws a picture ofwomen's work and consciousness. She explores the way domesticworking conditions have changed over her subjects' lifecycles withrespect to services concerned with birth control and childbirth,childcare, nursery schools and education, and examines women's workas consumers and domestic managers. One chapter examines women'spaid work in the labour force in terms of its furnishing a supplement tofamily resources. Her assumption that all women regarded theirinvolvement in the paid labour force as auxiliary to a primary familialrole is problematic; but sustained by her data. Mackenzie sought, and found, a proud, activist and optimisticwomen's community. The women "retained a sense of theirability and their right to intervene, whether this took the form ofenergetic, collective acts of 'swimming against the tide' andcreating concrete alternatives, or of quiet, individual decisions todistance themselves from forms of behaviour they felt were wrong, ofacting in principled ways in their relations with their children with(the supermarket) Saintsbury's with the local council ... Women hadcarefully, constantly and incrementally constructed their lives." This book is a refreshing development beyond the historiography historiographyWriting of history, especially that based on the critical examination of sources and the synthesis of chosen particulars from those sources into a narrative that will stand the test of critical methods. of"woman as victim" and a clear celebration of what women havedone well. Mackenzie notes that women were less successful incontrolling, or even making a mark, in "the unionizable andprofessional sectors of the labour force." She is more interestedin the thesis that "the very essence of social change in post-warBrighton" is located in the "activities which define'what a woman does.'" If so, her assessment of what(some) women do is timely and important. She rightly re-claims this workfor contemporary feminist analysis, but such a project could benefitfrom a wider reading in recent women's history ''This article is about the history of women. For information on the field of historical study, see Gender history.Women's history is the history of female human beings. Rights and equalityWomen's rights refers to the social and human rights of women. . The work ofhistorians such as Jane Lewis and Elizabeth Roberts is grist toMackenzie's mill. Nevertheless, Mackenzie's documentation ofwomen's work in Mrs Thatcher's Brighton contributes to a moremeasured appreciation of women's power and autonomy. Mary Kinnear Department of History St. John's College, University of Manitoba LocationThe main Fort Garry campus is a complex on the Red River in south Winnipeg. It has an area of 2.74 square kilometres. More than 60 major buildings support the teaching and research programs of the university. .