Temperate Heroes: Concepts of Masculinity in Second World War Britain

This chapter in the 2004 edited volume Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History examines how war-time masculinity was depicted in a host of representations including newspaper articles and stories, trade union publications, advertisements, propaganda posters, and first-person accounts in Britain during the Second World War. The author argues that hegemonic masculinity was fashioned from seemingly opposing sets of characteristics. It was composed of crucial aspects of both the post-World War I ‘anti-heroic’ masculinity and the stereotyped adventurer or soldier-hero most clearly exemplified by combat soldiers. The characteristics of masculinity depicted in the popular culture of the World War II years were also those that composed wartime Britishness or Englishness. Moreover, ‘good citizenship’ and masculinity were virtually the mirror images of one another. Masculinity, in other words, was ideal personhood.