Hannah Gavron ( he, חנה גברון; born Ann Fyvel; 1936 – 14 December 1965) was a

Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine ( ar, فلسطين الانتدابية '; he, פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א״י) ', where "E.Y." indicates ''’Eretz Yiśrā’ēl'', the Land of Israel) was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 ...

-born British sociologist.

Life and work

Ann Fyvel was born in

British Mandate of Palestine British Mandate of Palestine or Palestine Mandate most often refers to: * Mandate for Palestine: a League of Nations mandate under which the British controlled an area which included Mandatory Palestine and the Emirate of Transjordan. * Mandatory P ...

(now

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

) in 1936, the daughter of Mary (Kirschner), who was from South Africa, and T. R. Fyvel, the left-wing

Zionist Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...

who eventually became the literary editor of ''

Tribune Tribune () was the title of various elected officials in ancient Rome. The two most important were the tribunes of the plebs and the military tribunes. For most of Roman history, a college of ten tribunes of the plebs acted as a check on the ...

'' and a friend of the writer

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitar ...

.Helen McCarthy
"Social Science and Married Women’s Employment in Post-War Britain"
'' Past and Present'', vol. 233, no. 1 (2016), p. 280. She was registered at birth as Ann, but always used the name in the form of Hannah, both privately and professionally. Aged sixteen, she became a student at the Royal Academy of the Dramatic Arts (RADA)."'Tell the boys I loved them'"
''The Guardian'', 4 April 2009. Retrieved 27 January 2018. In 1955 she married Robert Gavron, who would become a

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

peer,

barrister A barrister is a type of lawyer in common law jurisdictions. Barristers mostly specialise in courtroom advocacy and litigation. Their tasks include taking cases in superior courts and tribunals, drafting legal pleadings, researching law and ...

and printer, but who had then only just started training in printing, having eschewed a legal career for the time being (the same year he married Hannah, he had been

called to the bar The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...

after graduating from the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

)."Lord Gavron – obituary"
''The Telegraph'', 8 February 2015. Retrieved 27 January 2018. Shortly after marrying, Gavron graduated from RADA, but stayed in education; she went on to

Bedford College, University of London Bedford College was in York Place after 1874 Bedford College was founded in London in 1849 as the first higher education college for women in the United Kingdom. In 1900, it became a constituent of the University of London. Having played a lead ...

, where she remained for eight years, firstly to study sociology as an

undergraduate Undergraduate education is education conducted after secondary education and before postgraduate education. It typically includes all postsecondary programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree. For example, in the United States, an entry-lev ...

(she received a first-class degree) and then to complete a

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

,Philip Maughan
"Hannah Gavron: a woman ahead of her time"
''New Statesman'', 12 November 2015. Retrieved 27 January 2018. which was awarded in 1964 for a

thesis A thesis ( : theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: ...

on "The position and opportunities of young mothers: progression or retrogression: a study of the difficulties confronting young mothers in the contemporary family based on a comparative study of working class and middle class families". After completing her doctorate, Gavron took up a lectureship at

Hornsey School of Art Hornsey College of Art (a.k.a. Hornsey School of Art) was a college in Crouch End in the London Borough of Haringey, England. The HCA was "an iconic British art institution, renowned for its experimental and progressive approach to art and design ...

. On 14 December 1965, she locked herself in the kitchen of her neighbour's house in Jackson's Lane,

Highgate Highgate ( ) is a suburban area of north London at the northeastern corner of Hampstead Heath, north-northwest of Charing Cross. Highgate is one of the most expensive London suburbs in which to live. It has two active conservation organisati ...

, switched on its

gas oven A gas stove is a stove that is fuelled by combustible gas such as syngas, natural gas, propane, butane, liquefied petroleum gas or other flammable gas. Before the advent of gas, cooking stoves relied on solid fuels such as coal or wood. The ...

and

committed suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including major depressive disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic f ...

. The year after her death, Gavron's thesis was published as ''The Captive Wife'', which is cited as an early example of the emergent British feminist literature and a noted early sociological study on women and work. It was a qualitative sociological analysis of narrative accounts of working- and middle-class married women's lives, and has been called one of the "classic examples of feminist interpretation of housework". She argued that women tended to leave paid work after childbirth and that motherhood stripped women of independence, bringing their values and aspirations as 'New' women into conflict with the traditional role they were having to play as mothers.Mary Eagleton and Emma Parker, ''The History of British Women's Writing, 1970–present'', vol. 10 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 115. In the view of

Helen McCarthy Helen McCarthy (born 27 February 1951) is the British author of such anime reference books as ''500 Manga Heroes and Villains'', ''Anime!'', ''The Anime Movie Guide'' and ''Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation''. She is the co-author of ...

, this study meant that Fyvel (Gavron) was one of a number of researchers in the 1950s and early 1960s (such as Nancy Seear, Viola Klein, Ferdynand Zweig, Judith Hubback and Pearl Jephcott) who "helped to entrench new understandings of married women's employment as a fundamental feature of advanced industrial societies, and one that solved the dilemmas of 'modern' woman across social classes." In 1990, Ann Oakley wrote that Gavron was an "optimistic pioneer of modern feminism" who "stood as a role model for many of us, trying to make our way in the male-dominated world of social science. She even at times appears in the guise of a cultural metaphor ''à la''

Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, ''The ...

and many others – a woman torn apart by her position on the edge of time, by those same dilemmas of being female which form the subject matter of her work and writing".Ann Oakley, "Optimistic pioneer of modern feminism", ''The Observer'', 29 August 1990, p. 33. In 2015, Gavron's son Jeremy published his memoirs of her, ''A Woman on The Edge of Time'', which was the ''

15 Minute Drama ''15 Minute Drama'', previously known as ''Woman's Hour Drama'', was a BBC Radio 4 Arts and Drama production strand that was broadcast between 1998 and 2021. It consisted of 15-minute episodes, broadcast every weekday 10:45–11:00 am (i.e. ...

'' on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

in June 2019.

Life and work

References

Further reading