Writing a scholarly occupation: student women diarists (1940-1944)

Through the examination of diaries written by four women students in occupied Paris, this article aims to show how each of them struggled through adversity with great courage and resilience to pursue their scholarly ambitions. In placing their stories within the broader social and political context of the Occupation, supposedly inimical to the women’s pursuit of self-fulfilment, the article echoes more recent histories of women’s lives during the period which show that women were not necessarily cowed by reactionary legislation and ideology. These young women, raised and educated in the inter-war period when first-wave feminism was at its height, were resourceful and creative and they were determined to carry on with their studies in the face of considerable practical and material difficulties.