The Morass of Morale

Abstract

The Ministry of Information (MoI) had a robust morale-research apparatus which, more often than not, failed to successfully appeal to the public in high-profile information campaigns. Cecil Day-Lewis, who worked in the Publications division of the MoI during the war, allegorized such failures through his detective fiction; in both Malice in Wonderland and Minute for Murder, he alludes to Ministry campaigns like the “Silent Column Campaign,” which failed to appropriately respond to public criticism elicited from Home Intelligence morale reports. Day-Lewis’s subtle critiques of MoI morale assessment are also mirrored in the wartime work of Elizabeth Bowen, who used her information work in Ireland to encourage the MoI to take on more sympathetic public stances towards the neutral nation during the war. While Bowen attempted to read and translate the desires of the Irish public to English officials, The Heat of the Day likewise emphasizes characters’ struggles in interpreting and mastering the desires of others. In both The Heat of the Day and in her wartime short stories, Bowen returns to early psychographic symbols of ghosts and apparitions to elucidate the precarious position of the public opinion worker during wartime. In this chapter, both Bowen and Day-Lewis remind readers that the desire to manifest interiority as material produces fear and anxiety amongst citizens who feel themselves spied upon and who see psychographics as just another means of control for governments and institutions against its citizens.