The Great War and Women's Consciousness: Images of Militarism and Womanhood Book

Contemporary British culture is still heavy with the memory of 1914-18. Whether angry or sad, satirical or grief-stricken, literary memory of the Great War is dominated by the writings of Sassoon and Owen, Graves and Blunden. The clearest voice that reaches us from that era is the voice of the trench-poet, calling from the Western Front. It is a male voice. This voice, the resentful complaint of young men, has drowned out the sound of women, who also had something to say. Men spoke from beyond the firing-line, describing the horror of a zone where no woman was allowed. Propaganda and censorship shielded women. They also prevented men from knowing what women were trying to publish in an effort to understand what war entailed and to put a stop to it. This book is a study of what women wrote about militarism and the First World War.Read More