Fighting Forces, Writing Women

In a period of high idealism, and 'titanic illimitable death' women ofter found themselves longing to play an active role alongside their male compatriots. In this fascinating work, Sharon Ouditt examines the traumatic nature of women's experiences during the Great War, and the complex ideological structures they constructed in order to legitimate their position in the public world of work and politics. Using a wealth of historical material - contemporary propaganda, journals, magazines, memoirs and fiction - Sharon Ouditt challenges the notion that women achieved sudden and unproblematic independence, and demonstrates the ways in which women mediated their attraction to a fixed female identity with their desire for radical social change.

Sharon Ouditt is Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies at The Nottingham Trent University.

List of Plates -- Acknowledgements -- INTRODUCTION -- 1 NUNS AND LOVERS: Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses in the First World War -- 2 COUNTRY AND TOWN, AGRICULTURE AND MUNITIONS: The proper lady and the woman worker -- 3 WOMEN AT HOME: Romance or realism? -- 4 REACTIONARY OR REVOLUTIONARY? The maternal pacifist -- 5 WOOLF, WAR AND WRITING: New words, new methods -- CONCLUSION -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.