The Depiction of Nation in Women’s Poetry of the First World War

“ ‘Fight on!’ the Armament-kings besought:

Nobody asked what the women thought. ” (Reilly and Kazantzis 38)

The above couplet is taken from a poem aptly titled ‘A Fight to a Finish’, which highlights, in its meagre ten lines, the social ironies and paradoxes born out of the Great War. Incidentally, the poem has been written by a woman: S. Gertrude Ford.

Among the prominent ideologies prevalent during the First World War was the notion of nationalism. To understand nationalism, we first need to establish what one means by the term ‘nation’. One of the most widely popular and accepted definitions of the terms is the one by Benedict Anderson, who defines nation as – “An imagined political community (that is) imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”. (Anderson 6) Otto Bauer explains the concept of nation as “a relative community of character” where each individual inhabitant has his or her own individual characteristics that, in combination with those of all inhabitants of the nation, lend it its own unique set of characteristics. (Bauer 22) He further asserted that the national character is “variable” (Bauer 20) and is bound up with ego – for the nation and for one’s kind.

Nationalism is therefore an ideology which members of the same community share and through which they identify with the nation. Tamar Mayer describes it as “the exercise of internal hegemony, the exclusive empowerment of those who share a sense of belonging to the same “imagined community”.” (Mayer 1)

When Bauer thus speaks of the ego being connected to the notion of the nation, one does wonder what kind of ego is he talking of. Mayer theorises that it is the male and female ego that is at stake in the case of the nation. These egos cannot be separated from gender and sexuality and therefore, the nation gets defined by the gendered ego.

In the case of war, the notion of the nation that is attached to the feminine and the masculine take on the role of the protectors and saviours. This inadvertently has managed to seep through our language, with most, if not all countries as being referred to in the female gender. Nature, nurture and nation become synonymous with the feminine and then further get grouped together to push forward the idea amongst individuals that the nation needs to now be protected, since it becomes a matter of honour.

This thus manifested itself in the emergence of the ‘Home Front’ during the Great War – a designated space from where the women of Britain could express their support for the men at war. The Home Front became the woman’s battleground and she slowly moved towards the jobs the men had left behind in their wake, leading to the formation of the VADs , the Land Army Corps and the Timber Corps . The existence of a Home Front legitimizes the stories of the non-combatant civilians and the fact that the war was experienced by those at the front lines and those at home. The magnitude of the impact of the war can be gleaned from such distinctions.

As stated previously, the notion of the nation is an amalgamation of the individual characteristics of its inhabitants. Thus, the notion of the British nation during the First World War can only be seen as a complete picture if we assimilate poetry written by women in this time. While the male poets recounted the first hand experiences of the War and documented in verse the horrors of trench warfare, women documented the scenes back at home: alongside physical safety there is “working-class poverty, middle class war-shortages, … Jingoism rampant; London both grim and feckless; hospitals; soldiers wounded and unwounded; varieties of war work … all done from a middle-class viewpoint…”. (Reilly xvii)

There is as much of thematic differences in women’s poetry as there is in men’s, especially when concerned with the nation. To contradict Elizabeth Chandler Forman’s war nationalism (Reilly xx) there exists Ruth Comfort Mitchell attacking the glory of war in her poem ‘He Went For A Soldier’. (Reilly xxi)

The idea of a ‘Mother England’ is seen repeated quite often in war poetry. What is surprising is how often it is mentioned in women’s poetry of the First World War. Lilian M. Anderson’s ‘Leave in 1917’ brings together the idea of the nation being feminine and nurturing almost seamlessly. The soldier returning home on leave, Sheringham, keenly observes the scenery surrounding him and dejectedly speaks of how, ‘Though he not / of night hushed fields and elms” and “Though he of hidden forts and hidden camps,” “his England was no England.” (Reilly 3) He travels extensively, crossing Bedford and Northampton and Avon, constantly moving closer and closer to home and yet, “his England was no England” (ibid.) until he reached Devon. Here we see the soldier slowly revitalising in the presence of his England, the one that is described as “stripped of mail and weapons, / child-sweet and maiden-gentle.” (Reilly 4) In his England, there is Spring and there is his family – his wife. It is clear how the soldier’s England, the one he speaks of with a sense of ownership, is the one which is feminine. Further, his wife is waiting for him on their doorstep, standing still because “she feared to meet her happiness”. (ibid.)

Susan Grayzel, the renowned academic historian, explains how nationalism and motherhood was cleverly purported amongst women and, inadvertently, manages to trace a strand of its origins: men were the soldiers and women were denied an active role in the war. To justify their roles, motherhood was raised to a standard equivalent to that held by the male soldiers – women may not have been fighting the fight at the Fronts but were tasked with glorious purpose instead – that of producing the future male soldiers who would fight for their country. Soldering thus becomes defined by the male gender and women are now comfortable with the space given to them to express their loyalties to their nation. (Grayzel 2)

Thus comes the resolution of the ‘The Deserter’: he is a man “in abject fear of death” and who is killed on the count of desertation. His mother, however, is not aware of her son dying a deserter but is instead proud of a son who died for his nation and died “a hero”. On her part, she contributed towards to cause of the war – she gave them “Her best” – “a hero son”. (Reilly 62) The poem quietly draws parallels between the ideas of loyalty to one’s nation, duty to one’s nation and making one’s parent proud.

Helen Parry Eden’s ‘Volunteer’ too echoes the idea of the feminized nation. The poem explores the Unknown Soldier’s justifications of going to war. He did not go because he had a wish for it or the skills. He had not gone for a “nation’s spoils” but he had “sighed for England in her toils.” His sole reason for going to war was “Lest little girls … / Should look ‘You did not shield us!’ …”. It is important to note that the soldier mentions little girls as the reason why he went to war – so that they do not think poorly of him and so that he is not held responsible for any of their deaths.

This poetry of England is inalienable from the notions of Courage, Duty, and Sacrifice. What stems behind these beliefs is the orthodox Christian idea of the Great War, the backing of God and in turn, the thankfulness that is to be shown to those in active service. The patriotism in these poems is thus abetted by the religious metaphors. Helen Hamilton clearly spells it out: men are dying for the women. The women thus are the embodiment of Mother England and they are to ensure the continuation of the generations.

In terms of the religious metaphors, men soon become the Cavalry, embracing Sacrifice and embodying Christ. Lucy Whitmell’s ‘Christ in Flanders’ brings out these metaphors very simply through the poem. The speaker talks about forgetting about Christ in a pre-war world, and now calling for His benevolence. The speaker agrees to fighting the war under the security of the thought that “If anything could make us glad to bear it – / ’Twould be the knowledge that you willed to bear it –”.

The most seemless convergence of these ideas is seen in Mary J. Henderson’s ‘An Incident’, where the protagonist is a boy who is likened to Christ, with his suffering due to the shell-bombing making him “…wounded more pitifully/ Than Thine, O Christ, on Cavalry.” The speaker is a nurse and talks about her experience of having looked after that boy just like “Mary, Mother of God”. On the battlefield, the boy suffers and Christ suffers along with him, with “Womanhood striving to ease His pangs.” All the men are as important to God as all their mothers are to Him – the sons’ forward their hands in defence of their nation and their mother. This idea is summed up beautifully in the following lines:

“For each son of man is a son divine,

Not just to the mother who calls him ‘mine’,

As he stretches out his stricken hand,

Wounded to death for the Mother-Land.” (Reilly 52)

Emily Orr is poet who attacks the willing consignment of civilians for the War. She addresses ‘A Recruit From The Slums’ and asks him for his reasons to sign up for the war and “answer her ringing call” – why does this blind patriotism exist amongst the masses, even those who are the poorest and who therefore have no reason to defend the motherland? Why are those who are marginalized by the society ready to take up arms and defend the preservation and existence of that very society which had previously made them “… fight like death for your board and keep”? The poem goes on to answer this question by implying that, in the end, the fact remains that England is their “mother old” and it is to her they will crawl for comfort and security and it is to her defence they will rise.

These poems, in trying to highlight the women and their roles and emotions, end up associating men with sons and women with mothers. They therefore continue to enforce the ideas of protection, nation, nurture and motherhood together to ply to their own needs.