The concept of the unfaithful widow had existed before the war, but regained popularity during the conflict due in large part to soldiers who feared being betrayed or forgotten, and moralists who saw widowed women as a possible source of social disorder that could potentially contribute to the military defeat of their respective countries. Conventions of mourning were also affected by the different types of legislation regulating military burials within each country, which greatly affected mourning and commemoration rituals. In Britain, where there was a strict policy concerning burying fallen soldiers in situ , widows had to go abroad, whilst in Italy, France or United States , there was the possibility of recovering remains at the end of the war.
The belligerent states promoted, or confirmed, legislation aimed at materially supporting war widows. Most of them granted a war pension with a supplement for the children , although pension amounts, as well as the attribution criteria varied from one country to another. Pensions were partially or totally lost by the widows in the case of remarriage. Even in their full capacities, these pensions were insufficient to cover the daily needs of the widows, many of whom topped up their incomes by working, or relied on help from their families or new spouses.
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Some of the poorest widows also had recourse to charitable associations. In exchange for this help, the public powers allowed themselves to exercise fairly strong control over war widows. War widows were restricted by considerable social and political constraints. Because of this, it is possible to infer that many women were downtrodden and easily manipulated by their governments for propaganda purposes.
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Speeches and pictures from the time illustrate the ambiguous position of the war widow who was expected to remain faithful to her fallen husband, whilst also contributing to the renewal of future generations for the nation. Several studies reveal that widowed women were not only aware of their contradictory situation but also learnt, either individually or collectively, to turn these constraints to their advantage, or to challenge these constraints through their actions. In France, for example, certain widows exploited their status during the war making use of their mourning attire to encourage pacifist ideas.
Although these actions were repressed by authorities during the conflict, they were rarely sanctioned afterwards. Images, Myths and Forgotten Experiences since , was an attempt to work across those divisions, to broaden perceptions of the First and Second World War Home Fronts, and to dislodge, stretch and challenge many of the popular tropes of everyday life in Britain during both conflicts. We appreciated Palgrave Macmillan acquiescing to our desire to publish this volume in paperback at a price that comparable to other texts on the shelves of non-academic bookshops. This shaped and framed the book immeasurably.
The contributors were given a remit which required them to write in a accessible style, in what may seem to be relatively short chapters.
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We deliberately chose to publish work being undertaken by post-graduate students, independent scholars and writers who had never been published before alongside established and well known academics. The chapters that produced are consequently varied in their focus, use of sources, analytical approaches and appeal to different readers. Interestingly the cross-over aspect of the book has not been picked up by any of the reviews I have read so far but I hope that an exploration of whether and how publications can bridge the gulf between academic and non-academic readers will become a future area of debate.
The portrayal of the Home Front in both conflicts is not the prerogative of the historian, the media or the heritage industries but rather a product of the ebb and flow of private, community, official and unofficial narratives that vie for their place in cultural memories of the conflict. Furthermore, as Peter Grant correctly points out, there is a significant variation in the quality and quantity of academic, and indeed popular, literature on the Home Fronts of the First and Second World Wars.
In so doing he affirmed the oft-repeated suggestion that war and conflict were moments of British greatness; the simplicity of such narratives, however popular, needs challenging, as there are multiple conflicting and complex histories of both conflicts. We hope this text has extended them a little and will stimulate further debate and research. The desire to ensure that this collection on the Home Front was part of the discussion around the centenary of the First World War introduced a range of time pressures into the production process; any inadvertant mistakes which have slipped into the volume as a result are clearly regretable.
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This approach remains necessary as despite the popular interest in the Tommy, ordinary working-class women all too often remain hidden from histories of the First World War. This is not surprising, as the ideological shifts identified by historians after events, or even the new priorities or concerns of those in Whitehall, in the Labour Party or within the national leadership of groups like the Charity Organisation Society are not necessarily translated into the everyday practices and varied and contradictory attitudes of those who administer welfare whether working for charities or the state.
Indeed in Worcestershire there was a fair degree of suspicion towards the working-class claimants of separation allowances and pensions; rumors circulated that at least one woman had benefited in the South African War by requesting assistance from two different charities for two different husbands. This has increased since the construction of a memorial to them at the National Memorial Arboretum in and the granting of a pardon in ; whilst this group of men has been referred to in numerous media representations of the conflict including The Village BBC —14 and Downton Abbey ITV — The structure of this book, whilst bringing together the scholarship on the First and Second World War Home Fronts, did not however, until the last chapter, facilitate writers being able to make comparisons between the Home Fronts of the two conflicts.
Nor did it explore the degree to which voluntary and government processes and mechanisms developed during the First World War, such as food rationing, shaped those utilized in the Second World War. These I hope will become avenues for future research.
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Work patterns, employment opportunities and experiences, the consequences of aerial bombardment and the impact of food shortages and rationing were all shaped in both wars not merely class but by where people lived. In the small Worcestershire market town of Pershore, a fruit growing area where market-gardening, smallholdings and allotments predominated, the sugar shortage was felt acutely in the First World War.
Over 60 per cent of the sugar consumed in was imported from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in , for housewives keen to turn their fruit gluts into jam for the winter months it was an anxious time. Hence in when parcels of sugar arrived from Canada, they were distributed at the police station by the local sergeant to ensure the danger of civil disturbance was avoided. They were not uniformly present throughout the war — although anyone viewing popular representations of the conflict could be forgiven for thinking they were. The pressures of clothes and furniture rationing became more acute as time went on, for example as things wore out and children grew out of clothes.
For the historian identifying the uneven and patchy process by which shifts and changes take place, attitudes harden, and policies are brought into practice is complex. This was the year in which conscription came into force, food shortages became more acute and food queues lengthened, the Easter Rising took place in Dublin, and the casualties of war injured, dead or missing just went on rising. This was also the year of the Somme, a battle that has gained an almost mythical status in British cultural memory, which was accelerated by the release of the documentary of The Battle of the Somme in the same year.
[Commentary] The Widow & the Law: A Brief History of Widows’ Pensions in Britain
The film serves also as an important reminder that the imagination, the mind and consciousness of the population on home and fighting fronts was not limited to their geographical location. Nor does the figure include the many deaths among the 13, volunteers from the French Caribbean. Given the relative sizes of the populations at that time, if the figure of 2. This would give Scotland the highest figures outwith Serbia and the Ottoman empire and must surely be worthy of reporting given the previous attempts since to discredit the figures calculated by Professors Devine and Ferguson since some of the Scots may have been double-counted.
The latest research has removed the counting errors and still leaves percentages worthy of reporting. Although China was not a combatant nation, it joined the allies and sent , men to Europe as members of the Chinese Labour Corps; these men undertook physical labour, digging trenches, transporting munitions and so on, thus freeing up large numbers of allied soldiers to fight. Although the Chinese labourers had been assured that they would not be working near the front, that front could move unexpectedly, and many were killed by shell fire and explosions; around 3, died from various causes in Europe, while just under 1, died at sea from submarine attacks on their transport ships.
We would do well to remember the contribution of the Chinese Labour Corps.
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Alison Hardie Retired lecturer in Chinese studies , Edinburgh. He survived, to die in , but continued to suffer physically and psychologically for all of his life. The other casualties rarely mentioned are those left behind; the families of those killed and wounded and the generation of women who lost actual and potential husbands.