British Women Writers and the First World War

The First World War was fought between 1914 and 1918 and it is still considered an epoch-making event, since it involved countries from all over the world and virtually all the strata of society, without counting the great number of casualties and deaths. This means that even children and women were involved in the conflict and took an active role in it. This, definitely, brought crucial changes within the British society, including an important redefinition of the role played by women inside it. Indeed, with the outbreak of the war, many women started to work both in factories and in the countryside, as the so called ‘Land Girls’. These women were part of the ‘home front’ effort. However, the present work also aims at presenting the other face of the coin that includes the women who took an active role working from the very ‘battle front’: VADs and nurses. Therefore, the purpose of the present work is to provide an historical overview of the conditions created by the First World War and the changes it brought about, delineating, in particular, the new active role taken up by most women, both on the ‘home’ and the ‘battle front’. From a literary perspective, the work provides examples, together with an analysis, of war-related women’s writings, poems in particular, showing the main differences in content that are detectable between the writings of women engaged in the ‘home front’ and in the ‘battle front’, its counterpart. Furthermore, it is in the interest of the present work to underline that women’s writings related to the First World War constitute a necessary testimony of what the war has meant for them, who experienced it first-hand, and to suggest that they should integrate men’s, and especially poet-soldiers’, writings that, for most of the twentieth century, have been considered the only reliable source of information about the war experience.