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Constructions of "Home," "Front," and Women's Military Employment in First-World-War Britain: A Spatial Interpretation PDF
Constructions of "Home," "Front," and Women's Military Employment in First-World-War Britain: A Spatial Interpretation PDF
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History and Theory 52 (October 2013), 319-343 © Wesleyan University 2013 ISSN: 0018-2656
Forum: At Home and in the Workplace: Domestic and Occupational Space in Western
Europe from the Middle Ages
2.
KRISZTINA ROBERT1
ABSTRACT
This essay adopts a spatial approach to explain how British women gained a
to military employment between 1914 and 1916. The choice of this interp
framework is dictated by the contemporary practice of organizing the gend
division of war participation spatially. Wartime debates focusing on the loca
1.1 would like to thank Lucy Bland, Kelly Boyd, Beat Kiimin, Clare Midgley, Alison Oram, K
arina Rowold, Comelie Usborne, and Andy Simpson for their comments on earlier drafts of this
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320 KRISZTINA ROBERT
wartime space that became dominant in 1916.1 will argue that the volunteers sue
2. "Defence Relief Corps," Evening Standard (October 1, 1914); "Women's National Defence
League," Newcastle Chronicle (December 16, 1914); "Women's Volunteer Reserve," Islington Daily
Gazette (December 29,1914).
3. Letter from E. D. Smithett, Northern Mail (March 12, 1915).
4. "Women and the War," Sheffield Independent (June 30,1915); Letter from "A Woman," Morn
ing Post (July 16, 1915); Letter from "A Stitch in the Background," Morning Post (July 22, 1915).
5. For a broader discussion of women's military employment, see Krisztina Robert, "Gender,
Class, and Patriotism: Women's Paramilitary Units in First World War Britain," International History
Review 19, no. 1 (1997), 52-65.
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"HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 321
ceeded in opening up military employment for women because of the wider range
of spatial strategies at their disposal, the geographical distance of their activities
from their critics, and because their definition of gendered wartime places was in
accord with the newly dominant spatial discourses of the time.
The approach of this essay builds on the interpretive frameworks developed by
recent gender and urban studies of the war. These have emphasized the discursive
construction of wartime spaces and places, including the imagined landscapes of
"home" and "front" and built environments such as streets, hospitals, and railway
stations.6 Historians stressed the function of these locations as the actual and
discursive sites for the performance and thus definition of new wartime identi
ties and roles. But the gendered meanings of these localities and the processes
through which they were created have not been fully analyzed. Scholars demon
strated that the connotations of wartime sites were shifted both by events of the
war and by the various populations, including women, whose "appropriation of
these spaces ... transformed their functional operations into culturally significant
ones."7 Studies, however, have not explored how women's organized actions
redefined the meanings of such locations and, through that, the nature of their
own war participation. This gap stems partly from the broader focus of the litera
ture. Exploring spatial discourses at the level of capital cities and nation-states,
historians have drawn mainly on wartime fiction and the national press, which
conveyed the more hegemonic, conventional, and, therefore, critical views about
women's novel roles.8 In contrast, they neglected cultural production occurring
at the level of metropolitan boroughs, suburbs, and provincial towns. As a result,
studies have overlooked women war workers' alternative forms of discourse
6. Susan R. Grayzel, Women's Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and
France during the First World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 11-50,
121-140; Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to
the Blitz (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Capital Cities at War: Paris, London,
Berlin, 1914-1919, volume 2: A Cultural History, ed. Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
7. Jay Winter, "The Practices of Metropolitan Life in Wartime," in Winter and Robert, eds., Capi
tal Cities at War, 7.
8. See Emmanuelle Cronier, "The Street," in Winter and Robert, eds., Capital Cities at War,
57-104, which argues that due to their war work and the absence of men, women's increased visibility
led to the feminization of metropolitan streets. However, Cronier focuses on the critical discourses of
such gendering of public space rather than on women's own spatial practices.
9. For a discussion of such approaches, see The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed.
Barney Warf and Santa Arias (London: Routledge, 2009).
10. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, transi. Donald Nicholson-Smith [1974] (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1991).
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322 KRISZTINA ROBERT
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"HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 323
15. For historically specific dominant understandings of space, see Lefebvre, The Pro
Space, 234-291; Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 (Cambridge,
vard University Press, 1983); Barney Warf, "From Surfaces to Networks," in Warf and
The Spatial Turn, 59-76.
16. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 268-320; Matthew Johnson,/!« Archaeology of C
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). Challengers of absolute spatiality included Leibniz, Kant, and
followed by March, Dürkheim, and Einstein, but as Kern argues, these caused little stir ou
natural and social sciences until technological inventions and modernist art disseminated n
tions among the public. See Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 131-240.
17. Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-
London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Richard Dennis, Cities in Modern
resentations and Productions of Metropolitan Space, 1840-1930 (Cambridge, UK: C
University Press, 2008).
18. Kern, The Culture of Time and Space.
19. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the
Middle Class, 1780-1850 (London: Hutchinson, 1987) Amanda Vickery, "Golden Age to
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324 KRISZTINA ROBERT
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"HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 325
tion, barrack accommodation, and restrictive marriage policies reduced the num
ber of army wives living with their husbands and after 1856 prevented them from
accompanying their men on campaign.25 All noncombatant jobs during war were
now regarded as men's work. These practices were reinforced by the argument
that "women's place was at home" and that the pit brow, the mill, the fields, and
the army were "no place for women." Consequently, by the late nineteenth cen
tury, the gender attribution of work depended mainly on the location of the job
rather than on its nature.
In the prewar decades, when the gendered division of work also came under
attack, these spatial strategies and discourses defined the terms of the ensuing
debates about women's employment. From the 1870s, the expansion of the ser
vice sector, state education, bureaucracy, and the reform of civilian and military
medical services created new job openings for educated women whom employ
ers saw as cheaper and more docile than men. Women leaped at the chance of
respectable paid work, oversubscribing available posts in teaching, nursing,
and clerical work.26 Male professionals, however, viewed this influx as a threat
to their jobs and the violation of gender boundaries and male working space.
Protesting against the "invasion of man's [domain]," they argued that "women's
own proper sphere of labour ought to be good enough for the lady clerk" and
"the telegraph office was not her proper place."27 Male managers reacted to
the threat by an excessive reassertion of the spatial segregation of workers by
gender. To maintain distinctions between male and female jobs, they assigned
women to lower clerical and teaching grades and segregated them on separate
women's floors complete with private entrances, staircases, and dining rooms.28
Army medical officers resorted to similar practices to protect war hospitals from
"the invasion" of a "monstrous regiment of women." They limited the number
of nurses and confined them to base hospitals, arguing that there was no proper
accommodation for them in the field.29
The outbreak of war intensified the crisis of the absolute spatial paradigm. Invad
ing German armies smashed through national borders and established foreign rule
25. Myna Trustram, Women of the Regiment: Marriage and the Victorian Army (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1984), 10-15, 22-49, 105-115; Helen Rappaport, No Place for Ladies:
The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War (London: Arum, 2007), xv, 2, 15-29.
26. Meta Zimmeck, "Jobs for the Girls: the Expansion of Clerical Work for Women, 1850-1914,"
in Unequal Opportunities: Women's Employment in England, 1800-1918, ed. Angela V. John (Lon
don: Blackwell, 1986), 153-177; Zimmeck, "Marry in Haste, Repent at Leisure: Women, Bureaucracy
and the Post Office, 1870-1920," in Gender and Bureaucracy, ed. Mike Savage and Anne Witz
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 65-93; Dina M. Copelman, London's Women Teachers: Gender, Class
and Feminism, 1870-1930 (London: Routledge, 1996).
27. "Competition with Male Clerks," Liverpool Mercury (June 7,1899); "Conference of Telegraph
Clerks," Evening Standard (June 6, 1892).
28. Zimmeck, "Jobs for the Girls"; "Marry in Haste"; Copelman, London Women's Teachers,
66-67.
29. Anne Summers, Angels and Citizens: British Women as Military Nurses, 1854-1914 (New
bury, UK: Threshold, 2000), 51-86, 155-159, 162-167.
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326 KRISZTINA ROBERT
and migrations both inside Britain and between her and the outside world, putting
pressure on boundaries separating the discrete forms of British/foreign, public/pri
vate, and male/female. Some of this mobility, like the movement of men to enlist
and the arrival of colonial troops, was celebrated. Thus the Times enthused about
"the rush of recruits" "flocking to their country's standards" and praised "the men
who are hurrying to our shores from across the seas ... to safeguard the empire."31
Mobility on women's part, however, was seen as the blurring of gender bounda
ries. Observers censured women's self-mobilization, including their formation of
war charities and search for nursing classes, as a "frenzied rush" and "flapping
and running around" which caused "jar, . . . friction . . . [and] confusion."32 By
1915 even Belgian refugees, who had formerly been welcomed to Britain, were
seen by some as encroaching upon national and personal space. Campbell Lee,
the London-based proprietor of Vanity Fair, reflected such hostility by describ
ing the influx of Belgians into London as "the invasion of the gay old town" by
"outlandish hordes" who committed a "painful atrocity" against the sanctity of the
breakfast table by forcing their British hosts to talk during the meal!33
The dislocation of the existing geographical order and the need to make sense
of the new wartime world generated two sets of spatial discourses about "home"
and "front." The first set to emerge can be called traditionalist due to its attempt
to restore absolute spatiality and its pessimistic view of the future. Therefore, it
constructed the two places through oppositional discourses of modernity, as dis
tinct, differently gendered, widely distanced, and firmly bound entities. "Home"
was represented as a female Utopia, set in the idyllic rural past. Propaganda post
ers depicted villages of thatched cottages and medieval churches with picturesque
gardens among rolling hills inhabited exclusively by women (Figure l).34 Defined
by their familial roles as mothers, wives, and sweethearts, they were portrayed
by popular songs and postcards in domestic settings in their gardens and drawing
rooms. Their main role, as the song suggested, was to "keep the home fires burn
ing," which included thinking of their soldier boys, writing them letters, and wait
ing for their return.35 This world was peaceful and civilian, with no reminders of
the war, such as enlisted men. The only way soldiers could appear in this realm was
30. "The Story of Liège;" "Stirring Speech by Mr. Lloyd George;" and Rudyard Kipling, "For All
We Have and Are," Times (August 10, September 20, and September 2,1914).
31. "The First Phase;" "The Imperial Link," Times (September 2 and August 22, 1914).
32. Lady Wolseley, "The New Army of Women," Weekly Despatch (December 20, 1914); Cicely
Hamilton, "Women in Wartime," Liverpool Daily Post (September 28, 1915).
33. Campbell Lee, "London Taken by the Belgians!," Vanity Fair 3, no. 4(January 1915).
34. George Clausen, "Mine Be a Cot Beside the Hill" (London: Underground Electric Railways
Company, 1916), Imperial War Museum [IWM], PST 13661.
35. "Somewhere a Voice is Calling (1)" (Holmfirth: Bamforth, n.d.), 4794/1; "In All My Dreams
I Dream of You (3)" (Holmfirth: Bamforth, n.d.), 4818/3. For Bamforth song postcards, see Peter
Doyle, British Postcards of the First World War (Oxford: Shire, 2010), 25-27.
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'HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 327
re-establishment of sepa
rate gendered spheres isn't
isn't this
this worth
worthfighting
fightingfor?
for?
aimed to provide reassur
ance amid the disruption
early in the war.38 This is
ENLIST NOW
conrirmed by the act or Figure 1. Anon., "Your Country's Call. Isn't This Worth
the London Underground Fighting for?" (London: Parliamentary Recruiting
Company, which sent out Committee [PRC], 1915), Library of Congress, Prints
such "homely" images to and Photographs Division [LOC, PPD], WWI Posters
[LC-USZC4-10829]
British troops in France
home."39
as "a reminder of home."
The traditionalist construction of the "front" was the binary opposite of "home":
a futuristic and dystopian place of destruction, barbarity, and wilderness. Maga
zine images portrayed a nightmarish world of war where soldiers forced their way
through wire entanglements, fought fierce night battles, and died heroic deaths in
the process.40 The "front" represented the decline of civilization symbolized by its
lack of homes. Posters depicted abandoned towns in ruins and deserted villages in
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328 KRISZTINA ROBERT
depicted on postcards
,h Dtifkrte-sz \ THE ONLY ROAD in separate frames
FOR AN ENGLISHMAN 1 to indicate that they
were out of place
Figure 2. Gerald Spencer Pry se, "The Only Road here.43 Their safety
for
forananEnglishman"
Englishman"(London: Underground
(London: Electric
Underground Electric in grjtajn
in Britain was UIK}er
was under
RailwaysCompany,
Railways Company, 1914-15),
1914-15), LOC,WWI
LOC, PPD, PPD, WWI Posters r*A u.,
Posters
[LC-USZC4-1125] 'lined
[LC-USZC4-1125] lined by portrayals of
by portray
Belgian
Belgian women,
women,
who who
*es. Castburning
were shown on posters fleeing from their in the role of the
villa
villages. Cast in
female "other," they embodied the object
soldiersthat Britishtosoldiers we
were fighting
save.44 This representation of women< indicated
ward-lookingthe bac
backward-looki
orientation
of this
this construct,
construct, as
as it
it portrayed
portrayedthe precedent
thefuture
future of past wars
through
through the
thein precedent
which women figured as victims to be
;o reinforced
protected. al
the message
It also reinforc
of
of this
this discourse
discoursethat
thatinin
wartime the
wartime "front"
the ly placewas
"front" the the
forwas
men. or only place fo
41.
41. "Remember
"Remember Belgium.
Belgium.
EnlistEnlist
To-Day"To-Day"
(London:(London:
Parliamentary
Parliamentary
Recruiting Committee
Recruiting[PRC
C
1914),
1914),IWM,IWM,PST
PST
11422;
11422;
"There
"There
is a Light
is a That's
LightBurning
That's inBurning
the Window
in the
(3)" Window
(Holmfirth:
(3)"
Bamfor
(Hol
n.
n.d.), 4894/3.
d.), 4894/3.
42.
42. Kent,
Kent,
Making
Making
Peace, 23-26;
Peace,
Grayzel,23-26;
Women's Grayzel,
Identities at War,
Women's
63-66. Identities at War, 63-66.
43.
43. "There
"There
is a Light
is That's
a LightBurning
That's
in the Window
Burning(3)" (Holmfirth:
in the Bamforth,
Window n. d.),
(3)" 4894/3.
(Holmfirth: Bamforth,
44.
44. "Remember
"Remember
Belgium. Enlist
Belgium.
To-Day" Enlist
(London: PRC,
To-Day"
1915), IWM,
(London:
PST 11422. PRC, 1915), IWM, PST 11
45. Peter Simkins, Kitchener's Army: The Raising of the New Armies, 1914-16 (Manchester, UK:
Manchester University Press, 1988), 163-320.
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"HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 329
^4.
Figure 3. Anon., "Step into Your Place" (London: PRC, 1915), LOC, PPD, WWI Posters
[LC-U SZC4-11013]
called "modernist" in the sense that they viewed boundaries, distances, and spatial
forms as relative and mutable and actively anticipated the future in order to take
control of it.48 The authors of these images were drawn from various sections of
46. "Come into the Ranks and Fight for your King and Country" (London: PRC, 1915), IWM, PST
5150; "There is Still a Place in the Line for You" (London: PRC, 1915), IWM PST 11509.
47. "Boys Come Over Here You're Wanted" (London: PRC, 1915), IWM, PST 5165; "Come Lad
Slip Across and Help" (London: PRC, 1915), IWM, PST 5070.
48. Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 89-108, 131-240.
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330 KRISZTINA ROBERT
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"HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 331
52. "Men of Britain! Will You Stand This?" (London: PRC, 1915), IWM, PST 5119.
53.Ibid.
54. Lucy Kemp-Welch, "Remember Scarborough! Enlist Now" (London: PRC, 1915), IWM, PST
5109; "For the Glory of Ireland. Will You Go or Must I?" (Dublin, 1915), IWM, PST 0554.
55. "With the British Army in France," The War Illustrated (August 29,1914), 35; "Civilian Cur
osity in the Evidences of War," The War Illustrated (December 19, 1914), 431.
56. Richard Caton Woodville, "In the Trenches at the Aisne: British Officers in a Splinter-Proo
[Shelter];" "In the Trenches at the Aisne: 'Tommy' in the 'Rabbit-Warren'," ILN(October 10,1914)
500-501.
57. Caton Woodville, "The 'Stirrup Charge' of the Scots Greys and Highlanders at St. Quentin,"
ILN (September 12, 1914), 392; John de Bryan, "A German Trap," ILN (October 17, 1914), 537.
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332 KRISZTINA ROBERT
2"CITY OF LONDON
, iff pt ft
Ill^
ISL^ I '3m / V
\Sm
jM * it' )
als, looking after the men in military hospitals and near the fighting line.58 These
images sought to paint soldiering as an exciting pursuit in order to increase recruit
58. "Red Cross Heroines who Will Ride to the Battle Front," The War Illustrated (19 September,
1914), 119; Cover page, Illustrated War News (December 2, 1914); "Women in the War," T.P.'s
Great Deeds of the Great War (November 21, 1914).
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"HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 333
ment rates. At the same time, they also depicted scenes of domesticity and wom
not out of place, but as integral parts of the "front."
The main strength of modernist discourses lay in their construction of het
erotopic sites that reconciled their messages of "home" and "front." The forme
argued that the only way men could prevent air raids and the upheaval of gend
norms was by joining the army. Therefore, they had to leave "home." Soldier
however, were also promised the pleasure of comradeship and exciting milita
duties as well as the attention of female carers and civilians. Although the "fron
satisfied both sets of requirements, modernist definitions needed heterotopic lo
tions in Britain that provided these conditions for enlisted men who were not y
in the war zone. These places had to be transitional between "home" and "front
combining their attributes, but separate from both. The solution lay in portrayi
enlisted men at a series of militarized sites in Britain, including recruiting offic
where they joined up, barracks where they stayed, public parks and roads whe
they trained, and railway stations where they entrained for the front. These place
provided all the benefits promised to soldiers, but as martial sites, they were se
rate from "home."59 This is illustrated by a recruiting poster of the Royal Fusilier
that portrays a unit of soldiers on the march, singing and enjoying the attentio
of two young women. Although the domestic area of the women and the marc
ing zone of the soldiers border each other, they are separate sites marked by t
grassy border (see Figure 5). Other images depicted soldiers watched by crow
while drilling in parks or saying goodbye to loved ones on railway platforms.6
These heterotopic sites helped remove enlisted men from "home," where they d
not belong, and they also functioned as approximations of Utopia by preparin
soldiers for their military duties and pleasures at the "front."
In 1914 leaders of the women's volunteer corps drew on both traditionalist and
modernist spatial discourses to support the formation of their units. By combining
and manipulating these discourses, however, they produced a more radical ver
sion of the relative modernist definition of the wartime world. Seeking to justify
the military organization of their new female corps, organizers of the Women's
Volunteer Reserve (WVR) fused absolute portrayals of the "front" as the only
place for men and the scene of German atrocities with modernist images of
invaded Britain as a second front where women could play active roles in emer
gencies. Thus, Evelina Haverfield, the founder of the Reserve, defined the objec
tive of her corps as the protection of women in a potential invasion. Recalling
the "barbarities and violation, which have been the fate of . . . [our] unfortunate
59. See these points in Adrian Gregory, "Railway Stations: Gateways and Termini;" Cronier, "The
Street;" and Winter, "Hospitals," in Winter and Robert, eds. Capital Cities at War, 23-56, 57-104,
354-82.
60. "Learning How to Use the Rifle and Bayonette," The Penny War Weekly (PWW) (November
14, 1914), 296; "Recruits at Physical Drill in Hyde Park," PWW (November 14, 1914, 217); "Off to
the Front," Color plate, iVewvies' I lust rated (May 22,1915); V. A. Fry, "There's Room for You. Enlist
To-day" (London: PRC, 1915), IWM, PST 12246.
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334 KRISZTINA ROBERT
Claiming the role of protecting the helpless was merely a pretext for the vol
unteers to further their real ambition: the performance of military support jobs
in a potential invasion. As corps leaders explained, this included the provision
of transport, catering, and communications services for the troops fighting the
invaders.65 These roles were controversial, since they had to be performed near
the fighting line. What made them even more problematic was the volunteers'
admission that they would bring women into contact with the enemy. Thus, the
leader of a new signaling corps warned potential recruits that they should be
prepared "to put up with the penalties of belligerents."66 Consequently, most vol
unteer units took up training in marksmanship, along with instruction in auxiliary
tasks. To defend training for these duties, the volunteers combined elements of
the rival spatial constructions again. Relying on absolute discourses that fight
ing was the only job for men in wartime, whereas women's role was supporting
their men and doing domestic tasks, the volunteers argued that by performing
auxiliary duties for the soldiers, they would assist the men and release more of
them for the fighting. Corps leaders stressed repeatedly that they were "out to
help" their men and "simply wanted to supplement" their work by "cook[ing]
for camps of soldiers."67 They also argued that by "taking the place of men" who
were employed "as signallers, dispatch riders, telegraphists and motorists," the
volunteers would free them for their "proper place ... in the firing line."68 How
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"HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 335
ever, while paying lip service to the idea of separate spheres, the volunteers al
drew on modernist images of women taking on active roles in emergencies. Th
consistently described conditions in Britain as a "crisis" and argued that corp
members would be armed only "as a last resort to defend themselves and the
fellow women from barbarity."69
Besides these verbal arguments, the volunteers also deployed physical spati
strategies to further their goal of obtaining martial work. These practices focu
on entering militarized heterotopic areas and performing the same activities as t
troops. The most important of these acts was carrying out route marches on pub
roads. After perfecting their technique indoors or on secluded country lanes a
acquiring their khaki uniforms, companies of the WVR went on regular fort
nightly marches across their local area. The first such parade was carried out b
the Marylebone unit of the Reserve in January 1915, when 120 members march
from their headquarters to Hampstead Heath.70 Two months later over 500 me
bers paraded in Birmingham, and several other units added drummers to the
march.71 These performances had multiple objectives. First, they aimed to g
publicity for the volunteers' activities by alerting newspapers and their photo
phers to these events and, through these channels, sought to publicize the corp
intention to participate in the war in a new, military capacity. One caption c
veyed this message by stating that these "women are convinced that their place
not at home, and that even the hospital is not the limit to their usefulness."72 Mo
specifically, the parades aimed to secure martial employment for the corps.
marching firmly in step and moving in formation with their heads up, shoulde
squared, and eyes front, the companies sought to demonstrate their qualities
discipline, efficiency, and esprit de corps to military authorities. An advocate
the corps summed up this intention by arguing that the greatest value of thes
sights was to advertise the readiness of "hundreds of able-bodied, healthy wom
disciplined and trained to be of use."73 Further examples of this strategy includ
staging drilling and signaling practices in public parks and commons.74
These performances generated intense public debates in the press about the
volunteers' activities. Opponents of the corps drew on absolute spatial discourse
in these discussions, dividing the wartime world into a secluded "home" f
women's domestic work and a separate "front" for men's military duties, with
spaces and roles in between. Criticism first emerged in early 1915, in the conte
of broader debates about women's ambition to play combat roles.75 Pointing
the martial training of the WVR, the Daily Graphic argued that the formati
of the corps is sufficient proof of such ambitions, claiming that the Reserve
69. "Defence Relief Corps," Evening Standard (October 1, 1914); "For Their Own Defence
Oldham Evening News, December 17, 1914.
70. "Women Volunteers Do a Route March," Daily Mirror (January 11, 1915); "Women's Volu
teer Force Marches Past Buckingham Palace," Daily Sketch (February 8, 1915).
71. "Women's Volunteer Movement," Birmingham Daily Mail (March 12,1915); "Women's Vo
unteer Corps," Northern Echo (March 8, 1915); No title, Daily Graphic (April 12, 1915).
72. No title, People's Journal (January 13, 1915).
73. Lady Frances Balfour, '"Of What Use?'," Evening Standard (July 15, 1915).
74. See photo in Lady's Pictorial (April 24, 1915).
75. See Nicoletta F. Gullace, "The Blood of Our Sons" : Men, Women, and the Renegotiation
British Citizenship during the Great War (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 60-63.
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336 KRISZTINA ROBERT
81. Letter from "A Woman," Morning Post (July 16, 1915).
82. Letter from Smithett, Northern Mail (March 12, 1915); Letter from Minnie G. Davison, New
castle Chronicle (March 31, 1915).
83. Letter from Smithett, Northern Mail (March 12, 1915).
84. Ibid:. Letter from Minnie F. Reay, Newcastle Chronicle (March 31, 1915).
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"HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 337
against "living in a fool's paradise" believing that invasion was impossible, and
another pointed out that the trained and disciplined women would be more useful
"should invasion come" "than picking fruit and making jam."85
Simultaneously with this criticism, the volunteers' parades earned significant
praise from local military authorities. In early 1915, as enlistment rates were
declining, recruiting officers of the army were deploying new methods to secure
more recruits.86 One such method was using the parades of uniformed women
to shame the men into enlisting.87 Therefore, army officers supported their local
WVR companies by appearing and speaking at their inaugural meetings, lending
them drill sergeants and bands, and inviting them to their barracks for parades,
inspections, and tea. Having marched to Glen Parva barracks behind the regimen
tal band of the depot, the Leicester unit of the WVR was drilled and inspected
by Captain Buckley, after which soldiers, who had been watching the parade,
entertained the company to tea.88 In North Dulwich and Worcester, army colonels
visited and inspected WVR companies on their home grounds. On all these occa
sions, officers complimented the women on their drill and told them that they
were "setting a splendid example" to the shirkers.89 The most crucial endorsement
of the volunteers by military authorities was the inclusion of uniformed female
units into army recruiting marches. Invited by Colonel Willoughby Wallace, on
April 24th, 1915, 200 members of the London Battalion of the WVR took part
in a large recruiting rally accompanied by military bands, with Colonel Mrs.
Charlesworth riding alongside Colonel Willoughby.90 Other units of the Reserve
participated in similar processions across the West End of London, in Warwick,
and Birmingham.91 The endorsement of military authorities was a powerful argu
ment for the volunteers in press debates with their opponents. Although critics
protested incredulously against these "mixed band[s] of men and women parad
ing the streets together," they could not question the judgment of army authorities
in wartime.92
Similar support from local elites and newspapers provided the volunteers with
meeting, training, and advertising spaces. For municipal leaders, the female units
represented the patriotic womanhood of the town, whose aim to provide more
men for the fighting by replacing them in other jobs demonstrated the exceptional
dedication of the municipality to the national war effort, beyond the performance
85. Letters from "Dug Out" and "Veteran," Newcastle Chronicle (April 1,1915); Letter from "Yet
Another Woman," Morning Post (July 26, 1915).
86. Simkins, Kitchener's Army, 104-137.
87. For a broader discussion of women's recruiting roles, see Gullace, "The Blood of Our Sons,"
53-60,64-69,88-89, 123-125.
88. "Parade to Glen Parva Barracks," Leicester Mail (May 7, 1915).
89. "Women as Volunteers. Novel Parade and Inspection in Dulwich," Kentish Mercury (May 21,
1915); "Worcester Women Volunteers. Inspection by Col. Edwards," Worcester Advertiser (June 5,
1915).
90. Letter from Smithett, Ilford Recorder (April 16, 1915); for photographs, see "Woman Colo
nel," Daily Mirror (April 26, 1915); "Women Volunteers Show an Example," Daily Graphic (April
26,1915).
91. "Women's Recruiting March," Daily Graphic (May 17, 1915); "When the Women Call What
Man Can Hang Back," Daily Sketch (June 21, 1915); "To-Day's Military Parade in Birmingham,"
Birmingham Daily Mail (July 27, 1915).
92. Letters from "A Woman" and Markham, Morning Post (July 21 and 22, 1915).
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338 KRISZTINA ROBERT
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"HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 339
101. "National Register," Birmingham Daily Mail (August 17, 1915); "Birmingham Wome
Ambulance," Birmingham Mail (May 16, 1916); "Women as Wartime Firemen," Daily Grap
(April 3, 1916).
102. Women's Reserve Ambulance, Booklet, IWM, Department of Documents (DD) SUPP. 55
"Munition Workers Canteen," Picture World (June 28, 1915).
103. "Munition Workers Canteen," Picture World (June 28, 1915); "Glasgow Station Cantee
Bulletin (14 December, 1915); "A Home Away from Home for Overseas Troops," Daily Grap
(March 1916), IWM, DD, 38/145.
104. Letters from "A Uniformed Woman" and "Another Woman," Morning Post (July 20, 1915)
105. Londonderry, "Organised Women," Evening Standard (June 5, 1915); "Uniform Comp
sory," title unknown (June 1915), IWM, DD, SUPP. 38/58.
106. Letter from Smithett, Express and Star (May 29,1915); and from "Another Woman," Mo
ing Post (July 20, 1915).
107. Londonderry, "Organised Women," Evening Standard (June 5, 1915); Smithett, "Wome
Volunteer Reserve," Express and Star (May 29, 1915); B. Hopkins, "Refreshments for Munitio
Workers," Birmingham Post (July 8, 1915).
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340 KRISZTINA ROBERT
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"HOME," "FRONT;' AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 341
portrayal implied that "home" and "front" were no longer binary opposites. T
were linked through the expanding heterotopic sites into "a national machine"
which men took their places by fighting and women by working for victory.11
This construction of "home" and "front" utilized and was supported by shifti
hegemonic definitions of gendered wartime space. During this period new po
trayals of Britain and the war zone took the place of representations created in
first year of the war. Traditionalist images of the country as an idyllic femin
Utopia merged into the concept of "Blighty": the idealized concept of "home"
imagined by British soldiers.117 By contrast, in Britain, a new version of mode
ist portrayals became dominant. This fused the formerly dichotomous images
"home" and "front," depicting these places as strikingly similar. The prevaili
symbol of Britain in this period became the munitions factory staffed by wom
whose smoking chimneys, barbed-wire fences, and utilitarian canteen huts par
leled the smoking gun barrels, barbed-wire entanglements, and recreation h
of the "front."118 Both locations were portrayed as increasingly urban, industr
and mechanized. The pastoral idyll of picking fruit in sunbonnets was replac
by portrayals of women in drab uniforms, making shells in factories and drivi
tractors on the land. Likewise, images of the "front" as a site of cavalry charg
and open-air trenches in the countryside were superseded by photographs of
steel-helmeted and gas-masked soldiers with heavy guns who lived in elaborate
constructed wooden cabins called "trench-town."119 The unity of the two plac
was stressed by visual images showing soldiers in parallel positions or shakin
hands with munitions workers (Figure 6).120 This new discourse developed fro
the growing dominance of modernist arguments in 1915. Declining enlistme
rates, the shell shortage, and the use of new military technology by the enem
gave justification to modernizing political forces, who blamed the dragging-
of the conflict on the traditional methods of the British war effort and urge
more efficient organization of resources through conscription, greater mechan
tion, and women's mobilization.121 The reorganized operation was portrayed
a "great national machine" whose component parts of fighting men and worki
women were united by their joint effort for future victory.122
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342 KRISZTINA ROBERT
Figure 6. Anon., "We're Both Needed to Serve the Guns!" (London: PRC, 1915) LOC,
PPD, WWI Posters [LC-USZC4-10830]
IV. CONCLUSION
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"HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 343
where they enjoyed overwhelming support from the municipal elites and the
press. The volunteers' success in obtaining military catering and transport jobs in
Britain laid the foundations for performing these and other noncombatant roles
for the armed forces in the war zone in the second half of the war.
University of Roehampton
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