The three documents under study date back to the years 1917 and 1918, at the end of the

First
World War, when the battles were reaching a paroxysm on the front, and when many families were
receiving the news of the deaths of their loved ones. In her letter to her fiancé, Emily expresses her
anxiety: she says that she is worried about not getting news from him, nor from another man called
George, but she prefers to keep hope and imagine that he is safe. Her letter also gives an illustration
of the state of mind of the people who stayed at home: time was very long and they suffered from
not having news from the persons they loved. Also, the situation was tense, and she gives the
example of a boy called Arthur, in conflict with his parents because he was eager to go to fight. It
shows on one hand the suffering of the people during the war, and also their innocence of the
horrors on the front. The poem The Hero has an ironic title: it tells the story of a mother who learns
about the death of her son who “blew up” on a mine. Even if she is dejected and heartbroken, she
prefers to express her pride as her son died a hero. This poem reminds us of Rudyard Kipling’s poem
My Boy Jack: we feel that the notion of heroism is an absurd one as no one can justify the horrors of
war. Poetry is a way to transcend the horrors of war and to express what cannot be expressed. The
painting The Mad Woman in Douai also focuses not just on the soldiers themselves but on women.
Against an apocalyptic landscape, we see women mourning and lamenting. We do not know which
one is “the mad woman”, as all seem to be mad, heart-broken and alienated by despair. All the
characters are painted in pale blue and grey, giving the impression that they are ghosts. The only
person in the painting whose face is in colour is the soldier who seems to have survived to war. It
shows that death is not only physical, but could also be psychological for women enduring the
violence of war, directly or indirectly. Writing during the war was often the only way to keep contact
with the soldiers, even if there was no guarantee that they would ever receive and read the letters.
Many letters, like those of Vera Brittain to her fiancé Roland, were written in poem form, as poetry
enabled the writers to express with images facts and feelings that were to hard to describe. Artists
also used painting to express the essence of the suffering of the victims, and to reveal the absurdity
of war, in order to strike the viewers’ souls, so that such a tragedy would never happen again.