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Terminale L - 2014/2015 Collection - WOMENTORY
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The&Suffragettes&
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Lena&Ashwell&
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Charlotte!Tardiveau& &
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The&Munitionnettes& ! Pages&6,&7& ! Sami!Foudil! !
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Letters&
Nurses&at&the&front&
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Page&8& Justine!Duval
InesThavard!et!Céleste!Callen!
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Edith&Cavell&&
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Tessa!Overvoorde
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Isabella!Singery!
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Women’s&Land& Army&
Chanel’s&&influence&
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Eileen!Monfort!
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MUNITIONNETTES)
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World War I, wasn’t a time when only men risked their lives for their country, women were also involved. The opposite sex, as we liked to call them the ‘’ weaker one ’’ at that time, proved to men they were competent enough to accomplish hard work. That’s how they showed their skills and became an important part of the aid force during the war. The war might have divided husband and wife, father and daughter, mother and son but being separated as they used to be only made them stronger for their nation. Whilst men were fighting, women were employed in the munitions factories. It was certainly one of the most important job they had to do! Women made more than 60 % of the war force. Women had to work really fast, hard and carefully because one mistake could have cost hundreds of lives.
Soldiers didn't want their wives to work in industries; in fact they wanted to keep their place of domination in their marriage. But when men left their wives, often, these ones couldn't earn money anymore so they had to work. The help from the State wasn't enough; they needed to find a job as fast as they could! Then, from 1915, the nation asked women to work to help their country.
What did they have to do? They had to make the munitions, shells etc ‌ They had to work in different ways: Work in chain is an example. At that time, it was a shock to hire women to do that kind of job. It was nothing like the work they used to do before the war began. It was also the time when women showed their skills; patience, ability! Their skin became almost yellow because they had to work near and with toxic products without any good protection. They were the most paid women during the war even though compared to men, they earned way less money. There was a difference of more than 50% in 1913 before the war began and the percentage went lower in 1917: 20%.
At the end of the World War I, we can count more than a million women working in the military industry. They represented at that time 25% of the labor armament but here again, before the war even started, they only represented 5 or 6 %. The percentage increased. They made more than 300 millions of shells and 6 millions of cartridges. By the end of the war over 200 women had died from explosions in the factories and countless other women suffered from TNT poisoning. In the press, a new idea of the woman was given! Indeed, there was a lot of humor in propagandas‌a new view of Women's places in this Man's world.
Nursing in World War One was exhausting, and sometimes a dangerous work. The women who volunteered experienced the horror of the war, some paying the ultimate price. But their story is surrounded by myth and their work is often unrecognized.
Young men and women in 1914, like their parents, expected the war to be short. Music hall songs were patriotic and optimistic. Women were expected to wait at home patiently or, if they were from working-class, to join munitions factories. "Keep the home fires burning," they were abjured. "Though your boys are far away, they will soon come home." Had they been injured, however, there would have been very few nurses to look after them. While a lot of women were working in factories, in lands etc. A minority went close to the actual fronts where the soldiers were fighting for their country. Nurses of WWI worked from sun up to sun down, with almost no proper sleep. The life conditions were very difficult, the cold, the rain and the constant terrible things that could happened all day every day, were physically and psychologically heavy. Nurses had a lot of mixed emotions and most of them wrote what they could feel, in diaries, poems... Some felt ashamed of being so dirty after a difficult day, but when they were walking down the streets nobody could tell they were at the front line before. Things like this where how the nurses felt throughout the war and there are a lot more examples. In Britain 90 000 civilian women joined the British Red Cross, all of them had to train on taking a lot of medical stuff, quickly and effectively, to the place where the injured soldiers were. The professional nurses used to help them learning the basic medical treatment. The nurses are very well recognized for what they’ve done during the First World War, thanks to the writing some of them did, the historians can relate their story and tell the world how helpful they were, and that without them the war wouldn’t have been as successful as it became in Britain, and in others country.
To understand more precisely the situation of nurses during World War I, here is the experience of one specific nurse, Edith Cavell: Edith Cavell was born on the 4th of December 1865 and was a British nurse who was famous for treating many soldiers, no matter what their nationalities were. She helped about 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium during WWI.
When Brussels fell to the Germans in November 1914, Cavell walked away from her British Secret Intelligence Service recruitment to hide injured Allied soldiers and get them out of the country as fast and safe as possible. The soldiers were given fake identities and were hidden until they could make it to the Dutch frontier.
In August 1915, Edith was betrayed by German collaborator Gaston Quien. German soldiers arrested Edith for treason. Cavell admitted that she had personally taken about 175 men in her home and helped them to escape. Her actions obviously went directly against German military law. Despite international pressure for mercy, she was given a death sentence and was executed by a “16 man German firing squad� on October 12, 1915.
Edith’s role in the war and the resonance of her ultimate sacrifice had a huge impact on people. In 1939, a film named Nurse Edith Cavell was released in her honor. In addition to the numerous stone memorials, streets, medical and nursing facilities, schools, and gardens, from all over the world! For example in the UK and Belgium, to Australia, Canada and the USA. She had the courage to save many soldiers even when she knew the eventual consequences. She took part in the war as a real hero and that is why we can still hear and see her name all over the world.
The Women’s Land Army, called WLA, was first formed during World War One. It was a British civilian organisation which was created in 1917 to work in agriculture replacing men called up to the military. Women who worked for the WLA were commonly known as Land Girls. The name Women's Land Army was also used in the United States for an organisation formerly called the Woman's Land Army of America. Actually, the Land Army operated to place women with farms that needed workers, the farmers being their employers. The Women's Land Army was made up of girls from every walk of life. Posters of smiling girls bathing in glorious sunshine and open fields covered the fact that the WLA often presented raw recruits (many from industrial towns) with gruelling hard work and monotony. Homesickness was common as many of the girls had never been away from their parents for long periods. This was particularly true of girls that stayed in private billets. The girls that stayed in local hostels often told a different story and were more settled as they were grouped together. However despite all this there was a great sense of camaraderie amongst the girls who ultimately made life- long friends. Women were initially asked to volunteer for the WLA. At first only single women between 20 and 30, and widows without children, were called up, but later the age limit was expanded to include women between 19 and 43. Women could choose whether to enter the armed forces or work in farming or industry. The Land Girls did a wide range of jobs, including milking cows, lambing, managing poultry, ploughing, gathering crops, digging ditches, catching rats and carrying out farm maintenance work. Some 6,000 women worked in the Timber Corps, chopping down trees and running sawmills.
Working conditions were sometimes very difficult. This required a lot of strength, they worked for hours every day, especially during the summer, mostly outdoors and often in cold and rain. There was minimal
training and most women were expected to learn about agricultural work while they were actually doing it. The Land Girls lived either on the farms where they worked, or in hostels. They waited many days to see their children sometimes. Salaries were low, sometimes they didn’t even earn half the salary of a man. Some girls were attracted to the uniform, others described it as awful! Many agreed that the shirts were scratchy and wearing a tie never seemed to work. The uniforms were normally far too big and breeches had to be taken in. However, resourceful girls normally did their own tailoring and made a good job of improving their uniforms. The uniforms normally consisted of the following:
2 shorts sleeved shirts, 1 green pullover, 2 pairs of socks, 1 pair of shoes, 1 bib and brace overall, 1 hat and 1 pair of rubber boots with a very long Mackintosh for the winter. The Land Army was disbanded in 1950. Although the work was hard, conditions were often bad and the pay was low, many women enjoyed the experience, and formed lifelong friendships with fellow Land Girls.
LENA ASHWELL
Born Lena Margaret Pocock was a British actress and acting manager. She was born on the 28th September 1872. She was known as the first woman to organize large-scale entertainment for troops at the front, which she did during World War I. She grew up in Canada with her family. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London where she became a member of the pre-war suffrage campaign. During the First World War, she was a supporter of British aims. She began to organize companies of actors, singers and entertainers to travel to France and perform in front of the troops. She also organized male concert parties to perform show near the front line. By the end of the war, there were 25 of them travelling in small groups all around France. In a new book written by Kate Adie (a British war correspondent for BBC News) she describes how Lena was as an actress and suffragette She was determined not to deprive soldiers from culture, music and entertainment.
Promotional material for the Lena Ashwell YMCA concert parties – The Telegraph
« Nameless » “WOMEN COME AND HELP!” “Married or not married, widow, in your thirties or forties, independent, from large "respectable" backgrounds, ranging from the middle class to the aristocracy or even from the working class?”
“YOU can be a soldier for YOUR country!” You want to fight for the love of your country, of your religion, or because of the hatred of those evil Germans? You are not alone Women made up around 30 percent of the total of spies, entire households or extended families enrolled simultaneously. One widow who had lost a son in battle joined up together with her four daughters. You can do your bit, even under occupation, and be considered, as one young woman called it, as "soldiers without uniforms" or the “nameless”. Agents have military status (recognized by the War Office) and you will be a part of this "powerful motivating force". You will also gain from 20 to 30 franc per month and 5 franc for one letter sent.
“ENROL YOURSELF” Welcome in the secret services: first, you have to achieve a training course of 8 or 10 days to learn the basics. Then members swore an oath to "enlist in the capacity of soldiers in the Allied military observation service until the end of the war". We forbade members to call themselves "spies." You are "agents" or "soldiers" from now.
« I was an agent from secret services, not a silly young girl ! » You can be a nurse on the front or in city, that way you could get information from the Germans, French or Belgian wounded soldiers. But you can work also near the population, witness the case of the brother-and-sister "train watching cell" in its rented room next to a train line, working twelve-hour shifts watching German troop trains. Then you’ll have to fill sheets with precision for the government.
For you, soldiers, the term "home front" take a specific meaning: "your own home becomes fronts," fronts that are almost as lethal as the military front, and certainly as mind-numbing. Front, danger, enemy everywhere around you, at every time of the day and the night.
“in a room without lights in forced idleness ... fighting drowsiness and fearing to fail in one's duty. The next day taking up again the same life, with nothing, not relaxation nor distraction to come break the somber monotony of this existence" Women are at least as competent at these dangerous and thankless tasks as men. Yet this did not prevent an intelligence officer from stating in a 1926 newspaper article that "Women are fundamentally inaccurate. They experience a constant 'urge' to be working in the limelight, jibbing at the patient compilation of dull details which forms the basic job in spying" Postwar recognition of women's intelligence work was hampered by the elaboration of new image of women: on the one hand, the chaste martyr; on the other, the sexy traitor. The elevation to iconhood of the nurse Edith Cavell set the tone for the commemoration of female commitment. What was celebrated was not efficiency, and certainly not wiliness--much as one might consider this a crucial quality in an underground agent but on the contrary, the virtues of honesty, chastity and an unflinching willingness to die for the cause. As with other fusilles, the actual merit of her war work was obscured in postwar accounts. For Cavell, as for other executed women, "the real celebration was of their ... deaths, not their ... ingenuity" because they were remembered as an example of murder and martyr. Her death was used for British propaganda to encourage young volunteers. « Miss Cavell’s death story was transformed into a murder, it was the symbol of the pain in occupied Belgium and France. Martyr, we forgot she was a spy.”
French postcard
British postcard
Women and letters during WW1 During the First World War, women saw in writing a way to escape from reality, the reality of war and the unbearable loss of their loved ones. Barely a family across the country was untouched by tragedy during the 14-18 conflict in which almost a million British soldiers died. Letters were not only a way to keep in touch with their husbands, sons or brothers, but most of all helped them endure every day, and lighten the burden of these hard times.
The letters’ role Having been on the front wasn’t something you could ever erase from your memory, but for a moment, at least, the soldiers but most of all the men hiding under their uniforms felt the need to exchange with their families. Reassuring their wives, keeping in touch with their growing children, they put aside their worry and their sad thoughts. It was hard for women too, who throughout the letters were desperately hoping the letter would arrive, and were afraid to receive bad news as an answer. Concerning women as well as men, the letters were an incredible emotional support, giving them courage and the strength to fight and get through every day. One of the soldiers even said that
letters were “far
better than all
medecines”, giving them hope and making the harsh life on the front line a little easier. Behind the noises of the Germans bombarding, the words from their wives were worth the sacrifice. Doctor Alastair Massie, a soldier during the war said :«
In wartime especially, all the usual emotions experienced by men and women in love are felt to a heightened degree », « The sense of danger, and the years of separation imposed by service abroad, make the heartache of loss and the joy of reunion all the greater. »
BETWEEN LOVERS Many were the women who felt powerless during the war. This was mostly due to the fact that they couldn’t do anything to avoid the danger on the front line, and so they used letters to send all their positive thoughts, their courage, their hope and their love. We could take the example of the Regimental Sergeant Major , who left his pregnant wife Florence and daughter Margaret in 1914, and exchanged a series of moving letters. In one of his letters, he said: «
You and my darling child are constantly in my thoughts. It is indeed a comfort to me always that your life during the last three years, since we were happily united at the altar, has been a happy one »,
Gunner Sidney Edwards was in the 20th Battery with the London Brigade. He is the author of 150 painfully frank letters to his beloved Emma May Goodall whom he called Kiddie. His letters were long,
showing the happy memories which never leave his mind. In her reply, Florence doesn’t only seem hopeful but also confident concerning his return home:
« God many happy days together are still in store for us. I crave for you so often but you must be like so many other men out there being patient.» Sadly, he died a month after this letter – and two weeks after celebrating the birth of his second child.
affectionate and humorous during the good days but when he was in the thick of the battle, they became brief and tragically funny.
« We have gone into action again. My word, we shan’t be sorry to get out again, fot it’s too warm for my liking. I don’t mean the mean the weather, I mean shells. » We can only imagine what Kiddie was feeling when she received these
types of letters. Gunner died two months after this letter. She received a letter that many families were afraid of.
The letters of Donald davies were found and sold out during an auction. He maintained a correspondence with his beloved Freda Willshire for four years. In these letters, he wrote his love, desperation however he was able to write them with great care.
the most moving collection of letters I have ever read. How he managed to keep writing these beautifully and intensely emotional letters throughout the war is staggering.” "It feels as if you are there with them and can't help being caught up in their love affair." At the end of the war, they got married and continued writing to each other till 1982 when they died.
Charles Hanson, from Hansons Auctioneers in Derbyshire, said: "This
The diaries start in 1909 detailing the reality of war, the loss of his brother and his time in hospitals dealing with wounds and trench fever.
is
Many were in these cases. We can only imagine what they were feeling when the object of their expectation never came. Private Harold Robinson:
disappeared.”
« When I saw your letter lying on my bed, all my troubles
The war Godmother "wargodmothers ": women or girls who maintain correspondence with soldiers at the front during the First World War to support them morally , psychologically or emotionally . They were often soldiers left to their own, having lost their families for example. The wargodmother sent letters to her soldier but could also send packages, gifts, photographs.
This institution has for result the hasty weddings. These weddings were precipitated. Many had never met face to face before the big day in front of the pastor. This institution had been disputed by many. Some thought it was selfish to get married only because of the thought of them possibly dying on
the front. They were being attached to each other but sadly many died and with them, promise of a shared future as well. The General Edwards was one of these who thought that it was selfish to marry a woman with the possibility of dying but he changed his mind after two years and proposed to his godmother to marry him.
 We shall have a glorious time when I do come home, in fact I think we ought to be married, even if we had to rush of to a registry office and then dash off the rest of my leave for a honeymoon, that would be most enjoyable wouldn’t it darling, just think of it  His godmother accepted but sadly for him, he was killed one month later aged of just 22 years old in June 1917. She was left alone, a pointless proposal and no wedding. Even if some had the chance to marry each other, war was not the reality thus, in 1918 the divorce was
imminent. They were strangers who shared letters then strangers who shared their vows.
WOMEN’S FASHION BEFORE AND AFTER WORLD WAR I
Clothing is an excellent example of women’s emancipation during the War. Fashion changes frequently and, people, women particularly, often struggle to keep up with the new trends. Women who have money have always supported the latest fashion trends, while working class women or women on the countryside have typically been behind in the latest trends. However, there is enough evidence to say that all women made efforts to update their clothes to reflect the changing fashions. 1914-1918 were the dates of WWI when the world of fashion began to change for everyone. For a start many of the men went off to fight for their country leaving the women behind. They had to take care of themselves.
Before the war During the early 1910’s, women used to wear the famous corset, the « S » body shape was very fashionable and considered as quite attractive. This famous « S » style was quickly replaced by what they used to call the Hobble Skirt. Women thought they were so comfortable; they wore it whenever they wanted to. The corset :
The hobble skirt :
After 1915, the hobble skirt was shortened to the ankles, and the V-neck became trendy.
Women’s waists were loosened and a straight line was adopted. The style remained until 1915. Hats were also very fashionable, the size was large and feathers were prominent.
By Singery Isabella
The cloche hat, seen below, was the dominant style. The small, round hats closely covered the head and were worn low on the brow
Chanel’s influence
Coco Chanel Although a quite large amount of her Parisian customers fled from Paris at the beginning of the War, Coco Chanel’s shops began to flourish. She encouraged women to free themselves of their corsets with her well-known style all made of boxy lines and shortened skirts. In fact, Chanel was very passionate about her work and strongly believed a woman could also be active while remaining elegant. The Chanel suit Considered as the most influential designer of all time, she enjoyed huge success before the end of the War.
The designer was one of the first to borrow from menswear for women’s attire when she created her iconic suits. Consisting of a collarless wool jacket with braid trim, fitted sleeves and metallic buttons with a similarly fashioned skirt, the outfit was the perfect choice for the post-war woman who was trying to build a career in the male-dominated workplace. The suit was favoured by celebrities such as Grace Kelly, and quickly rose to one of the most fashionable piece of clothes for active women.
Tessa OVERVOORDE, Celeste CALLEN, Ines THAVARD, Clémence PINQUIER, Sami FOUDIL, Kahina Laichour, Charlotte TARDIVEAU, Justine DUVAL, Isabella SINGERY, Eileen MONTFORT, Melissa STUDLER