SCRIBBLE
On the “Rim of the Shadow of Hell”?
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Women poets of the First World War By Madeline Williams
conic figures in poetry of the first world war, Owen and Sassoon, drew attention to the futility of war from the perspective of officers in the trenches and are most popular voices of the war. Despite this 2225 different British and Irish poets were published during the war, ¼ of these were women and yet the 1960’s literary elite chose Owen and Sassoon to be the voices of this war as the views expressed in their poems of war’s futility fitted the current climate. Female poets’ voices were neglected until 1970’s Anglo-American feminist movement with the republication of Vera Britten’s Testament of Youth and publication of Catherine Reilly’s anthology Scar’s Upon My Heart (both prominent features on feminist reading lists) which drew attention to women’s issues during the war such as loss, inequality, evolving position of women and female suffrage. This year marks the centenary of the end of the first world war and votes for women which presents a good opportunity to reflect on the evolving position of these pioneering women.
‘The destruction of men as though bests, seems a crime to the whole march of civilisation’ Vera Brittan
The war presented opportunities for generation, the Great War. Poetry was women to work and help with the war perceived as an effective medium as it effort and by 1918 female suffrage. 5000 allowed writing to occur despite the huge women worked as VAD (Voluntary Aid disruption in war torn society in such a Detachment) and nurses assisted on compact form to match the intensity of the battlefields of the Western Front, the generation’s experiences. The views thousands of factory workers and land of women broke from the narrow band girls helping the war effort offered women of soldier poets and the horror of the a growing platform for their voices to be trenches portrayed by Owen and trench heard and publish work and views on the poets. However, at the time of their greatest socio-historical event of their writing women’s views were often side-
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