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Literatura Inglesa de la Primera Guerra Mundial: Poetas en las trincheras (II)

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Literatura Inglesa de la Primera Guerra Mundial: Poetas en las trincheras (II)

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25-07-2014. Literatura Inglesa de la Primera Guerra Mundial: Poetas en las trincheras (II)

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La UNED en TVE-2 Fecha de emisión: 25-07-2014 En esta segunda parte analizamos la poesía inglesa durante la Primera Guerra Mundial y sus poetas más representativos como Siegfried Sassoon y Wilfred Owen Participan: Antonio Andrés Ballesteros González profesor de Filologías extranjeras y sus lingüística, UNED Vídeo disponible en: http://canal.uned.es/mmobj/index/id/17981.html

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 Literatura Inglesa de la Primera Guerra Mundial: Poetas en las trincheras (I)

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 Literatura Inglesa de la Primera Guerra Mundial: Poetas en las trincheras (I)

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Literatura Inglesa de la 1ª Guerra Mundial

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Tres grandes figuras de la Literatura Inglesa del siglo XIX

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Literatura Inglesa de la Primera Guerra Mundial

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la literatura inglesa durante la Primera Guerra Mundial

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25-07-2014. Literatura Inglesa de la Primera Guerra Mundial: Poetas en las trincheras (I)

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La UNED en TVE-2 Fecha de emisión: 25-07-2014 Primera parte del programa en el que se analiza la posición de los intelectuales frente a la guerra. Nos centramos en la literatura inglesa durante la Primera Guerra Mundial, la poesía de trinchera y sus poetas más representativos como Tolkien y Rupert Brooke.

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"So how were these heroines remembered after the war? Women who had taken on men's roles during the war were subject to suspicion and sometimes to ridicule in peacetime."

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"So how were these heroines remembered after the war? Women who had taken on men's roles during the war were subject to suspicion and sometimes to ridicule in peacetime."

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World War One had many heroines, including 'she-soldiers', spies and martyrs. Their heroism was praised during the war but they were not always remembered in a positive light afterwards, says Prof Alison Fell.

World War One created new kinds of heroes and heroines. The main route to heroism for men was through the bearing of arms. Following the mass mobilisation of civilians into the armed forces, military heroism became more democratised, as any man donning a uniform could potentially be seen as a hero.

Medics, skilled male auxiliaries and members of the labour corps were sometimes seen as heroic, but it was front-line soldiers who were placed at the top of the hierarchy of male heroism.

The shift in the ways that heroism was understood, and the advent of "total war" in which a large percentage of the population were actively engaged in the war effort, meant that women could be seen as heroic, too.
Changing Faces of Heroism
WW1 moved away from traditional views of heroism and created new kinds of heroes and heroines. Prof Alison Fell explores how and why views changed in a free online course (MOOC) from the BBC and the University of Leeds.

Their heroism was sometimes related to the ways they carried out their pre-war roles in exceptionally difficult circumstances - nurses caring for the wounded on trains, ships and hospitals, or bereaved mothers and wives stoically coping with their losses, workers taking on jobs normally reserved for men, and housewives coping with the privations of war. They were all perceived, in different ways, to demonstrate heroic qualities of bravery, endurance and selflessness.

But other women, especially those close to the front lines, took on roles that challenged social expectations about the roles and duties of men and women. Some took up arms, becoming 'she-soldiers'. The name was given in previous centuries to women who dressed up as men in military uniforms and who were popular characters in ballads and folk-tales.

During WW1 some female fighters were claimed as war heroines and were photographed and praised in newspapers, but their heroism was not always remembered in such a positive light once the guns had fallen silent.

When war broke out, these women were keen to prove their worth and join the Armed Services. In Britain, members of the Women's Volunteer Reserve, founded in 1914 by wealthy suffragette Evelina Haverfield, adopted army ranks, dressed in khaki and practised their drills in central London - to the scorn of some journalists.

In France, cross-dressing archaeologist and journalist Jane Dieulafoy, who had already had experience of being at the front in the Franco-Prussian war, petitioned the government to create a women's auxiliary corps. Only in Britain, however, in the manpower crisis of 1917, were such corps founded, and then only to perform non-combatant roles such as domestic and clerical work.

Other fronts saw women get more involved. On the Western Front, individual women were caught up in the action. Emilienne Moreau was a 17-year-old who killed German soldiers while helping British members of the 9th Black Watch during the Battle of Loos. She was awarded medals and nicknamed the "Heroine of Loos" in both the French and British press.
Woman's work?
Later in the war, resistance networks in occupied France and Belgium sought to undermine and disobey the martial laws of the German occupiers. As was to be the case in the World War Two, occupation blurred the line between combatant and non-combatant and resistance networks involved both sexes.

Women carried out tasks such as train-watching, publishing and distributing underground newspapers and smuggling Allied soldiers back to their lines. Edith Cavell, the most famous female member of these resistance networks, helped some 200 French and British soldiers to escape. She was found guilty along with other members of her network of treason and executed by firing squad in September 1915.

Other women worked as spies for the newly formed British and French secret services. Frenchwoman Louise de Bettignies worked as an agent for the British and ran an intelligence network in Lille. After she was arrested and found guilty her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, but she died in a German prison in September 1918.

Unsurprisingly, the Germans objected strongly to the creation of "resistance heroines" during the war. Teenage fighter Moreau was attacked as a "franc-tireur" or "free shooter", as a civilian taking up arms. Just as Allied propaganda headlines condemned Germans for "murdering" Edith Cavell, so the German press condemned Moreau for "murdering" German soldiers and violating the 1906 Geneva convention.

The only officially sanctioned group of "she-soldiers" in the war were the members of the Russian Battalion of Death, led by Maria Bochkareva. She had initially been granted special permission to enlist in the Imperial Russian Army by Tsar Nicholas II. Upon his abdication she was asked to create a female battalion by the minister of war. But they were not considered as an alternative to male soldiers. Part of the attraction of deploying women in Russia's army was their propaganda value as a recruitment tool to "shame" men into enlisting.

There were other women who took up arms. The best-known British she-soldier is Flora Sandes, who changed her uniform as a member of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps for that of a captain in the Serbian Army. French athlete, pilot and journalist Marie Marvingt served for three weeks by disguising herself as a French soldier. British journalist Dorothy Lawrence also disguised herself and served for 10 days.

So how were these heroines remembered after the war? Women who had taken on men's roles during the war were subject to suspicion and sometimes to ridicule in peacetime.

Sandes expressed disappointment and dissatisfaction with life in Britain after the war and eventually settled with her husband, a former Russian general, in Serbia. Marie Marvingt attempted to use her skills as a pilot in the interwar period in France but was unable to persuade the French army to employ her in an official capacity.

Lawrence's attempt to find commercial success as a journalist on the strength of her war experiences failed, she eventually died in an asylum in 1925. In Bochkareva's case, her heroism did not protect her for long in the new Russia. Tainted by her connection with the White Army, she was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1920.
What are MOOCS?
MOOCs stands for massive open online courses and are a new way of learning from the world's leading academics. The BBC is launching four WW1 MOOCs, working with leading universities.

Explore the courses by registering here.

Rather than the handful of exceptional women who took up combatant roles, it was the heroines whose role did not contradict or challenge traditional views of femininity who came to dominate memories of the war.

Pride of place was given to nurses. During the war, they had worked close to the front lines undoubtedly displayed heroic qualities. They had braved shells and infectious diseases to care for the sick and wounded. But importantly, their association with a traditional feminine maternal and nurturing role did not jar in a post-war world eager for a return to the status quo. Women were called upon to repopulate the nation through their roles as mothers and to accept a secondary status in favour of returning men in the workplace.

The "resistance heroines" who had died, most famously Cavell, could forever remain heroine-martyrs, eternally fixed in this role in monuments that elevated them above the crowd. But those who survived could dress and act as men in a moment of national or international crisis, but the exceptional acts that had marked them as heroic in wartime were often met with embarrassment or silence in peacetime.

Find out more about MOOCs and register here. Also, discover more about the World War One Centenary.
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The WW1 'she-soldiers' who fought on the frontline

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World War One had many heroines, including 'she-soldiers', spies and martyrs. Their heroism was praised during the war but they were not always remembered in a positive light afterwards, says Prof Alison Fell. World War One created new kinds of heroes and heroines.

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Mary Seacole was Jamaican and she was not accepted by Florence Nightingale´s team. However her work could be equal to Florence Nightingale´s.

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Mary Seacole was Jamaican and she was not accepted by Florence Nightingale´s team. However her work could be equal to Florence Nightingale´s.

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SUFRAGGETTES WERE REAL HEROINES, BUT WHY WE DONT REMEMBER ANY OF HER NAMES

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SUFRAGGETTES WERE REAL HEROINES, BUT WHY WE DONT REMEMBER ANY OF HER NAMES

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Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett, GBE (11 June 1847 – 5 August 1929) was an English suffragist (one who campaigned for women to have the vote) and an early feminist. She was a British suffragist, an intellectual, political leader, Union leader, mother, wife and writer. However, she is primarily known for her work as a suffragist.

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Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett, GBE (11 June 1847 – 5 August 1929) was an English suffragist (one who campaigned for women to have the vote) and an early feminist. She was a British suffragist, an intellectual, political leader, Union leader, mother, wife and writer. However, she is primarily known for her work as a suffragist.

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She was granted an honorary LLD by the University of St Andrews in 1899, appointed a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in the 1925 New Year Honours and died, four years later, at her home in Gower Street, London. Fawcett was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium.

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Mary Seacole (1805 – 1881) was a Jamaican nurse who became well known in the Victorian period for her nursing efforts during the Crimean War. Though she was much respected by officers whom she treated during the war, after her death, her fame diminished, though in recent years she has become better known.

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Mary Seacole (1805 – 1881) was a Jamaican nurse who became well known in the Victorian period for her nursing efforts during the Crimean War. Though she was much respected by officers whom she treated during the war, after her death, her fame diminished, though in recent years she has become better known.

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Mary Seacole (1805 - 1881) was a Jamaican nurse who became well known in the Victorian period for her nursing efforts during the Crimean War. Though she was much respected by officers whom she treated during the war, after her death, her fame diminished, though in recent years she has become better known.

"I have witnessed her devotion and her courage ... and I trust that England will never forget one who has nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead."

- William Howard Russell - Preface to Autobiography of Mary Seacole

Short Bio of Mary Seacole

Seacole was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805. She was of mixed race birth. Her father was a Scottish officer in the British army and her mother a free Jamaican Creole.

As a child, the young Mary was fascinated with medicine, and from her mother, she began learning many traditional Caribbean and African medicines. Mary gained a wide knowledge in treating endemic illnesses such as yellow fever.

With the help of a 'kind patroness' (local elderly, rich lady) Mary achieved a good education and trained as a nurse.

In 1821, she visited London for a year and was exposed to some of the racial prejudices of the time. In the Caribbean, slavery was still legal until it was partly abolished in 1834 and fully abolished in 1838. The Victorians had a diverse range of attitudes to racial issues. Some, like those campaigning to abolish slavery, believed in the equality of races, others sought to prove the Negro race were scientifically inferior. Mary undoubtedly experienced a range of different attitudes, especially when seeking employment as an official nurse in the Crimean War. However, Mary did notice that because her skin colour was lighter brown (being of mixed race stock) she was subject to less racism.

In one experience, in 1852, Mary was travelling between Panama and the United States when she spent time in the company of American traders. After leaving a dinner she records hearing an American say of her "God bless the best yaller woman he ever made" However, Mary was incensed as he later went on to say that "if we could bleach her by any means we would [...] and thus make her acceptable in any company as she deserves to be"

Mary responded in her autobiography by saying:

"I must say that I don't appreciate your friend's kind wishes with respect to my complexion. If it had been as dark as a nigger's, I should have been just as happy and useful, and as much respected by those whose respect I value: and as to his offer of bleaching me, I should, even if it were practicable, decline it without any thanks."

It was a reflection of the racist attitudes of the time, but, Mary was always proud of her mixed race origin.

Seacole married Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole in November 1936. Unfortunately, the marriage lasted only eight years, as her husband died in October 1844. Her mother died shortly later, plunging her into a period of grief. It was a difficult period for Mary as the year previous her boarding house had burnt down. However, through her resilience and hard work as a nurse, she became widely known and respected amongst the European military visitors to Jamaica. She was active in dealing with an outbreak of cholera in 1850, at a time when there were few treatments for cholera.

In 1854, Mary heard about an appeal in the Times newspaper for nurses to aid wounded soldiers in the Crimean War. Mary felt a call to go to London and apply to be of service. However, despite letters of recommendation from doctors in the Caribbean, she was turned down by the War Office and the medical department headed by Florence Nightingale. Mary was bitterly disappointed by the rejection, saying:

"Doubts and suspicions rose in my heart for the first and last time, thank Heaven. Was it possible that American prejudices against colour had some root here? Did these ladies shrink from accepting my aid because my blood flowed beneath a somewhat duskier skin than theirs?"

However, undeterred by the seeming racial and class prejudices of those in charge, Mary determined to travel to the Crimea using her own funds.

On reaching the Crimea she visited the Nightingale's hospital in Scutari, but her offer of help was again refused. Mary then went to a British bridgehead at Balaclava. Here, lacking proper building materials, she managed to build a British hotel on the main British supply road on the way to the siege of Sevastopol.

Seacole began running a thriving hotel selling food, drink and clothes to British officers and meeting medical problems. Mary also travelled to visit injured troops on the front lines. She recounted some of her experiences of war in her autobiography:

"..This was my first experience of actual battle and I felt that strange excitement which I do not remember on future occasions, coupled with an earnest longing to see more of warfare, and to share in its hazards. It was not long before my wish was gratified..."

"...few nights passed without some fighting in the trenches; and very often the news of the morning would be that one or other of those I knew had fallen.

These tidings often saddened me, and when I awoke in the night and heard the thunder of the guns fiercer than usual, I have quite dreaded the dawn which might usher in bad news..."

She became known as "Mother Seacole" and her presence was greatly welcomed by injured troops. Reports suggested she was able to address many injuries and illness' with all manner of cures. On one occasion she dislocated her right shoulder when visiting troops under fire.

She describes her own motivation in treating the injured soldiers.

"....and the grateful words and smile which rewarded me for binding up a wound or giving a cooling drink was a pleasure worth risking life for at any time."

According to Lady Alicia Blackwood, Seacole had "... personally spared no pains and no exertion to visit the field of woe, and minister with her own hands such things as could comfort or alleviate the suffering of those around her; freely giving to such as could not pay ... "

On 30 March 1856, a peace treaty was signed between the Allies and Russia. Mary had gained a great reputation, but her activities had left her poor. However, on hearing about Mary's financial plight, back in London a fund was set up to collect money. Many prominent people contributed to the Mary Seacole fund including Major General Lord Rokeby and later Prince Edward and the Duke of Wellington.

In 1857, she published an autobiography, focusing mainly on her period in the Crimea. She then returned to Jamaica where she continued to work as a nurse

In 1870, Seacole returned to London, she even became a personal masseuse to the Princess of Wales. She died in 1881 in Paddington, London.

Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale

Both were women who overcame obstacles to help serve injured soldiers and improve the standards of medical care and nursing.

The biographer Mark Bostridge has published evidence in his book Florence Nightingale. The Woman and Her Legend that Florence Nightingale did appreciate the work of Mary Seacole and was an anonymous contributor to the Mary Seacole Fund.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. "Biography of Mary Seacole", Oxford, UK www.biographyonline.net , Published 25 Jan 2010. Last updated 12 February 2018.

Mary Seacole

Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands at Amazon

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Mary Seacole (1805 - 1881) was a Jamaican nurse who became well known in the Victorian period for her nursing efforts during the Crimean War. Though she was much respected by officers whom she treated during the war, after her death, her fame diminished, though in recent years she has become better known.

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Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910) Volunteered to nurse soldiers during the Crimean War. She analysed the difficult conditions to help revolutionise the service of nursing and the treatment of patients.

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Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910) Volunteered to nurse soldiers during the Crimean War. She analysed the difficult conditions to help revolutionise the service of nursing and the treatment of patients.

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Victorian Heroism in Reality and Fantasy: The Everyday Heroics of Endurance

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Victorian Heroism in Reality and Fantasy: The Everyday Heroics of Endurance

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The Hero. A valorous cavalier, a noble social activist, a virtuous clergyman, a worthy gentleman. These are the archetypal heroes of Western Culture. Curiously enough, these characters seldom if ever take their accustomed, comfortable place in the body of Victorian Literature. Often in their place at the center of a work is what would appear to be an inappropriate substitute. An unsure precentor, an emotional woman, a naive retired businessman, a disillusioned knight, even a little girl. And yet, these characters somehow resonate as heroic in ways that the "common" hero cannot, and often much more strongly.

"That they even get up in the morning is something..." - Bertolt Brecht

he Victorian novel characterized employs main characters who turn out to be particularly irregular heroes. The fact that so many heroes are not the classical hero type is remarkable in itself. Instead, their innate, unique personal qualities are the source of their heroic natures. The heroes of all three novels are never completely "masculine" or "feminine," either in the biological or stereotypically figurative sense. In addition to "un-heroes," the novels often have a character who does superficially exemplify the hero, but turns out to be just as fallible and vulnerable as anyone. Finally, each of the three very different genres employed add greatly to the delineation of the nature of Victorian heroism.

In The Warden, Anthony Trollope tells Septimus Harding's story in a very simple prosaic style, spending little to no time with such devices as imagery and symbolism, and even leaving out extraneous, unnecessary facts. Instead, he concentrates nearly the whole of his effort in making the environment and the characters more realistic, giving them more gray areas. The ending is no fairy tale, and none of the major forces are affected by even the most ambitious actions. Eleanor Harding is not particularly beautiful in a classical sense, but Trollope certainly gives her a familiar type of beauty which we can recognize in real people every day:

She had no startling brilliancy of beauty, no pearly whiteness, no radiant carnation: she had not the majestic contour that rivets attention, demands instant wonder, and then disappoints by the coldness of its charms. You might pass Eleanor Harding in the street without notice, but you could hardly pass an evening with her and not lose your heart. (95)

In the same way, Trollope makes it clear that Archdeacon Grantly, though he antagonizes his father-in-law through much of the novel, is "a gentleman and a man of conscience...a man doing more good than harm."

John Bold, "the Barchester Reformer," has all the trappings of a classical hero. He is a young man, an intelligent surgeon, a social and political activist; he is in love with Eleanor Harding. He has really great name, and yet it turns out that he is not the hero. On the contrary, his attempted reformation of Hiram's Hospital causes a great deal of grief and trouble for the warden. In addition, he occasionally acts somewhat unmannerly, he unnecessarily involves the newspaper, his actions inspire greed in the residents of the Hospital, and he eventually abandons his cause. Though his motivation is noble and his portrait is noble, his actions can hardly be said to be so. In truth, Bold becomes a foil for the real hero of the novel, the quiet, gentle, submissive warden and precentor, Harding.

Septimus Harding hardly comes across as the striking hero figure in his description in the first chapter:

Mr. Harding is a small man, now verging on sixty years, but bearing few of the signs of age; his hair is rather grizzled, though not grey, his eye is very mild, but clear and bright, though the double glasses which are held swinging from his hand, unless when fixed upon his nose, show that time has told upon his sight: his hands are delicately white, and both hands and feet are small; he always wears a black frock coat, black knee-breeches, and black gaiters, and somewhat scandalizes some of his more hyperclerical brethren by a black neck-handkerchief.

Mr. Harding's warmest admirers cannot say that he was ever an industrious man; the circumstances of his life have not called on him to be so; and yet he can hardly be called an idler. Since his appointment to his precentorship, he has published, with all possible additions of vellum, typography, and gilding, a collection of our ancient church music, with some correct dissertations on Purcell, Crotch, and Nares. He has greatly improved the choir of Barchester, which, under his dominion, now rivals that of any cathedral in England. He has taken something more than his fair share in the cathedral services, and has played the violoncello daily to such audiences as he could collect, or, faute de mieux, to no audience at all. (5-6)

Harding's physical characterizations, such as his stature, his "delicately white" hands, and his small hands and feet, commonly described women. Trollope refers to Harding as having "womanly affection," and he is prone to tears. He is easily swayed by, and at times is even somewhat afraid to confront his own his son-in-law. Yet even though the warden does not correspond to the active, energetic man as typified by contemporary theories, he clearly is not lazy. His state is such that he simply has never been required to attempt any remarkable feats in his lifetime. Like most people in the Victorian period, he never had to kill his adulterous murderer uncle or survive on a deserted island for 20 years.

Despite all of this, Harding has personal qualities which allow him to be heroic. His peculiar sense of discernment and taste, embodied in his "scandalous" black neck-handkerchief and evinced by his habitual imaginary cello-playing, are character quirks through which he is able to derive, not strength, but a clear sense of self. Harding is a true "Victorian Gentleman." He is gentle, kind, and sympathetic, with no desire to "live on other people's toil" in accordance with the views held by Ruskin (See Cody, " The Gentleman"), and is the very personification of the tenets of gentleman-hood set out by John Henry Cardinal Newman.

At the climax of the novel, Harding's confrontation with Archdeacon Grantly (Ch. 18, "The Warden is Very Obstinate"), after a novel's worth of wavering, the warden pulls on all of his resources, and proves himself finally to be heroic. He resigns his wardenship, partly out of his weakness in being unable to bear the attack on his character made by the Jupiter, but mainly because he does not feel morally justified in receiving the warden's £800 stipend. Throughout the entire argument, Trollope makes it clear that the warden is not strong. He "[moves] uneasily from one foot to the other... [knowing] his own weakness,...how prone he was to be led." He hangs his head, speaks weakly, and even half attempts to sneak out unnoticed. And yet, in the end, he holds to his moral convictions and his conscience, and resigns. This final act is what merits his declaration as "Trollope's grandest gentleman" by Hugh Walpole. We see The Warden as an exciting and fulfilling novel, simply because Septimus Harding held to his morals.

In chapter 11, "Iphigenia," Trollope makes another statement about what being a hero requires. In this episode, Eleanor Harding endeavors to convince her paramour, John Bold, to drop his suit against Hiram's Hospital, and thus relieve her father of the suffering he has undergone. In order to be assured that Bold will drop the suit because of the righteousness of that action rather than in exchange for the marriage proposal he was sure to give, she plans to expel her love for him:

There must be no bargain in the matter. To his mercy, his generosity, she could appeal; but as a pure maiden, hitherto even unsolicited, she could not appeal to his love, nor under such circumstances could she allow him to do so...She could not be understood as saying, "Make my father free, and I am the reward." There would be no sacrifice in that (90)

Like Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon who sacrificed her life so her father could sail against Troy, and Jephthah's daughter, who submits to being sacrificed that her father might keep his honor, Eleanor wants to give up all she has for her father's sake. Her ideals are truly heroic. What ends up transpiring, as we know, is that he drops the action and they are affianced anyway. Trollope makes it clear that Bold does not take one in exchange for the other, and the originally intended heroic sacrifice turns out to be unnecessary. Eleanor is but a "mortal angel" (94) after all, and the heroism in Trollope's world requires only pure intention, not complete sacrifice. [Readers might also wish to look at Elizabeth Lee's discussions of similar representations of women in Victorian art. GPL]

Other Sections of "The Atypical Hero in the Victorian Novel"

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Victorian Heroism in Reality and Fantasy: The Everyday Heroics of Endurance

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The Hero. A valorous cavalier, a noble social activist, a virtuous clergyman, a worthy gentleman. These are the archetypal heroes of Western Culture. Curiously enough, these characters seldom if ever take their accustomed, comfortable place in the body of Victorian Literature.

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Gabrielle Petit was a Belgian woman who spied for the British Secret Service during World War I. Executed in 1916, she became a Belgian national heroine after the war's end.

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Gabrielle Petit was a Belgian woman who spied for the British Secret Service during World War I. Executed in 1916, she became a Belgian national heroine after the war's end.

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1st Russian Women's Battalion of Death

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Literatura Inglesa de la Primera Guerra Mundial

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Literatura Inglesa de la 1ª Guerra Mundial

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Literatura Inglesa de la Primera Guerra Mundial Fecha

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Tres grandes figuras de la Literatura Inglesa

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24-10-2014. Literatura Inglesa de la 1ª Guerra Mundial: La Mujer y la Guerra (II)

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La UNED en TVE-2 Serie: Literatura Inglesa de la Primera Guerra Mundial Fecha de emisión: 24-10-2014 Este programa trata sobre algunas de las escritoras inglesas que escribieron sobre la 1ª Guerra Mundial: Vera Brittain y Virginia Woolf Participan: María Ángeles de la Concha Muñoz catedrática de Filología Inglesa, UNED Vídeo disponible en: http://canal.uned.es/mmobj/index/id/20195.html

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VERA BRITTAIN WANTED TO FIGHT IN THE WWI INFLUENCED BY PROPAGANDA TO JOIN THE ARMY.

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VERA BRITTAIN WANTED TO FIGHT IN THE WWI INFLUENCED BY PROPAGANDA TO JOIN THE ARMY.

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Viewpoint: Why are so few WW1 heroines remembered?

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Viewpoint: Why are so few WW1 heroines remembered?

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"The only officially sanctioned group of "she-soldiers" in the war were the members of the Russian Battalion of Death, led by Maria Bochkareva. She had initially been granted special permission to enlist in the Imperial Russian Army by Tsar Nicholas II. Upon his abdication she was asked to create a female battalion by the minister of war. But they were not considered as an alternative to male soldiers. Part of the attraction of deploying women in Russia's army was their propaganda value as a recruitment tool to "shame" men into enlisting."

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World War One had many heroines, including 'she-soldiers', spies and martyrs. Their heroism was praised during the war but they were not always remembered in a positive light afterwards, says Prof Alison Fell.

World War One created new kinds of heroes and heroines. The main route to heroism for men was through the bearing of arms. Following the mass mobilisation of civilians into the armed forces, military heroism became more democratised, as any man donning a uniform could potentially be seen as a hero.

Medics, skilled male auxiliaries and members of the labour corps were sometimes seen as heroic, but it was front-line soldiers who were placed at the top of the hierarchy of male heroism.

The shift in the ways that heroism was understood, and the advent of "total war" in which a large percentage of the population were actively engaged in the war effort, meant that women could be seen as heroic, too.
Changing Faces of Heroism
WW1 moved away from traditional views of heroism and created new kinds of heroes and heroines. Prof Alison Fell explores how and why views changed in a free online course (MOOC) from the BBC and the University of Leeds.

Their heroism was sometimes related to the ways they carried out their pre-war roles in exceptionally difficult circumstances - nurses caring for the wounded on trains, ships and hospitals, or bereaved mothers and wives stoically coping with their losses, workers taking on jobs normally reserved for men, and housewives coping with the privations of war. They were all perceived, in different ways, to demonstrate heroic qualities of bravery, endurance and selflessness.

But other women, especially those close to the front lines, took on roles that challenged social expectations about the roles and duties of men and women. Some took up arms, becoming 'she-soldiers'. The name was given in previous centuries to women who dressed up as men in military uniforms and who were popular characters in ballads and folk-tales.

During WW1 some female fighters were claimed as war heroines and were photographed and praised in newspapers, but their heroism was not always remembered in such a positive light once the guns had fallen silent.

When war broke out, these women were keen to prove their worth and join the Armed Services. In Britain, members of the Women's Volunteer Reserve, founded in 1914 by wealthy suffragette Evelina Haverfield, adopted army ranks, dressed in khaki and practised their drills in central London - to the scorn of some journalists.

In France, cross-dressing archaeologist and journalist Jane Dieulafoy, who had already had experience of being at the front in the Franco-Prussian war, petitioned the government to create a women's auxiliary corps. Only in Britain, however, in the manpower crisis of 1917, were such corps founded, and then only to perform non-combatant roles such as domestic and clerical work.

Other fronts saw women get more involved. On the Western Front, individual women were caught up in the action. Emilienne Moreau was a 17-year-old who killed German soldiers while helping British members of the 9th Black Watch during the Battle of Loos. She was awarded medals and nicknamed the "Heroine of Loos" in both the French and British press.
Woman's work?
Later in the war, resistance networks in occupied France and Belgium sought to undermine and disobey the martial laws of the German occupiers. As was to be the case in the World War Two, occupation blurred the line between combatant and non-combatant and resistance networks involved both sexes.

Women carried out tasks such as train-watching, publishing and distributing underground newspapers and smuggling Allied soldiers back to their lines. Edith Cavell, the most famous female member of these resistance networks, helped some 200 French and British soldiers to escape. She was found guilty along with other members of her network of treason and executed by firing squad in September 1915.

Other women worked as spies for the newly formed British and French secret services. Frenchwoman Louise de Bettignies worked as an agent for the British and ran an intelligence network in Lille. After she was arrested and found guilty her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, but she died in a German prison in September 1918.

Unsurprisingly, the Germans objected strongly to the creation of "resistance heroines" during the war. Teenage fighter Moreau was attacked as a "franc-tireur" or "free shooter", as a civilian taking up arms. Just as Allied propaganda headlines condemned Germans for "murdering" Edith Cavell, so the German press condemned Moreau for "murdering" German soldiers and violating the 1906 Geneva convention.

The only officially sanctioned group of "she-soldiers" in the war were the members of the Russian Battalion of Death, led by Maria Bochkareva. She had initially been granted special permission to enlist in the Imperial Russian Army by Tsar Nicholas II. Upon his abdication she was asked to create a female battalion by the minister of war. But they were not considered as an alternative to male soldiers. Part of the attraction of deploying women in Russia's army was their propaganda value as a recruitment tool to "shame" men into enlisting.

There were other women who took up arms. The best-known British she-soldier is Flora Sandes, who changed her uniform as a member of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps for that of a captain in the Serbian Army. French athlete, pilot and journalist Marie Marvingt served for three weeks by disguising herself as a French soldier. British journalist Dorothy Lawrence also disguised herself and served for 10 days.

So how were these heroines remembered after the war? Women who had taken on men's roles during the war were subject to suspicion and sometimes to ridicule in peacetime.

Sandes expressed disappointment and dissatisfaction with life in Britain after the war and eventually settled with her husband, a former Russian general, in Serbia. Marie Marvingt attempted to use her skills as a pilot in the interwar period in France but was unable to persuade the French army to employ her in an official capacity.

Lawrence's attempt to find commercial success as a journalist on the strength of her war experiences failed, she eventually died in an asylum in 1925. In Bochkareva's case, her heroism did not protect her for long in the new Russia. Tainted by her connection with the White Army, she was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1920.
What are MOOCS?
MOOCs stands for massive open online courses and are a new way of learning from the world's leading academics. The BBC is launching four WW1 MOOCs, working with leading universities.

Explore the courses by registering here.

Rather than the handful of exceptional women who took up combatant roles, it was the heroines whose role did not contradict or challenge traditional views of femininity who came to dominate memories of the war.

Pride of place was given to nurses. During the war, they had worked close to the front lines undoubtedly displayed heroic qualities. They had braved shells and infectious diseases to care for the sick and wounded. But importantly, their association with a traditional feminine maternal and nurturing role did not jar in a post-war world eager for a return to the status quo. Women were called upon to repopulate the nation through their roles as mothers and to accept a secondary status in favour of returning men in the workplace.

The "resistance heroines" who had died, most famously Cavell, could forever remain heroine-martyrs, eternally fixed in this role in monuments that elevated them above the crowd. But those who survived could dress and act as men in a moment of national or international crisis, but the exceptional acts that had marked them as heroic in wartime were often met with embarrassment or silence in peacetime.

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The WW1 'she-soldiers' who fought on the frontline

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World War One had many heroines, including 'she-soldiers', spies and martyrs. Their heroism was praised during the war but they were not always remembered in a positive light afterwards, says Prof Alison Fell. World War One created new kinds of heroes and heroines.