Gendered responses to death?

[Guest Toodlepip]

I'm wondering whether the dichotomy of the seperate spheres of involvement in the Great War led to a more general gendered split in responses to death itself, based on the assumption that the majority of men witnessed and caused death constantly at first hand at the front, and the majority of women stayed at home, and largely detached from death. For this I was looking for certain statistics: amount of women involved in active service at the front (as nurses for example) who would have seen death often, and also the percentage of non-combatant males who stayed at home. I'm looking only at Great Britain and Ireland, therefore statistics of the British Empire do not help much. I would be very grateful for some opinions, as I have not yet made up my mind. My predicition is that gendered differences in attitudes towards the deaths of the First World war were shortlived and that the key responses to loss were mostly similar between the sexes - especially when the soldiers were removed from their 'professional' sphere.

[Desmond7]

I was gonna ask you to 'run that by me again' BUT ..

There may be something I can contribute ..

although it may be a negative and something you've already encountered?

I find few if any 'open hearted' letters, diaries, accounts of how women reacted to the scale of death (certainly from the working class community I would be interested in).

What that says about society is 'open to intepretation' .. but a class question and worthy of discussion.

My personal opinion is that at 'human' level, grief is grief. How women were EXPECTED or even PERMITTED to exhibit those traits is (as I say) worthy of a good thread.

Des

[John_Hartley]

On the basis of researching several hundred deaths in my town, there's nothing really to add to Des' comment.

Except that, certainly in industrial areas, death at an early age from disease or accident in the factories was fairly commonplace. Women would be used to it (as much as one can be used to such a thing).

Interesting first post - welcome to the Forum.

John

[DaveBrigg]

No statistics to add, but there is a clear difference in the literature of the time. Comapre Testament of Youth, and the anguish caused by the loss of a brother and a fiance, with the one or two line descriptions by Graves and Sassoon of when close friends were killed. Obviously the relationships were different, but it might be a place to start.

I've also found Sassoons' 'Lamentations', written about an actual event, particularly poignant.

I FOUND him in the guard-room at the Base.

From the blind darkness I had heard his crying

And blundered in. With puzzled, patient face

A sergeant watched him; it was no good trying

To stop it; for he howled and beat his chest.

And, all because his brother had gone west,

Raved at the bleeding war; his rampant grief

Moaned, shouted, sobbed, and choked, while he was kneeling

Half-naked on the floor. In my belief

Such men have lost all patriotic feeling.

[squirrel]

Only a bit of family info passed down so best to take it for what it's worth so to speak.

My grandmother, a housewife with a large family, "mourned" the loss of her son, who was killed near Ypres in 1918, for the rest of her life. He had only been overseas for five weeks.

His photo, medals etc were framed and hung in the front room and it was years before she took off the black crepe that draped over the frame.

They also had the temporary grave marker from Belgium beside the sideboard.

Apparently she was unconsolable for some time after his death, more so after the other son came home in 1919 after having gone out in 1914.

However, she gradually came out of it but now and again would spend some time talking to Fred.

[KateJ]

Hmm interesting topic. I would agree with Des that grief is grief.

If you start to take a gendered approach towards grief, it would be my fear that you would end up with something similar to the (disproved?) Lawrence Stone theory about family and people's attitude towards marriage and death in the past. I haven't got his exact work in front of me but I believe that it includes theories such as because in the past people died relatively young there wasn't long lasting marriages so it therefore followed that there wasn't a lot of affection between husbands and wife. In the same way he said that there wasn't a lot of grief from parents when their off-spring died in childhood because they expected them to die.

As I said at the start of this paragraph, his theory has been much disputed/disproved.

Kate

[Mr_Sunray]

I wouldn't say that women were largely detached from death in the early part of the 20th Century. Figures show that the Infant Mortality rate was 138 per 1,000 births for the period 1901 to 1905. Infant Mortality accounted for 25 per cent of deaths in 1901. In 1981, the number of infant deaths per 1,000 births was 16.

Steve

[J T Gray]

Cor, that's some question to start your life in the forum with!

I think that to understand potentially different responses to death between the sexes, you have to consider what was required of them by society. You don't state where you are from but if you are in the UK I strongly suggest that you try to get hold of a copy - I'd suggest on Inter-Library Loan - of John Morley's "Death, Heaven and the Victorians".

I'll try to precis, as that second sentence of mine above needs explaining!

In 1914 the attitude towards death in society was still fairly much unchanged from Victoria's reign. Society DEMANDED from women that they follow the "social code" for mourning - effectively you wore black for a year, dark colours for another year after (so-called "half-mourning"). Not only this, but you were not supposed to enjoy yourself in that time, so there were major restrictions on what was socially acceptable for a woman in mourning to be seen doing. Victoria - in permanent mourning for forty years - was the ultimate expression of this. Effectively you were largely cut off from society for that first year, and to a lesser extent for the second. Meanwhile your husband could probably get away with a black ribbon round his sleeve and another round his hat, the width depending on how closely the deceased was related to him, and his social life was unrestricted.

World War One changed this utterly because in a country where women were doing the men's work there was no way that the country could have carried on if all the bereaved women went into mourning. It effectively freed women from their burden of mourning obligations, never to return (well not yet!).

So any assessment of gender differences in reaction to death has to take into account the fact that a death meant not just the loss of a loved one but also the loss of one's liberty. With the mortality rates of the time this could be a near-permanent state.

Hope that helps - wordy answer, but a big question!

Adrian

[Ozzie]

One way of researching this would be to read the letters between soldiers and home. They often carry the emotions of the different genders, altough there is the obvious problem that the ones that could read and write usually came from a "different class", and therefore the study would be distorted according to the class system.

Please keep us informed of your findings.

Cheers

Kim

[Ian grant]

A soldier might grieve for his mate, knowing that it may be his turn next, if so his grieving would be over.

A wife or mother might grieve for her friends loss, knowing it might be her turn next, if so her grieving, and possibly the misery was just begining. They didn't see the slaughter first hand, but felt the consequences of it as much if not more in some ways.

Ian.

[Guest Toodlepip]

I suppose I do have to be wary of assumptions and theories about emotions that can never be

proven/investigated. Even to hypothesise I'd have to lean on the likes of Freud et al. I definatley think literature could help though, thanks. I thought maybe I'd compare poetry (without getting in to the whole discussion of war poets.) There were marked differences in the poems from women at home who were getting limited information about the true nature of the front with those of nurses who actually witnessed carnage first hand. (vera brittan etc) Also between those of male soldiers (own, sassoon etc etc) and non-combatant males, perhaps grieving fathers. I might also look at Victorian poems dealing with a similar situation - the sudden violent death of an adult male. Perhaps [/i]"In Memoriam" Altough I agree that theories of becoming 'immune' to death according to the death rate are speculative and invalidated (evidence shows that even pre-historic man grieved) the pre-war years did see a drop in the death rate, particularly in children, so that by then famlies did not expect to have to bury their children as the Victorians did. After a little consideration I must assume that there were differences in the attitudes towards death itself between those at home and those on the front - how could there not be when soldiers were so constantly surrounded by death and corpses and had so much reason to contemplate their own fate, and when mothers and families were left without a corpse or information - so central to the acceptance stage of the grieving process? Then again other things that represented a wartime departure from Victorian attitudes to mourning - the drained stocks of sympathy from companions for example - were the same for both sexes, although I don't think this can counterbalance the difference between experiencing constant in-your-face massacre, and experiencing only worry and memory. I can't help thinking that perhaps soldiers in battle put grief from their minds and perhaps did not experience it fully until they returned home, otherwise they could not have continued their 'job.' Rather like a doctor on A&E I suppose. A doctor or nurse has a professional attitude to death, yet will still grieve deeply for dead relatives. Freud would say that the constant repression of this grief without having time to release probably contributed to shellshock and

dementia. Then again of course, I must be aware of existing gendered differences this delayed or selective reaction was supposedly typical of Victorian men before the war anyway - who were suppose to grieve only at appropriate times and launch themselves into some form of work to distract themselves, whereas women were forced to wallow in it. On the other hand, there is a difference between how one privately grieves and how society tells you to grieve. Like you said grief is grief.

Well! After that confused babble I think I'll conclude that a split existed, but was probably shortlived - mainly whilst men were 'on duty' and that also, the actual proportion of men in the war and their opnions were not sufficient to split the entire nation genderwise - there were more males at home (? Need statistics, can't find any) than at the front, including the new generation of children.

Two things I was wondering about, I read somewhere that at the end of the war, those who experienced it wanted to 'celebrate and forget' and those who did not, wanted to 'be solemn and remember.' I'd like to find some primary sources to support this (or not, as the case may be) I'm based in Manchester so I'm thinking the Imperial war museum?

Also, I'd like to know if there are any official statistics for wartime population, amount of combatants - just for the British Isles (not entire empire.) The closest census I could find was 1911,and and estimation of population in 1914. Thanks a lot

[Guest Toodlepip]

I FOUND him in the guard-room at the Base.

From the blind darkness I had heard his crying

And blundered in. With puzzled, patient face

A sergeant watched him; it was no good trying

To stop it; for he howled and beat his chest.

And, all because his brother had gone west,

Raved at the bleeding war; his rampant grief

Moaned, shouted, sobbed, and choked, while he was kneeling

Half-naked on the floor. In my belief

Such men have lost all patriotic feeling.

I do like that poem and it will help greatly, thanks. Although, may it have been written because it was an unusual thing to witness?

[KateJ]

Toodlepip said:

Two things I was wondering about, I read somewhere that at the end of the war, those who experienced it wanted to 'celebrate and forget' and those who did not, wanted to 'be solemn and remember.' I'd like to find some primary sources to support this (or not, as the case may be) I'm based in Manchester so I'm thinking the Imperial war museum?

Toodlepip – check out my thread on the Great Dunmow War Memorial – there’s a couple of primary sources that might be of interest in the thread. The transcripts of the local council meetings to establish a war memorial (these meetings started to take place during the war) and the transcript of the local newspaper when the memorial was unveiled in 1921.

 

When you read the transcripts, bear in mind a couple of things: many of the people involved in the council meetings had sons, brothers, husbands etc who ended up being commemorated on the war memorial. Also one man mentioned, Captain Frank Bacon, was wounded twice in Gaza, the last time in November 1917 when he was invalided home. He appears to have been active on the committee but this goes against your hypothesis as he was soldier but wanted to “be solemn and remember”. Ironically, he died of his wounds a year later in December 1918 and is commemorated on the war memorial.

Also look at the words of the local newspaper report. Many of the people whose words appear in the newspaper report were soldiers and saw combat during the war. Lord Byng unveiled the memorial (he had been a pre-war resident of Great Dunmow) and two leaders of the 1/5 Essex Regiment were present (Col Welch and Lt-Col Tom Gibbons) both of whom were Dunmow men and personally knew the majority of men commemorated on the war memorial (inc Welch’s son). I think they wanted to be solemn and remember.

Lt Col Gibbons wrote his memoirs “In the East with the 1/5th” in the 1920s and in many places his military narrative of battles & strategy becomes very personal when he recounts the death of people he knew from their childhood. His final page of his book is very telling about how he wanted his book to be read so that people remembered those that fell. I haven’t got the book in front of me but I’ll look out the relevant pages.

Hope some of this helps! Interesting thread – keep posting your thoughts.

Kate

[DaveBrigg]

Sassoon's 'Lamentations' was about an actual incident, which is also mentioned in his autobiography. You may well be right when suggesting that this was mentioned due to it being an unusual case. I suppose another of his poems could show an opposite view ' Suicide in the Trenches' refers to a 'simple soldier boy' who

'put a bullet through his brain

No-one spoke of him again'

Owen's Spring Offensive ends with the survivors of an attack Why speak they not of comrades that went under?

Wyn Griffith gave the order that led to his brother being killed on the Somme.

'Yes, of course. . . you had to. I can't leave this place. . . . I suppose there's no doubt about his being killed?'

'None-he's out of it all now.'

So I had sent him to his death, bearing a message from my own hand, in an endeavour to save other men's brothers; three thoughts that followed one another in unending sequence, a wheel revolving within my brain, expanding until it touched the boundaries of knowing and feeling. They did not gain in truth from repetition, nor did they reach the understanding. The swirl of mist refused to move.

The full text can be seen at http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~alw...mametz_wood.htm

There seems to be little visible grief at the time, but reading the full account it is clear that he was greatly affected.

In 'Goodbye To All That', Graves describes one tragic night when three officers were killed within hours of each other in separate incidents.

'I felt David's death worse than any other since I had been in France, but it did not anger me as it did Siegfried. He was acting transport officer and every evening now, when he came up with the rations, went out on patrol looking for Germans to kill. I just felt empty and lost.

[Bob Bedward]

What an interesting discussion.

I came across a funeral report in the local newspaper dated Nov. 2nd 1918 of a young RNVR man

who died in Kings College Hospital. London and was bought back home to be buried

in the village church yard.

Of the list of mourners the majority were women. Most I was able to identify

as either bereaved wives or mothers of service men or wives and mothers of serving men.

The suggestion I wish to make is that the village women turned out in force for this funeral

because they were acting in present day terms as a “support network” and that

most women with husbands, sons and friends killed abroad had had no opportunity

to go through the “rite of passage” of a funeral. Therefore this particular funeral acted

as a surrogate for their own grief.

For men at war it may be that they too were unable to go through the “rite of passage” in the conventional sense so developed their own front line approach.

The recent television programme with interviews of the last Tommys

would suggest that even after so many years men still grieve.

As for gender difference, experience in my own family, would suggest that there is

no difference in levels of grief only difference in expression of it.

Old Jack

[John_Hartley]

Two things I was wondering about, I read somewhere that at the end of the war, those who experienced it wanted to 'celebrate and forget' and those who did not, wanted to 'be solemn and remember.' I'd like to find some primary sources to support this (or not, as the case may be) I'm based in Manchester so I'm thinking the Imperial war museum?

I'd also suggest Manchester Central Library for a read of newspapers of the time (and, perhaps, your local Heritage Library if you're not actually in the City). Look around 1920 - 23, when commmunities were considering war memorials. Should be some discussions (although I suppose if there are those who wanted to forget, then they probbaly didnt contribute to the discussion)

J

[Guest Toodlepip]

Although previously I thought that men were too preoccupied with survival to grieve in any war, now I think perhaps the grief of soldiers was perhaps actively encouraged by their superiors, to be channelled into anger and desire for vengeance against the enemy, resulting in men who were once peace loving civilians, calmly skewering innocent people on their bayonets - probably aided by the tuition of people like Colonel Ronald Campbell. They were told that to arouse the necessary animosity 'the mind must be purged of pity.' If a German cried for mercy and claimed to have ten children - kill him, he may have ten more! It is easy to see how this mentality might discourage the traditional sentimental, vulnerable grieving process, and replace it with the urge to kill. For men to have done to each other what they did in those year - this urge must have been fueled by something greater than a command by a superior. Maybe something even stronger than 'to kill or be killed.' Obviously this form of grief was only legitimately available to them whilst they were in active service, and once home they began to show it in other ways. I think the 'celebrate and forget' attitude (if at all present) didn't outlive the immediate aftermath of the war. Newspapers in the interwar years reported an increasingly solemn outlook at rememberance ceremonies each year.

In their poetry, some women expressed a desire to be able to trade places with their men, do someting constructive - to be able to channel their grief into a real wartime acitvity (rather than just crying into their knitting) although this urge wasn't expressed much after the Somme.. for obvious reasons.

[DaveBrigg]

'Remember the Lusitania' was mentioned as a battle cry in several official reports, as troops fixed bayonets and cleared the trenches of the Hun. Oddly, I haven't yet come across a mention of this in the accounts written by the soldiers themselves.