Sophie Whitehead presents the final part of a three-part study of the ways in which contemporary writers portrayed the First World War and the misconceptions that people still hold about the war a hundred years later.
Both Owen
and Sassoon suffered from this syndrome. Unknown in the times of the Great war,
modern estimates show that over 350,000 soldiers suffered from this detrimental
illness. Wilfred Owen himself was diagnosed but returned to France where he
would never return from war and died seven days before the armistice was
reached. By the end of the war a further 20,000 were still suffering from this
illness yet 80% of shell shock victims were never able to return to military
duty.
The Friendship of Owen and Sassoon
Although strictly
speaking both met at Craiglockhart the beginning to their meeting has to be
seen to have come from Sassoon’s friend Robert Graves who fought alongside Sassoon in 1915 and was the
person who helped get Sassoon into the hospital in order to avoid mental
institutionalisation following Sassoon’s testament against the war. Sassoon's
outlook on war was soon one of bitterness and resentment so he threw himself
completely and utterly into the outlook that he would die in the trenches.
However this was not the case. Sassoon
returned home a military hero –something
he never expected or wanted. He issued on June 15th, 1917, a formal statement
in wilful defiance of military authority, questioning the Government’s motives for continuing the war and
refusing to fight further. Graves, also in England serving as a military
instructor, supported a medical board’s decision to classify Sassoon as suffering from “shell
shock”. On July 23 he
arrived at Craiglockhart War Hospital, near Edinburgh, far enough away from
London to remove the troublesome poet from public attention.[1] Here, Sassoon met Owen who too was
suffering from the mental incapabilities of war. Owen was significantly younger
and less established as a poet compared to Sassoon but what began as only a
hero worship soon became a great friendship with Owen commenting in a letter
back home, Sassoon to be ‘the greatest friend I have.’ Sassoon aided Owen on
much of his work, including one of his most famous ‘Anthem of Doomed Youth.’ Sassoon
had an enormous impact on the promotion of many of the poets of the time and
helped establish the work of poets who were unable to survive the war. He would
prove instrumental in the posthumous publication of Owen’s (who died seven days before the
armistice) collected poetry in 1920, and that of Isaac Rosenberg in 1937.
However whatever your opinions on the
war were, one distinctive thing had certainly changed following November 1917;
the view of war. The horror and brutality of the world overseas on the trenches
removed older traditional poets; Conan Doyle, Kipling and Thomas Hardy from
being the only war perspective available. These poets who had traditionally
portrayed war in a lyrical, romantic way saw an embrace of a gritty realism
which Sassoon had helped to establish and which would directly influence future
literature and poetry of the 20th century in the future. It has mainly been through the poems written
by the canonical poets –mostly Owen and
Sassoon – that the crueler
side of war has become known, as the work of some poets began to be prioritised
while others were neglected. Today it is assumed that Brooke represents the
pre-war world of innocence and youth before the carnage of modern warfare
caused the anger and cynicism that characterise the poetry of Owen and Sassoon.
However recent anthologies have began to
challenge this ‘canon of the First World War’ by questioning the complete
honesty and truth behind what poets such as Owen and Sassoon seek to prove -
claiming the existence of other voices, approaches and poetic styles prove that
the emotions expressed by Owen and Sassoon did not always mirror those felt by
the majority of the soldiers. It may be seen then in fact that this ‘experience’
writers such as Owen speak of was not the experience felt by every soldier that
fought. As [2]Jay Winter writes; ‘individual memories
fade away, but cultural representations endure.’ Therefore the reader has to
bear in mind that when studying the Great War, it is important to adapt a
stance as least bias way as possible and to remember that the soldiers story
and recollection of the war is not the only story of the war poets.
‘Shell Shock’ amongst
Soldiers
Officers
suffered some of the worst symptoms because they were called upon to repress
their emotions to set an example for their men and because of this war neurosis
was four times higher among these than among the regular soldiers.
In
terms of dealing with mental health many doctors tried varieties of treatment
strategies; some far more severe than others - the most common being
electroshock treatment in which the patient would undergo a series of severe
electric shocks in hopeful order that they would become rehabilitated quickly.
The most famous doctor to cast such experiments was Dr Lewis Yealland, whose
experiments are largely documented in the novel ‘Regeneration.’ In fact it is
ironic that the most agonising episode to read
in the whole novel is not set in the trenches but in the ‘electrical room’ of a
London hospital, where Rivers watches Dr Lewis Yealland administering frequent
and agonising electrical shocks to a patient who has been made mute by his
experiences at the front. The terrified soldier must utter words to get the
torture to stop. An author's note at the end of the novel assures us that Dr
Yealland existed and that he detailed his ghastly methods in his own book. In reality
a variety of treatments were used at Craiglockhart. and Pat Barker draws on
ideas from William Rivers view of psychoanalysis and helped popularise Sigmund
Freud’s work with his use of the 'talking cure’.
Woolf
bases her most famous novel ‘Mrs Dalloway’ upon the events that happen purely
around one day. She begins her day ‘decid[ing] to buy the flowers herself,’ a
trivial note yet the novel seeks to explore a multitude of far darker motifs
and themes throughout. It is clear that Woolf views the effects of World War
One as lasting both on society and Britain itself. It was seen as a violent
reality check that a country that was as powerful as Britain had been, could
have fallen so quickly from such a large world power. For the first time
England were vulnerable at home, on their own land and although the Allies
technically won the war, the effects from it lasted far beyond 1918. The extent
of devastation varied not just from the damaged landscapes and scenery but to
the people themselves; whole communities had been split in two with the
introduction of such a war. Because of this, throughout ‘Mrs. Dalloway,’ Septimus,
Clarissa and Peter all struggle
to find an outlet for communication as well as adequate privacy, and the
balance between the two is difficult for all to attain. Clarissa in particular
struggles to open the pathway for communication and her try to constantly throw parties is
seen as a mere attempt to draw people together. At the same time, she feels
shrouded within her own reflective soul and thinks the ultimate human mystery
is how she can exist in one room and everyone else can exist separately in
theirs. Woolf describes how the war has changed people’s ideas of what English
society should be, creating a divide in understanding for those who continue to
support traditional British society and those who hope for continued change.
The novels tries to show how difficult meaningful connections were to make in
this disjointed postwar world, no matter what efforts the characters put forth.
The death of Septimus at the end of the novel comes as both a desperate, but
legitimate, act of communication.
However
shell shock was not all bad and in the long term provided a powerful impetus
for change to the mental health care system and an understanding of the
detriments war could cause a person far before it was known. The fact that such
a dishabilitating disease could affect such healthy young men, who were the
nation’s heroes shocked the general public; many of whom
still viewed the war in a triumphant light. This showed that anyone could break
down, if placed under enough stress. However despite the strong movement for
reform in the end, it was only in 1930 that the Mental Treatment Act made
provision for voluntary treatment at outpatient clinics, providing the mentally
afflicted with an alternative to the asylum. The long gap between the armistice
and this Act shows that mental health was not a strong priority for the
government. Shell shocked veterans benefitted from special clinics, but many
also experienced considerable difficulties in claiming pensions for
psychological injury. Other parts of the mental health care system lacked
resources, and civilians with mental health problems were neglected.
Another's
whose ideas were widely renown were that of Arthur Brock. A classic example of
altered propaganda being used to reach a popular ideal that shell shock victims
could recover from their illness far quicker than in reality they could, Brock
filmed shell shock victims home from the war as a before and after footage
attempted to portray their quick recovery. With work funded in fact directly
from the Medical Research Committee and Pathe cameramen, he recorded soldiers
who suffered from intractable movement disorders as they underwent treatment at
several psychiatric and disability hospitals across the country. As one of the
earliest UK medical films, Hurst’s efforts drew inspiration from the official
documentary of the Battle of the Somme made in 1916. Hurst was alert to the
wider appeal of the motion picture and saw an opportunity to position himself
in the postwar medical hierarchy. Many ‘before treatment’ shots were openly
reenacted for the camera as Hurst openly used deception as a therapeutic
measure. On the basis that the ends justified the means, the Medical Committee
defended this procedure as ethical. Claims made of ‘cures’
in the film and associated publications by Hurst were challenged by other
doctors treating shell shock. The absence of follow-up data and evidence from
war pension files suggested that Hurst may have overstated the effectiveness of
his methods. Nevertheless, the message conveyed in the film that chronic cases
could be treated in a single session had a powerful resonance. The production
of ‘War Neuroses’ in 1917 was the first motion picture to document the medical
changes in the UK and to document the changes made by the patients. His ‘miracle’
treatments meant that he was somehow able to cure 90% of shell shocked soldiers
in just one session. The most famous of these cases was Private Percy Meek who
had been driven almost mad during a massive bombardment of the Western Front so
that when he first came under Hurst's care, he'd regressed into an infant state
and could only simply rest in a wheel chair. Gradually Meek recovered the
physical functions he'd lost, and returned to normality under Hurst's tutelage.
Arthur Hurst’s son later commented on the effectiveness of his father’s
treatments, who although overstated still did achieve fantastic results. He
speaks that ‘the main work was occupational therapy’ and that ‘these soldiers,
who had been shell shocked, had lost vital faculties, like walking, speaking
and so on, were given jobs to do here.’ He continues; ‘This was interspersed
with intensive therapy sessions. My father... was head of a team, but he was
the guiding genius here. He cured these cases by means of persuasion and
hypnotism.’
Women in
war: A
Changing Society - Pre war women
World War
One saw the world change greatly in all accounts. However one of the largest
changes it saw was the role of the pre-war woman turned on its head. In the
works of both E.M Forster (1879-1970) and D.H Lawrence (1885-1930), two
prominent pre-war writers the changing role of women was one of speculation and
investigation.
Both
firstly evaluated the changing of the landscapes brought on by the Industrial
Revolution.
Forster
explored this highly in his novel ‘Howards End’ (1910) which highlights the
importance of the ‘real things’ that make life special - not the trivialities.
For Forster, only personal relations; the landscape that surrounds him; the
typical culture of a British society are what make life worth preserving. The
novel seeks to argue that stereotypes and unnecessary prejudices are dangerous
and should be avoided. The constant refrain ‘Germans of the dreadful sort’ and ‘England
and Germany are bound to fight’ act as a possible glimpse into the future of
the war that would follow. Everytime the refrain is made, the threat gets that
little bit more real. Similarly for
Lawrence, the changing world and the detriment on the environment the
Industrial Revolution was causing was of particular concern however his novel ‘Sons
and Lovers’ (1913) approached these worries from a different angle. In his
novels, the landscape that once surrounded the beautiful cities is changed and
haunted by the process of industrialisation - perhaps reflecting the exact same
views of the mining people of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire where Lawrence
grew up. His characters in his novels grow culturally to move away from the
small towns that withhold them and escape to the larger cities, and even abroad
to approach a more diverse approach on life. His characters; Paul Morel, for
example (the central protagonist to ‘Sons and lovers’) refuses to join the life
of a miner and instead tries to make a reputation as an artist. Likewise in ‘Women
in Love’ (written during the war itself) one of the principal daughters
welcomes the life of a painter, over the monotony of her life before. Lawrence,
much like Forster, deeply stresses the need for continuity of the British
landscape so whilst the turning millennium brought promises of a newly
industrialised life free from as much manual labour, it also brought deep doubts
on how a country could cope with new infrastructure and change. This continuity
of the British landscape is seen as a potent symbol into both authors works.
However
whilst both stress a worry about a changing climate, the topic both most highly
explored is the changing role of women. Not only do they see a change in the
emancipation of women but rather a world which opened itself up with new hopes
and dreams for all. Thus, whilst worries about a newly industrialised Britain
were arise - so too did it bring a literary perception of the opportunities
that were available now for all; not simply just in terms of the Suffragette
and the Vote but also for self-development and conquest.
Referring
back to ‘Howards End’ Forster explores a changing in perspective between the
old and the new; whilst the elder in the novel are happy to live by the rules
they have abided their entire lives, the younger seek a fresh perspective. A
clear example; Helen Schmugel at the end of the novel, becomes a single mother
with no wish to marry despite condemnation but to simply bring the child up on
her own, alone.
[3]In terms
of propaganda that was abundant at the time, much saw the women simply as a
useful medium in the persuasion for sending their husbands and lovers off to
war. Means of posters and publications were great and one of the most important
means of spreading the government word to enlist. The pre war standard that British woman were
to be defined by the epitome of grace and poise whilst the man was the brave and
heroic soldier who would defend all was blurred irrevocably by the demands of
the Great War. Of course the government wanted the highest level of security
and to be protected from the fear of a German invasion at all costs; and to
fight this the need for men in war was vital but women slowly refused to be
simply the tool which would make them go; they wanted an active part in the war
effort themselves. The governments propaganda portrayed women as the ‘sweethearts’
to the soldiers and centred the mens wish to fight, if not for his country; but
for his ‘love.’ This is most commonly reminded in the other of war posters ‘What
did YOU do in the Great War, Daddy?’ Linked with this was the Suffragette
campaign of the ‘White Feather’ which sought to shun the men into enlisting
using the medium of guilt. Suffragettes seized on this to argue that women
active in the war effort, via whatever means they could be were more worthy of
citizenship than male pacifists or conscientious objectors. Women showed
themselves to be able to balance not only a time consuming and often dangerous
job but also to still be conscientious mothers.[4]
Whether
the world liked it or not; women’s standard roles were being blurred by wartime
demands. In propaganda they were portrayed as gentle, unguarded home-makers,
playing on the idea of them as objects of men’s affections whilst at the same time as resilient, active
participants in the war effort. The Editor of ‘Women of the
Empire’ foresaw a more peaceful world, run on women’s terms and it
was without a doubt that the status of women had fundamentally changed.
The
government now had another problem on their hands. Whilst trying to portray
women as docile creatures for many a year before with a life that was simply
controlled by the man she married, they were now a most valuable and needed
asset to help the war effort at home and away as nurses or factory workers and
needed to be portrayed in a changed way in order to encourage work. Women began
seeking opportunities in this new work which had before been principally
reserved for men. Jessie Pope’s poem War Girls
lists a number of everyday roles undertaken by women as the war evolved:
There’s the girl who
clips your ticket for the train,
And the girl who
speeds the lift from floor to floor,
There’s the girl who
does a milk-round in the rain,
And the girl who
calls for orders at your door.
Strong, sensible and
fit,
They’re out to show
their grit
And tackle jobs with
energy and knack.
The tone is jaunty
and confident.
The
last three lines mirror the nimble qualities required of front-line troops as
women are compared and contrasted to the trials and tribulations faced on the
front line. Pope ignores any suggestion that they are not capable of performing
such tasks and by comparing the women as merely ‘the girl’ she categorises all
ages to an infancy which shows that even the youngest members of the women
working do their job. Pope goes on to state that women have been liberated by
these opportunities where the tone compares women who can easily ‘act like a
man.’
No longer caged and
penned up
and that their
commitment is not some short-lived affair:
They’re going to
keep their end up and deliver what they have taken on in the long term.
There’s the motor
girl who drives a heavy van,
There’s the butcher
girl who brings your joint of meat,
There’s the girl who
cries, ‘All fares, please!’ like a man,
And the girl who
whistles taxis up the street.
This links to actual events. By 1917
munitions factories, which primarily employed women workers, produced 80% of
the Women’s employment rates increased during WWI, from 23.6% of
the working age population in 1914 to between 37.7% and 46.7% in 1918.
Many women were enthralled to finally be able to receive a decent salary;
(albeit still significantly less than that which the men earned) but a chance
to contribute in a working society all the same.
D.H
Lawrence himself comments on the role of women, in the interchanging periods
when men went to war, in his short story ‘Tickets Please’ (1919) which
describes the girls who took over the roles of ticket collectors on the trams
in Nottingham.
This,
the most dangerous tram-service in England, as the authorities themselves
declare, with pride, is entirely conducted by
girls, and driven by rash young men, a little crippled, or by delicate young
men, who creep forward in terror. The girls are fearless young hussies. In their ugly blue
uniform, skirts up to their knees, shapeless old peaked caps on their heads, they
have all the sang-froid of an old non-commissioned officer. With a tram packed
with howling colliers, roaring hymns downstairs and a sort of antiphony of
obscenities upstairs, the lasses are perfectly at their ease. They pounce on
the youths who try to evade their ticket-machine.
They push off the men at the end of their distance. They are not going to be done
in the eye--not they. They fear nobody--and everybody fears them.
Women
in War Literature
The
assumption is commonly that all war literature only came from the men; because
they were the only ones directly at the front that could report back. However
this is very much not the case.
One
of the documented examples of prose against this was Vera Brittain’s autobiography
‘A
Testament of Youth’ which established itself as part of the canon of the First
World War era. There are often varied debates over whether a ‘canon’ (a
literary term generally relating to a piece of writing that can be used to sum
up the literary bias of an era) is a fair way of analysing an era in terms of
actual content due to the fact that often texts that have not found themselves
on a canonical list are somehow less important in portraying an ideal. This is
again not the case. Oppressed from her early youth with ideas that she would
have to marry to make a way for herself in the world; It was then that she
realised that war wasn’t the glorious adventure many young men thought it to
be. Afterwards she became strongly - and famously - associated with the peace
movement, to which she was committed for the rest of her life. ‘It was very
hard to believe that not far away men were being slain ruthlessly.... The
destruction of men, as though beasts, whether they be English, French, German
or anything else, seems a crime to the whole march of civilisation.’
She shone
a light on a part of the war which little at the time seemed to believe.
In
fact many females took to the medium of poetry or novels to express their
emotions on the war which was dividing society; the pacifists versus the
zeitgeist of war, the return of a disfigured soldier - a war hero or a monster
etc and the study of much of it actually portrays some very interesting
dimensions to the war. Sadly, most anthologies contain little work by women
during the war as the common concept is that because they were not directly
inflicted to the front line, their ideas are of less importance. The
publication of Catherine Reilly’s anthology ‘Women’s poetry and the verse of
the First World War’ (1981) expressed an intent frustration of not being able
to share the experiences the soldiers went through; not in a selfish way but
simply so that she could sympathise fully with what they went through. Women
proved that they could handle the blood and gore of war through their actions
as nurses and through the varying incidents that would happen at the dangerous
factories where they otherwise enrolled. The poem seeks to defy the stereotype
that men were the only ones affected by the war and the difficulty of the
divide between the ‘men that march away’ and the women left at home. Within
this anthology sits Nora Bomford’s poem ‘Drafts:’
Waking to darkness;
early silence broken
By seagull’s cried,
and something undefined
And far away.
Through senses half-awoken,
A vague enquiry
drifts into one’s mind.
What’s happening?
Down the hill a movement quickens
And leaps to
recognition round the turning –
Then one’s heart
wakes, and grasps the fact, and sickens –
‘Are we down-hearted’…’Keep
the home fires burning’.
They go to
God-knows-where, with songs of Blighty,
While I’m in bed,
and ribbons in my nightie.
Bombford
exploits the triviality of her condition ‘in bed…in my nightie’ whilst the
soldiers are away. This image of women at home was one many held, most notably
by Siegried Sassoon in a ‘Soldiers Declaration’ when he challenged the ‘callous
competence’ of women at home who ‘have the power to end’ the war. The bathos at
the end of the poem and the childlike rhyme in ‘blighty’ and ‘nightie’ empathise
an immediate sense of frustration and pent up anger in not being able to fight
like the men. For many writing about the
war however the main themes were the patience, grief and undesirable loss that
went into such a treacherous war. Women wrote both from their own perspectives
but also from perspectives that they could only imagine, as they tried to put
themselves into the soldiers feet fighting at the front.
Women
also used novels as a medium for their thoughts and feelings, most famously
Irene Rathbones ‘We were that young,’ (1932) which were usually published
around ten years after being written. These novels often began with a joyous
sense of optimism surrounding a war which was originally only meant to be a
quick and easy victory. The changing in environment created the perfect
atmosphere for Vera Brittain and her family to call themselves feminists. It
was this feminist influence which rivalled the large spirit of chivalry that
supported the beginning of the war, with a battle cry instead of ‘Better is
Wisdom than Weapons of War.’
Indeed
out of this began one of the most renowned 20th century feminist novelists the
world has ever seen; Virginia Woolf who shared the pacifist views of many of
the Bloomsbury Group of Writers and Authors. Woolf, described this herself in
her novels ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and ‘A Room Of Ones Own’ (1929) which shone a light
on the impact of war for women.
‘Shall we lay the blame
on war? When the guns fired in 1914 did the faces of men and women show so plain in each
others eyes that romance was killed? Certainly it was a shock (to women in particular with their
illusions about education and so on) to see the faces of our rules in the light of shell-fire. So ugly
they looked - German, English, French - so
stupid.’
In
1923, when ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ takes place, an air of failure surrounds the old
establishment and the end of the war has seen a violent change into how the
Empire is viewed both abroad and at home; its oppressive values are nearing
their end. Those citizens who still champion English tradition, such as Aunt
Helena and Lady Bruton, are stereotyped as old and dated. Aunt Helena, with her
glass eye (perhaps an inadvertent symbol of her reluctance to see the empire's
disintegration), is turning into an artefact. The old empire faces an imminent
demise, and the loss of the traditional and familiar social order leaves the
English at loose ends. The thought of death and the harrowing reality of its
closeness haunts all the characters throughout the novel, in fact they lie constantly
beneath the surface of everyday life. Because of this awareness, even the
most mundane events and interactions are made meaningful. At the very start of
her day and the novel, when she goes out to buy flowers for her party, Clarissa
remembers a moment in her youth when she foreshadows that a terrible event
would occur one day and she repeats a line from a funeral song in Shakespeare’s
‘Cymbeline’ constantly as the day goes on: ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun /
Nor the furious winter’s rages.’ The line
celebrates death as a comfort after a difficult life. Clarissa has of course
experienced several deaths; both that of her father and mother but also the
calamity of war. Thus the emblem of death strives very naturally in her
thoughts, and the line from ‘
‘Cymbeline,’ along with Septimus’s suicidal embrace of
death at the end of the novel, ultimately helps her to be at peace with her own
mortality. At the end of the novel, she reflects on his suicide: “Somehow
it was her disaster—her disgrace.” Although
she partly accepts responsibility, linked in with her acceptance that England
is no longer the ruling world power it once was, suggests that everyone is in
some way complicit in the oppression of others.
Conclusion
In this project which involves a
range and series of essays, I have attempted to critically analyse a selection
of novels and poetry, written from a range of authors to attempt to gain a more
accurate picture of the difference between how the government used media and
propaganda to inform on the First World War with that which was supplied
through literature. I have held an unbiased viewpoint throughout investigating
and writing this project in order to portray my findings of the First World War
in the fairest light possible.
Firstly
I have attempted to ‘debunk’ a series of myths surrounding the First World War
in order to provide a framework for the topics which I have then handled
throughout the project. This has also provided the opportunity for an audience
which might have little knowledge of the First World War to have a basis of
understanding before I tackled more incredulous issues. I have then gone on to
look at a selection of novels and poems in close detail which act as my
informed literature in which to compare to the medias portrayal of the war.
Literature has far fewer restrictions compared to that shown via national
television or radio so therefore it is very interesting to analyse; especially
when you are handling original material from the battlefield. I have found
highly interesting how this material differs from that which the government
supplied and how the government manipulated information to suit its own
purposes. This could be through from forged VCR, and the early documentation of
the ‘the Battle of the Somme’ in 1916 to Kitchener’s posters for recruitment.
Propaganda played on not just what the public wanted to see but also, albeit
now dated, values of bravery, honour and loyalty to ones country. Soldiers that
entered the First World War were unprepared for what they would meet overseas
in battle and this lack of preparation unfortunately led to the development of
severe shell shock in many. Throughout my exploration I have sought to seek the
truth about many commonly misled myths even to this day about the war and to
explore the key issues to the soldiers such as the susceptibility of shell
shock and how much was actually known about this condition in 1914 compared to
now. On top of this I have compared and contrasted both propaganda and
literature written on the Western Front with that taken at home, documenting
action on both sides to try and obtain a clearer picture.
My
inspiration into creating such a project drove from a passion I have had to
unearth myths about the First World War, which was the first prominent ‘total’ war
and would define the stereotype for the future of modern wars to follow.
Unfortunately, due to word count restraints I have not been able to include
everything that I would have liked to upon beginning this project however I do
hope it remains to the avid historian an account of how closely linked the
study of literature can be as a medium for conveyance and a source of
information about British past, which a modern day audience must learn from and
bring into the future.
[3] (right) Appeal by the Imperial Maritime League sees a poster
which can be compared as almost an identical male copy of the ‘Your Country
Needs You’ poster for men, by Kitchener.
[4] (below) Image from 'The White Feather: A Sketch of English
Recruiting' by Arnold Bennett, Collier’s Weekly 1914
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