Abstract
Hobbs examines how the expanded activities of women in the First World War and their public reception impact on the philosophy of heroism, arguing that whom and what a society regards as heroic tells us much about that society’s values, including its perception of women. After an initial definition of heroism classically conceived, she considers the various ways in which women could relate to heroism prior to 1914 and explores how the conflict opened up new spheres of female agency, and how those opportunities were viewed by women and men, both during and after the war. She goes on to ask whether the extraordinary conditions of the First World War might require a philosophical reappraisal of the very nature of heroism, and suggests that the wartime roles of women in particular urge such a rethinking.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
I should like to express my gratitude to Federica Pedriali and Cristina Savettieri for inviting me to give a philosophic perspective at the Mobilizing Identities: Identities in Motion Through the First World War conference in Edinburgh in May 2017, and for their expert curation of this volume. I should also like to thank all the participants at the conference for a rich and illuminating discussion, and in particular to Elizabeth E. Pender for her perceptive comments on a draft of this chapter.
- 2.
For this reason, I shall concentrate—although not exclusively—on those who were raised and largely educated in this classical tradition. The primary focus of this chapter shall thus be on western Europe.
- 3.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, current at the time of writing, frontline healthcare providers are, rightly, being applauded as heroes for similar reasons. Although talk of a ‘war’ against COVID-19 is not always a helpful metaphor, many of these providers are putting their lives at risk, particularly if they do not have adequate personal protective equipment. Whether there are significant differences in responses to courageous healthcare workers between WW1 and now is a topic for another paper.
- 4.
For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see Hobbs (2000, pp. 68–75).
- 5.
Socrates and Plato were notable and radical exceptions; see Hobbs (2000, pp. 72–73 and 245–46).
- 6.
In Greek mythology, the hērōes (pl.) originally referred to a race of demi-gods, with one divine and one human parent.
- 7.
In 1884 Eglantyne Louisa Jebb set up the Home Arts and Industries Association to revive crafts and help tackle rural poverty. Two of her daughters, Eglantyne Jebb and Dorothy Buxton, founded the Save the Children Fund in 1919; Eglantyne Jebb also wrote the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1923 (which was adopted by the League of Nations in 1924).
- 8.
The dismissal of the services of both Inglis and Stobart is recounted by Marlow (1998, p. 5). Fortunately, neither of these redoubtable women followed the advice they were given, as we will see below.
- 9.
- 10.
May Herschel-Clarke “For Valour” and Elinor Jenkins “Dulce et Decorum?” also raise questions about traditional heroic ideals. Both are quoted in Reilly (1981, pp. 55 and 57).
- 11.
It is also true that many women disapproved of this blunt tactic, and Helen Hamilton’s “The Jingo-Woman” is particularly scathing:Verse
Verse Jingo-woman (How I dislike you!) Dealer in White feathers, Insulter, self-appointed, Of all the men you meet, Not dressed in uniform, When to your mind, (A sorry mind), They should be, The test? The judgement of your eye, That wild, infuriate eye, Whose glance, so you declare, Reveals unerringly, Who’s good for military service. (Quoted in Reilly 1981, p. 47)
- 12.
I discuss Pope in more detail in Hobbs (2018), where I argue that she is the principal—though by no means the only—target of Wilfred Owen’s anger in “Dulce et Decorum Est” (earlier drafts of the poem were dedicated “To Jessie Pope” and “To a Certain Poetess”). It is above all Pope who tells:Verse
Verse … with such high zest, To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. (Day-Lewis 1963)
- 13.
Haverfield , who had set up the Women’s Emergency Corps in 1914, also worked in Romania in 1916 and with Flora Sandes established a fund for helping Serbian soldiers and prisoners.
- 14.
- 15.
Cavell was assisted in her work by a considerable network, including the resistance worker Louise Thuliez (on whom more below). See Debruyne (2015).
- 16.
The only instance I have found of a woman writing of herself as heroic is a German doctor who did not work anywhere near a front: Dr Bartsch, left to manage on her own the medical practice that she and her husband ran in Bavaria, wrote that “I sometimes felt heroic, as if I had made a great sacrifice” (Marlow 1998, p. 51). However, she does go on to say that her pride soon evaporated when she realized that many others were enduring far worse circumstances.
- 17.
They certainly do not admit to it in public, but I think it goes deeper than this: heroes in general really do not see themselves in a heroic light.
- 18.
In respect of the question I raised earlier concerning whether there are marked national differences in this regard, I have so far not found evidence of any notable differences between British, French, Belgian, Serbian, Russian and U.S. responses. However, this is an area that requires more work.
- 19.
See the photographs, for example, in the Illustrated War News, 22 April 1917, and on the cover of Home Chat, 11 April 1918. See also Atkinson (2009).
- 20.
The prison reformer Elizabeth Fry is commemorated in the Calendar on the same day.
- 21.
Although Sinclair spells her name Dorothy, it was in fact Dorothie. Perhaps partly as a result of Sinclair’s public plaudits, her work was soon afterwards well recognized and rewarded: in 1915 she received the Croix de Guerre from the French and the Order of Léopold II from the Belgians, and in 1916 she was the first woman to be awarded the Military Medal by the British.
- 22.
Sarah Macnaughtan makes the same point in her diary entry for 16 October 1914: “I could not help thinking, when I read the papers today, of our tired little body of nurses and doctors and orderlies going back quietly and unproclaimed to England to rest at Folkstone for three days and then to come out here again” (Marlow 1998, p. 57).
- 23.
The physical memorials, medals and honours awarded to men after the war apart, there were also complaints that in everyday life interest waned even in male heroics, a point made eloquently by Vera Brittain in “The Lament of the Demobilized”:Verse
Verse “Four years” some say consolingly. “Oh well, What’s that? You’re young. And then it must have been A very fine experience for you!” And they forget How others stayed behind and just got on— Got on the better since we were away. And we came home and found They had achieved, and men revered their names, But never mentioned ours; And no-one talked heroics now, and we Must just go back and start again once more. (Reilly 1981, p. 14)
- 24.
There is a remarkable example in Weston Park in Sheffield.
- 25.
In addition to all the medals and decorations for her achievements in combat, in establishing air ambulance services and in sport, many streets, schools and gymnasia in France have been named after her, and she was commemorated by an airmail stamp in 2004.
- 26.
- 27.
I strongly emphasize this point in Hobbs (2014).
References
Aristotle. 1963. Nicomachean Ethics. Edited by Ingram Bywater. Oxford Classical Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 1964. De Arte Poetica. Edited by Rudolph Kassel. Oxford Classical Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Arthur, Terri, and Jaclyn Taylor. 2017. Edith Cavell, Nurse Hero. Milwaukee: HenschelHaus Publishing.
Atkinson, Diane. 2009. Elsie and Mairi Go to War: Two Extraordinary Women on the Western Front. London: Random House.
Atwood, Kathryn J. 2014. Women Heroes of World War I. Chicago: Chicago Review Press.
Balfour, Frances. 1917. Dr Elsie Inglis. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Day-Lewis, Cecil, ed. 1963. The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen. London: Chatto and Windus.
Debruyne, Emmanuel. 2015. Le réseau Cavell: des femmes et des hommes en résistance. Brussels: Racine.
Grayzel, Susan R., and Tammy Proctor, eds. 2017. Gender and the Great War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Herbert, Kari. 2013. Heart of the Hero: The Remarkable Women Who Inspired the Great Polar Explorers. Glasgow: Saraband Books.
Hobbs, Angela. 2000. Plato and the Hero. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2014. Archive on 4: No More Heroes? Broadcast of BBC Radio 4 (first broadcast 6 September 2014).
———. 2018. Who Lied? Classical Heroism and World War 1. In Classics and Classicists in World War One, ed. Elizabeth E. Pender. Special issue, Classical Receptions Journal 10 (4): 376–92. https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/cly014.
Marlow, Joyce, ed. 1998. The Virago Book of Women and the Great War. London: Virago Press.
Murray, Flora. 1920. Women as Army Surgeons: Being the History of the Women’s Hospital Corps in Paris, Wimereux, and London Endell Street. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Pankhurst, Sylvia. 1932. The Home Front. London: Hutchinson and Co. Ltd.
Pennington, Reina, and Robin Higham, eds. 2003. Amazons to Fighter Pilots: A Biographical Dictionary of Military Women. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Pope, Jessie. 1915a. Jessie Pope’s War Poems. London: Grant Richards.
———. 1915b. More War Poems. London: Grant Richards.
———. 1916. Simple Rhymes for Stirring Times. London: C.A. Pearson.
Reilly, Catherine, ed. 1981. Scars upon my Heart: Women’s Poetry and Verse of the First World War. London: Virago Press.
Sandes, Flora. 1916. An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Sassoon, Siegfried. 1983. The War Poems. London: Faber and Faber. First published 1919.
Sophocles. 1990. Electra. In Fabulae, ed. Hugh Lloyd-Jones and Nigel Wilson. Oxford Classical Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Souhami, Diana. 2010. Edith Cavell: Nurse, Martyr, Heroine. London: Quercus.
Stevenson, Randall. 2013. Literature and the Great War 1914–18. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stobart, Mabel St. Clair. 1935. Miracles and Adventures. London: Rider and Co.
Stoff, Laurie. 2006. They Fought for the Motherland: Russia’s Women Soldiers in World War I and the Revolution. Lawrence (KS): University Press of Kansas.
Vinton, Iris. 1959. The Story of Edith Cavell. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.
Woolf, Virginia, 1992. Jacob’s Room. Oxford: Oxford University Press. First published 1922.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hobbs, A. (2020). Women, Heroism and the First World War. In: Pedriali, F., Savettieri, C. (eds) Mobilizing Cultural Identities in the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42791-7_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42791-7_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-42790-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-42791-7
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)