The second battlefield Women, modernism and the First World War [Paperback]

Explores written representations of First World War experience, produced by a variety of different women. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished material, in the form of diaries and letters, the book examines the way in which the variety of new roles undertaken by women triggered a search, conscious or otherwise, for appropriate new forms of expression. Through the twin approaches of literary criticism and historical exploration, the book contributes an important new strand to the scholarship of women and war. Expands current notions of how modernisms should be defined. This volume compliments Angela K. Smith's 1999 publication, Women's writing of the First World War: An anthology (MUP).

Introduction

I NON-FICTION

1. The private pen

2. Private to public: The front line woman

3. Accidental modernisms: Hospital stories of the first world war

II FICTION

4. 'Living words': The woman's story

5. Not so quietwomen answer back

(a) A conflict of interests: May Sinclair's The Tree of Heaven

(b) A conflict of ideas: Rose Macaulay's Non-Combatants and Others

(c)Art, Pacifism, Sexuality: Rose Allatini's Despised and Rejected

6. Living with words: The war according to HD

(a) 'I have broken the silence': Katherine Mansfield's War

(b) Rebecca West: Psychoanalyzing the home front

(c)The Happy Foreigner: Enid Bagnold and the post-war woman

Conclusion: The aspect of peace

Angela K. Smith is Lecturer in English at the University of Plymouth