The Female Mourner: Gender and the Moral Economy of Grief During the First World War

Siebrecht, Claudia

doi:10.1057/9781137302205_9

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Claudia Siebrecht has written about soldiers sending letters from the front to their wives and mothers asking them not to wear mourning dress should they be killed, to show that their bereavement was a 'proud' one, and that they shared the same ideals of sacrifice. 62 A not entirely dissimilar conclusion was reached by a number of British women at the very start of the war.…”

Section: War-appropriate Mourningmentioning

confidence: 97%

‘A Matter of Individual Opinion and Feeling’: The changing culture of mourning dress in the First World War

Whitmore¹

2017

Women's History Review

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Mourning dress, the typically black costume worn to mark a bereavement was once a well-established part of funeral and mourning culture in Britain. The First World War is generally understood to have caused a major breakdown in mourning practices; the explanations offered for this breakdown include patriotism, practicality, concern for morale, and respect for the war dead. This paper will address the changes that took place within the culture of mourning dress between 1914 and 1918, while simultaneously considering how attitudes towards death and the rituals associated with bereavement were altered by the conflict. This will include an analysis of the developments in fashionable mourning dress during the war, assessing changes both in aesthetics and etiquette, in an attempt to determine the reasons for the breakdown. This paper will also discuss what comfort the ritual of mourning dress offered the war widow, and what constituted 'war appropriate' mourning in wartime.

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Section: War-appropriate Mourningmentioning

confidence: 97%

‘A Matter of Individual Opinion and Feeling’: The changing culture of mourning dress in the First World War

Whitmore¹

2017

Women's History Review

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“…While their presence had been a marker of strength and dignity during the war and in the immediate aftermath, their continued and increasingly vocal presence in the public sphere disrupted attempts made by the government to return to normal and move on from the trauma of war. Refusing to abandon their uniform of grief, widows like Madeleine Vernet, one of the founders of the Ligue des femmes contre la guerre (Women Against War League), politicized their mourning dress by keeping it in the public eye at rallies, official government ceremonies, and on the streets, as they continued to fight for eternal peace (Siebrecht 2014). The publication of Pérley's painting in 1931 marked a high point in the pacifist fight to prevent war as organizations like the Ligue internationale des femmes pour la paix et la liberté and their male-dominated counterparts, the Association pour la paix par le droit and the communist-aligned Association des écrivains et artistes révolutionnaires (Association of Revolutionary Artists and Writers) prepared for the international disarmament conference in Geneva the following year.…”

Section: A Return To Traditionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Horrors Past to Horrors Future: Pacifist War Art (1919–1939)

Jannette

2020

Arts

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In this paper, I argue that interwar pacifists working in France presented an evolving narrative of what the First World War represented in order to maintain support for their movement and a continued peace in Europe. Utilizing posters, photographs, pamphlets, and art instillations created by pacifist organizations, I interject in ongoing debates over the First World War as a moment of rupture in art and pacifism in France, arguing that the moment of rupture occurred a decade after the conflict had ended with the failure of the Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments of 1932–1934 and the election of Hitler as the leader of a remilitarized Germany. Pacifist art of the 1920s saw a return to traditional motifs and styles of art that remembered the horrors of the past war. This return to tradition aimed to inspire adherence to the new pacifist organizations in the hopes of creating a new peace-filled world. The era of optimism and tradition ended with the economic and political crisis of the early 1930s, forcing pacifists to reconceptualize the images and styles of art that they utilized. Instead of relying on depictions of the horrors of the past war, these images shifted the focus to the mass civilian casualties future wars would bring in a desperate struggle to prevent the outbreak of another world war.

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“…Not onlyw erew omen unaccustomed to death, the means with which they negotiated it also became less effective.Battlefield deaths made traditionalmourning rituals impractical if not obsolete. Corpses wereeither buried in situ or werenot buried at all, and mournerscould not travel to the sites of death until after the war ended, when the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (German WarG ravesC ommission), av oluntary society,gained permission from the state to care for military graves and to organizec emetery tours.N or could women wear traditional mourning costume because of fabric rationing and admonitions that such clothing could be harmful to morale (Siebrecht 2014,1 44; "Keine ʻTrauerkostüme'" [No ʻmourning costumes']1 914, 378). In a rare example, author Margarethe Böhme (1867Böhme ( -1939 weighed in on this issue of mourning behavior in her 1915 novel Kriegsbriefeder Familie Wimmel (War letters of the Wimmel family).⁴ Her heroine Sannaw rites to ar elative about overhearing ag roup of women saying that they wanted all mourning clothes to be outlawed because they damaged morale and encouraged selfish wallowing.…”

Section: Mass Death and Mourningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women Writing War

2018

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Springorum (2002) focus on the German contexti nt heir texts. Cardinal'sdiscussionincludes novels (Bertha vonSuttner,Käte Kestien, Clara Viebig), novellas (ClaireG oll), diaries and memoirs (JoM ihaly/PieteK uhr,A nna Eisenmenger, AdaS chnee), fictional diaries (Adrienne Thomas), poetry (Berta Lask, Ricarda Huch), letters( Rosa Luxemburg), political writings (Clara Zetkin, HedwigD ohm, Annette Kolb), plays (Ilse Langner), songs (Hedda Zinner)a nd artwork (Käthe Kollwitz).  See, for example,FriederikeEmonds'sexamination of the concepts of Heimat and Vaterland in Ilse Langner's Frau Emma kämpft im Hinterland (FrauE mma fights in the hinterland, 1929) (1998) and Inca Rumold's "Der Malik: Else Lasker-Schüler'sA nti-WarN ovel" (1998).  Fori nstance, CarolineB land analyzes the notion of sacrificei nWorld WarInovels by Lily Braun and Clara Viebig (2007).  See, for instance, Patricia Marchesi (2004).  Forexample, Ulrike Tanzer (2013) and Dorothee Wierling( 2013) both examine archival materials to offer new insights regarding the livesa nd works of Rosa Mayreder and LilyB raun respectively,i np articular their evolvingt houghts on the war,women'sr oles and pacifism.  See, for instance, ErikaQuinn's "At War: Thea vonHarbou, Women, and the Nation" (2017). related to the colonial wars and World WarIdrawso nm ultiple genres to deal with the complexities of violence and crisis. Novels, novellas and autobiographical accounts such as diaries, letters and reports,oralhistory (songs, interviews), visual art,p ublic lectures, and av ariety of print media, includingn ewspapers, magazines and journals provide generic frameworks to organize meaning.

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The Female Mourner: Gender and the Moral Economy of Grief During the First World War

Cited by 5 publications

References 9 publications

‘A Matter of Individual Opinion and Feeling’: The changing culture of mourning dress in the First World War

‘A Matter of Individual Opinion and Feeling’: The changing culture of mourning dress in the First World War

From Horrors Past to Horrors Future: Pacifist War Art (1919–1939)

Women Writing War

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