Men, especially soldiers, were expected to be strong and tough, and any signs of fear or cowardice were seen as an indicator of a lack of masculinity. Emotions and mental instability were qualities more associated with women at the time, yet gender roles took a turning point during the first world war, when women were used as a driving force to encourage men to enlist. This consisted of using women’s vulnerability in propaganda as both objects of men’s affections and victims of the enemies’ threats, therefore causing men to want to protect the women of their country. This directly attacked and questioned men’s masculinity, particularly through the white feather movement where suffragettes pinned a white feather onto men who were not serving in the war, as a symbol of cowardice and shamefulness.
Poetry played a more significant role in the war effort than other forms of articles or pamphlets, with jingoistic poetry such as the works of Jessie pope being published in widespread newspaper, the daily mail, it was almost impossible for men to avoid the shame of not fighting for their country. Pope directly addresses young men within the call, through constant use of the pronoun ‘you’, and friendly, almost endearing terms such as ‘my laddie’, indicating that these words are directed more towards the male youth, the young men who are at the peak of their fitness and should enlist to show their honour. pope goes on to question the reader at the end of each stanza, insinuating cowardice through ‘who will stand and bite his thumbs’. Pope also directly questioned men within her controversial poem ‘who’s for the game?’, feminising England though ‘your country is up to her neck in a fight, and she’s looing and calling for you.’ Once again direct pronouns are used to attack the reader, and men may feel more inclined to protect their country when described in a feminine and vulnerable position. In response to the call, Wilfred Owens Dulce et decorum Est follows his experiences fighting in the trenches, something that pope never experienced, where he discredits pope’s illusions of war, contrasting her depiction of a noble and glorified war with the harsh realities of what truly happened on the battlefield. Owen ironically addresses pope as ‘my friend’, demonstrating his anger towards this propaganda, and the lies that were fed to young men that they would come back as brave heroes, when they were truly facing ‘trench horrors’, as described by Santanu Das, that left them resembling ‘old beggars’ and ‘hags’, with the use of hag, a term typically used to describe older women, linking back to the emasculation that came with war. Other soldier-poets, such as Ivor Gurney, also expose the realities of war in their poetry, sharing Owens antipathy towards the unrealistic outlook portrayed by propaganda. Gurneys ‘portrait of a coward’ describes how the battlefield ‘brought [the soldiers] soul down to a quivering’, contrasting claims that enlisting in the war brings out manliness and bravery, whereas its proved to do the opposite, and deteriorate the soldiers mental and physical stability. In her novel regeneration, pat barker uses the soldiers at Craiglockhart show the struggles that came from society’s expectation of a man. These soldiers who are staying at the hospital are seen as cowards, with certain characters being more vulnerable than others. In relation to the call, the theme of cowardice in regeneration is relative to soldier’s inability to fight due to their psychological or physical disability, which creates them as ‘less than a man’. Many soldiers, such as Willard in regeneration and the soldier in portrait of a cowards have enlisted in the war as urged to by the likes of Jessie pope, and pressure from the public to avoid feeling emasculated, yet are still emasculated by the suffering of the war experience.
One of the most inescapable threats to masculinity was the New Woman. During the war, women were recruited to perform jobs previously done by men who had to go to fight in the war, and after the British Government passed the ‘Munitions of War act 1915’, approximately 80% of weaponry and war material was being made by munitionettes. These New Women, portrayed through the munitionettes in regeneration, took on the places of their husbands, fathers or brothers working in factories to earn money, but to also show strength and patriotism within women. Barker introduces Sarah Lumb, betty, Lizzy and Madge to represent the home front effort that comes from women, especially using Sarah to show Billy prior and the reader the harsh conditions of these factories, but also a woman’s desire to gain economic independence and growth, as Sarah speaks of her earning previous to and after the war began. Barker uses Sarah’s strong female character to further highlight the emotional restriction within male characters such as prior, as while the soldiers experience psychological deterioration as the war proceeds, women are growing stronger and more independent. This is demonstrated through conversation between Sarah and Prior, which is dominated by Sarah from the beginning, proving that whilst men were off at war, women were able to be free from any oppression help by their male counterparts, and gain strength and independence, qualities that were originally associated with masculinity. We also learn this through the character of Lizzie, who gains freedom from her abusive, hypo-masculine husband, who betty exposes used to ‘thump, thump, thump’ his wife.
This independence and new courage and confidence in women was seen as a hazard to masculinity, as suggested by A. Green, ‘men returning home in a fragile state often found this new female assertion particularly threatening’, with war having the opposite effect on women than it had on men, causing a sense of intimidation and fear in the already damaged soldiers, and the unfamiliarity causing some soldiers, such as Robert Graves, struggle to return home to their feminist wives. As well as intimidated, a large population of men were disapproval of the rise of feminism, as described by Josh Tosh in ‘A Man’s Place’, not only did these cigarette-smoking, mind speaking women make men ‘question their authority’, but also ‘eroded male privilege’ when women gained access to education and the right to vote.
Poetry also explored the female effort made on the home front, with poems such as War Girls by Jessie pope, which lists the everyday roles undertaken by women such as: ‘the motor girl who drives a heavy van’ ‘the butcher girl who brings your joint of meat’, ‘the girl who cries, ‘all fares, please!’ like a man’, and ‘the girl who whistles taxis up the street’. The jingoistic tone that pope often features in her poetry is ever-present in War Girls, with the constant and confident rhyme scheme establishing the power and confidence amongst these women, who pope describes to be ‘like a man’. The use of this simile juxtaposes with the repetition of ‘girl’ in the poem, as this noun usually has youthful and innocent connotations, yet pope describes these girls as ‘strong, sensible and fit’, attributes that would typically be associated with men, rather than young girls. Unlike novels such as Regeneration which was published in 1991, 73 years after the war ended in 1918, writing by the likes of pope were being published amid the war, with contemporary readers being exposed to the strong feminist movements, and the men of the time being further pressured by the changing gender roles. In contrast to popes liberating outlook regarding the service of these women, who she describes as ‘no longer caged and penned up’, there is the differing perspective from the opposing sex, with the likes of Siegfried Sassoon offering his attitude towards the movement in his poem Glory of Women. Sassoon writes this sonnet with sarcasm as its main theme, immediately displaying irony through the title being ‘glory’ of women, whilst the poem is filled with criticisms of the female contribution to the war.
The structure Sassoon chooses for his anti-war, and essentially anti-women poem again portrays sarcasm and irony, as he writes his poem in sonnet form, traditionally associated with love and romance, however Sassoon themes his poem on violence and war, contrasting the sweet rhythm of a sonnet with the harsh condemnation of women. From the first line ‘you’ll love us when we’re heroes’, this poem has a confrontational tone, with the reader being directly addressed as ‘you’, from a ‘us’, with the reader being the women at home, and us being the male soldiers on the battlefields. Sassoon accuses women of glorifying the war, expressing this through lines such as ‘you believe that chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace’, suggesting that women focus of the ‘chivalry’ and honour that the soldiers possess, yet ignore the horrors of the war that Sassoon describes as a ‘disgrace’, directly contrasting with ideas of honour and pride. Glory of Women certainly displays Sassoon’s bitterness towards the women working on Britain’s home front who ‘make [the army’s] shells’, but also his general bitterness towards all women, both British and German where he specifically concludes the poem writing about a ‘German mother’. Sassoon uses this German mother as a symbol of ignorance and nativity during the time, as the mother is described as ‘dreaming by the fire’, and the gentle sibilant sounds in ‘knitting socks to send your son’ set the tone for the harsh final line describing a soldier’s face being ‘trodden deeper in the mud’. The final couplet is written deliberately to shock the reader, and to undermine the attempts made by women to help the men of their country, with the contrast between the thoughtful scene of a woman at home knitting socks for her sun and the barbarous image of a human head being stood upon displaying Sassoon’s negative outlook towards women, civilians, the home front and the entirety of war itself.
Female desire is another aspect that constantly affected soldier’s masculinity, from the initial pressure to enlist to the aftermath of the battle, men couldn’t avoid the fear of disapproval from society and from the opposite sex. Physical disability is an almost inevitable outcome for soldiers who fought in the war, with the total number of wounded soldiers estimated to be around 22 million, alongside the 40 million casualties, ranking the first world war among the deadliest conflicts in human history. Alongside the mental fragility many soldiers suffered with from being in the war, physical disability was another major factor that undermined soldier’s masculinity. This can be seen through the amputees in the hospital in Regeneration, who Barker describes as ‘no longer the size and shape of adult men’. Barker offers many examples of the negatives effect that war had on those who fought, with the novel being set in a hospital the main focus is on the aftermath, and the struggles that soldiers had to endure even once they were no longer fighting. Barker’s continuous portrayal of the negative effects supports Lynn Karpen’s reference to Regeneration as an ‘anti-war novel’, as the focus on the negative is far greater than any positive outlooks on war that feature in the novel. When Sarah enters the room filled with amputees in the medical hospital
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