Constructions of "Home," "Front," and Women's Military Employment in First-World-War Britain: A Spatial Interpretation PDF

Wesleyan University
CONSTRUCTIONS OF "HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT IN

FIRST-WORLD-WAR BRITAIN: A SPATIAL INTERPRETATION
Author(s): KRISZTINA ROBERT
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 52, No. 3 (OCTOBER 2013), pp. 319-343
Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
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History and Theory 52 (October 2013), 319-343 © Wesleyan University 2013 ISSN: 0018-2656
Forum: At Home and in the Workplace: Domestic and Occupational Space in Western
Europe from the Middle Ages
2.
CONSTRUCTIONS OF "HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY

EMPLOYMENT IN FIRST-WORLD-WAR BRITAIN:
A SPATIAL INTERPRETATION
KRISZTINA ROBERT1
ABSTRACT
In First-World-War Britain, women's ambition to perform noncombatant duties for

military faced considerable public opposition. Nevertheless, by late 1916 up to 1
members of the female volunteer corps were working for the army, laying the foun
for some 90,000 auxiliaries of the official Women's Services, who filled support
tions in the armed forces in the second half of the war. This essay focuses on the p
debate in which the volunteers overcame their critics to understand how they ob
sufficient popular consent for their martial work. I explain the process in terms of
ing hegemonic understandings of space. As critics' arguments in the debate indicate,
gender attribution of war participation was organized and represented spatially, assi
men to the warlike "front" as warriors and women to the peaceful "home" as civ
To redefine the meaning of these gendered wartime spaces, women volunteers dep
rival spatial discourses and practices in their campaign for martial employment. The
explores the progress of these competing definitions through feminist and spatial th
including gender performativity, discursively constructed and constructive space
heterotopias. I argue that the upheaval caused by the war in gender and spatial n
undermined absolute conceptualizations of space with dichotomous binary areas on w
critics drew for their arguments and reinforced more recent, relative spatialities, i
ing the cultural construction of militarized heterotopic sites in between and para
both "home" and "front" for soldiers in training or recovery. The volunteers' effor
gain access to military employment both contributed to and were supported by this
Heterotopic sites offered ideal discursive locations for constructing the new gender r
auxiliary soldiering through the performance of martial training and work, and com
spatial definitions provided arguments through which they could justify their activi
both critics and supporters.
Keywords: female volunteer corps, hegemonic understandings of space, perform

gender construction, spatial organization of gendered work, gendered wartime sp
discursive sites, heterotopia, scale
This essay adopts a spatial approach to explain how British women gained a
to military employment between 1914 and 1916. The choice of this interp
framework is dictated by the contemporary practice of organizing the gend
division of war participation spatially. Wartime debates focusing on the loca
1.1 would like to thank Lucy Bland, Kelly Boyd, Beat Kiimin, Clare Midgley, Alison Oram, K
arina Rowold, Comelie Usborne, and Andy Simpson for their comments on earlier drafts of this
320 KRISZTINA ROBERT
of women's war work reveal this principle.

paramilitary female volunteer corps annou
from invasion by performing martial supp
despatch-riding, ambulance-driving, sem
were "all well within a woman's scope," the
country service.3 These ambitions provoked
of the public. In letters to the press, critic
"duties of any kind in the neighbourhood
the back of the front" and suggested that
or keep things going "at home."4 Despite s
their aim of working for the military. Fro
Reserve carried out unpaid recruiting, cleri
authorities; the Women's Legion supplied d
ers for paid posts in military camps and ga
Such employment provided the model for
sponsored Women's Services in the second h
the navy, and the air force, their 90,000 m
Britain, behind the lines on the Western Fr
What enabled the female volunteers t
military employment? To answer this que
ing arguments and strategies deployed by t
debate and evaluates their success with mun
public whose support determined social co
sides utilized spatial definitions in their r
constructions of gendered wartime space, w
their female occupants, are the main focus
discourses of "home" and "front" produced
drew. The outcome of the debate, or the
constructs, depended on how well they fit
in turn depended on the changing exigenci
these discursive creations, the discussion s
organization of gendered work in prewar
understandings of space that these arrang
how the outbreak of the war disrupted thi
new, conflicting discourses of "home" and
their critics relied for their definitions. Fina
of the debate and assess its conclusion in the context of the broader discourses of
wartime space that became dominant in 1916.1 will argue that the volunteers sue
2. "Defence Relief Corps," Evening Standard (October 1, 1914); "Women's National Defence
League," Newcastle Chronicle (December 16, 1914); "Women's Volunteer Reserve," Islington Daily
Gazette (December 29,1914).
3. Letter from E. D. Smithett, Northern Mail (March 12, 1915).
4. "Women and the War," Sheffield Independent (June 30,1915); Letter from "A Woman," Morn
ing Post (July 16, 1915); Letter from "A Stitch in the Background," Morning Post (July 22, 1915).
5. For a broader discussion of women's military employment, see Krisztina Robert, "Gender,
Class, and Patriotism: Women's Paramilitary Units in First World War Britain," International History
Review 19, no. 1 (1997), 52-65.
"HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 321
ceeded in opening up military employment for women because of the wider range
of spatial strategies at their disposal, the geographical distance of their activities
from their critics, and because their definition of gendered wartime places was in
accord with the newly dominant spatial discourses of the time.
The approach of this essay builds on the interpretive frameworks developed by
recent gender and urban studies of the war. These have emphasized the discursive
construction of wartime spaces and places, including the imagined landscapes of
"home" and "front" and built environments such as streets, hospitals, and railway
stations.6 Historians stressed the function of these locations as the actual and
discursive sites for the performance and thus definition of new wartime identi
ties and roles. But the gendered meanings of these localities and the processes
through which they were created have not been fully analyzed. Scholars demon
strated that the connotations of wartime sites were shifted both by events of the
war and by the various populations, including women, whose "appropriation of
these spaces ... transformed their functional operations into culturally significant
ones."7 Studies, however, have not explored how women's organized actions
redefined the meanings of such locations and, through that, the nature of their
own war participation. This gap stems partly from the broader focus of the litera
ture. Exploring spatial discourses at the level of capital cities and nation-states,
historians have drawn mainly on wartime fiction and the national press, which
conveyed the more hegemonic, conventional, and, therefore, critical views about
women's novel roles.8 In contrast, they neglected cultural production occurring
at the level of metropolitan boroughs, suburbs, and provincial towns. As a result,
studies have overlooked women war workers' alternative forms of discourse
production, such as the occupation and reorganization of public space, which

were enacted and represented locally to more sympathetic audiences.
Adopting a more interdisciplinary approach could fill this gap in the literature.
Therefore, I combine the textual analysis of historical studies with the spatial the
ories and methods of cultural geography to create a framework that can analyze
both written and performative modes of discourse-production and their impact
on lived experience.9 This structure relies primarily on Lefebvre's model of the
construction of social space.10 Distinguishing the physical, mental, and meta
phorical aspects of space, he argued that it was produced through a three-way
6. Susan R. Grayzel, Women's Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and
France during the First World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 11-50,
121-140; Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to
the Blitz (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Capital Cities at War: Paris, London,
Berlin, 1914-1919, volume 2: A Cultural History, ed. Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
7. Jay Winter, "The Practices of Metropolitan Life in Wartime," in Winter and Robert, eds., Capi
tal Cities at War, 7.
8. See Emmanuelle Cronier, "The Street," in Winter and Robert, eds., Capital Cities at War,
57-104, which argues that due to their war work and the absence of men, women's increased visibility
led to the feminization of metropolitan streets. However, Cronier focuses on the critical discourses of
such gendering of public space rather than on women's own spatial practices.
9. For a discussion of such approaches, see The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed.
Barney Warf and Santa Arias (London: Routledge, 2009).
10. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, transi. Donald Nicholson-Smith [1974] (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1991).
interaction or these qualities. Conceived

of real environments and, in turn, shap
structures. Spatial practices also affect di
meanings to physical sites that then infl
gender implications of these processes, I
as well.11 This scholarship has demonstra
mutually constitutive, as spatial discours
women from the locations of power; such
the creation of separate gendered sites.
since gender construction is a perform
women can overturn these divisions thr
sive, ritualized acts that mimic masculin
male public places.121 adopt these model
martial training activities at militarized
the discursive context of a warlike "hom
became acceptable.
A further advantage of spatial theory
and classify multiple and intersecting de
tionship. Therefore, I use Foucault's conc
ing spatial constructs during the war.13
defined as places of otherness, both imag
marking the threshold between location
heterotopias is to make Utopias possible
incongruous with these idealized realms.
they function in nonhegemonic conditio
transgression. I deploy this concept to in
as streets, recruiting offices, and railw
tions of "home" and "front" both physic
first sites for the female volunteers' ma
scale to explore the various discursive an
of operation.14 Thus, broader discourses
analysis of propaganda posters, popular p
whereas spatial practices are scrutinized a
of local press reports and photographs. S
separation of these different spatial level
Finally, a comprehensive assessment of
courses, and meanings reveals how the c
11. Daphne Spain, Gendered Spaces (Chapel Hil

Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender (Cambrid
Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geog
12. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and
1990); Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discur
13. Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces," Diacrit
ton, The Badlands of Modernity: Heterotopia and
Shields, Places on the Margin: Alternative Geogra
14. McDowell, Gender, Identity and Place, 4-5;
German Historical Institute Bulletin 35 (Fall 2004
long-term, gradual transition of dominant Western understandings of space, fro

an absolute to more relative conceptualizations.15
I. ABSOLUTE SPATIALITY UNDER SIEGE: GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATION AND THE

SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF GENDERED WORK IN PREWAR BRITAIN
In Britain, hegemonic spatial understandings were increasingly th

between the 1880s and 1914. Based on Euclidean geometry, the prevaili
still imagined space as absolute, immutable, and given, despite repe
lenges to this concept since its emergence in the early modern period.
central feature of this model was its discursive partitioning of space int
of binary areas. Defined as hierarchical and dichotomous, with designa
lations and protocols about access and conduct, these "separate spheres"
mapped onto divisions of class, gender, and ethnicity. They included t
risms of British/foreign, urban/rural, public/private, and work/home
represented as widely spaced, firmly bound, distinct but internally hom
areas. This spatial order was also reflected in the growing residential seg
of the classes and increased separation between the sites of production,
and consumption.17 Under the weight of economic and cultural forces
spatiality had absorbed changes over the centuries. From the 1880s onw
however, it was radically disrupted by the forces of modernity, includ
expansion of suburbs and colonial empires, the rise of organized labor, f
and mass politics, the spread of railway networks, electronic communi
motorized transport and flight, and the dissemination of new geometrie
ity theory, and modernist art. Their pressure collapsed existing bound
distances, multiplied spaces and perspectives, and created diverse, over
places.18 In the ensuing conflicts, defenders of the status quo reasserted tra
geographies through distancing and firm new boundaries, but these re
tions could only be partial, assimilating elements of new rival definition
The spatial organization of gendered work and its challenge by n
economic trends illustrate prewar attempts at shoring up absolute spat
Throughout the nineteenth century, dominant spatial thought was close
cated in the gendering of employment roles due to its mutually constitu
tionship with the idea of separate spheres.19 In the early 1800s when pr
15. For historically specific dominant understandings of space, see Lefebvre, The Pro
Space, 234-291; Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 (Cambridge,
vard University Press, 1983); Barney Warf, "From Surfaces to Networks," in Warf and
The Spatial Turn, 59-76.
16. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 268-320; Matthew Johnson,/!« Archaeology of C
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). Challengers of absolute spatiality included Leibniz, Kant, and
followed by March, Dürkheim, and Einstein, but as Kern argues, these caused little stir ou
natural and social sciences until technological inventions and modernist art disseminated n
tions among the public. See Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 131-240.
17. Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-
London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Richard Dennis, Cities in Modern
resentations and Productions of Metropolitan Space, 1840-1930 (Cambridge, UK: C
University Press, 2008).
18. Kern, The Culture of Time and Space.
19. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the
Middle Class, 1780-1850 (London: Hutchinson, 1987) Amanda Vickery, "Golden Age to
moved to the factory, male workers soug

female labor by claiming better-paid jobs
to low-paid tasks defined as women's work
which also developed in the professions, w
rate spheres. Stressing women's alleged lack
workers argued that they should devote t
or to the female trades, since the heavy a
beyond their capacity and endangered the
divided space into discrete and mutually e
and male/female, reinforced this argumen
regation of workers along gender lines. By
employees were concentrated at single-s
sectors or in gender-segregated workshop
ferent processes.21
In turn, the spatial segregation of wor
ing of workplaces and jobs. This process w
conflicting representations of male and fe
oppositional discourses of modernity in lite
workplaces were associated with industr
rial expansion. Men were portrayed in dark
building sites, and battlefields, where the
nature, or fought the enemy.22 Women's w
ized in terms of tradition, service, and fa
interiors, kitchens, laundries, and dressma
working as servants, laundresses, and need
spatialized the gendered division of work. A
excluded women from mining and limited
social reformers' concern about the adverse
company on female health and morals.24 Si
performing domestic duties for the army
Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chrono

Journal 36, no. 2 (1993), 383-414.
20. Joyce Burnette, Gender, Work and Wages in I
Cambridge University Press, 2008); Katrina Honeym
England, 1700-1870 (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
21. Simon Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender i
bridge University Press, 1996), 350-353; Harriet Bra
New Technology in the Hosiery Industry," in Wome
in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Gertj
ledge, 1995), 17-34; Sony O. Rose, Limited Livelihoo
England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1
22. Tim Barringer, Men at Work: Art and Labour
versity Press, 2005); Martin A. Danahay, Gender at
Masculinity (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005).
23. Patricia E. Malcolmson, English Laundresses: A
sity of Illinois Press, 1986); Lynn M. Alexander, Wo
in Victorian Art and Literature (Athens: Ohio Univers
24. Angela John, By the Sweat of their Brow: Wom
Croom Helm, 1980); Karen Sayer, Women of the Fi
Nineteenth Century (Manchester, UK: Manchester U
tion, barrack accommodation, and restrictive marriage policies reduced the num
ber of army wives living with their husbands and after 1856 prevented them from
accompanying their men on campaign.25 All noncombatant jobs during war were
now regarded as men's work. These practices were reinforced by the argument
that "women's place was at home" and that the pit brow, the mill, the fields, and
the army were "no place for women." Consequently, by the late nineteenth cen
tury, the gender attribution of work depended mainly on the location of the job
rather than on its nature.
In the prewar decades, when the gendered division of work also came under
attack, these spatial strategies and discourses defined the terms of the ensuing
debates about women's employment. From the 1870s, the expansion of the ser
vice sector, state education, bureaucracy, and the reform of civilian and military
medical services created new job openings for educated women whom employ
ers saw as cheaper and more docile than men. Women leaped at the chance of
respectable paid work, oversubscribing available posts in teaching, nursing,
and clerical work.26 Male professionals, however, viewed this influx as a threat
to their jobs and the violation of gender boundaries and male working space.
Protesting against the "invasion of man's [domain]," they argued that "women's
own proper sphere of labour ought to be good enough for the lady clerk" and
"the telegraph office was not her proper place."27 Male managers reacted to
the threat by an excessive reassertion of the spatial segregation of workers by
gender. To maintain distinctions between male and female jobs, they assigned
women to lower clerical and teaching grades and segregated them on separate
women's floors complete with private entrances, staircases, and dining rooms.28
Army medical officers resorted to similar practices to protect war hospitals from
"the invasion" of a "monstrous regiment of women." They limited the number
of nurses and confined them to base hospitals, arguing that there was no proper
accommodation for them in the field.29
II. "HOME" AND "FRONT":

WARTIME CONSTRUCTIONS OF GENDERED SPACE, 1914-1916
The outbreak of war intensified the crisis of the absolute spatial paradigm. Invad
ing German armies smashed through national borders and established foreign rule
25. Myna Trustram, Women of the Regiment: Marriage and the Victorian Army (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1984), 10-15, 22-49, 105-115; Helen Rappaport, No Place for Ladies:
The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War (London: Arum, 2007), xv, 2, 15-29.
26. Meta Zimmeck, "Jobs for the Girls: the Expansion of Clerical Work for Women, 1850-1914,"
in Unequal Opportunities: Women's Employment in England, 1800-1918, ed. Angela V. John (Lon
don: Blackwell, 1986), 153-177; Zimmeck, "Marry in Haste, Repent at Leisure: Women, Bureaucracy
and the Post Office, 1870-1920," in Gender and Bureaucracy, ed. Mike Savage and Anne Witz
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 65-93; Dina M. Copelman, London's Women Teachers: Gender, Class
and Feminism, 1870-1930 (London: Routledge, 1996).
27. "Competition with Male Clerks," Liverpool Mercury (June 7,1899); "Conference of Telegraph
Clerks," Evening Standard (June 6, 1892).
28. Zimmeck, "Jobs for the Girls"; "Marry in Haste"; Copelman, London Women's Teachers,
66-67.
29. Anne Summers, Angels and Citizens: British Women as Military Nurses, 1854-1914 (New
bury, UK: Threshold, 2000), 51-86, 155-159, 162-167.
in parts of Belgium and France. They also

and the war zone—which in the late-ninet
to tens of thousands of miles—to a mere f
nel. Commentators portrayed these develop
modernity. The Times described the Germ
Lloyd George referred to it as the "road
warned that "the Hun is at the Gate."30 The war also caused massive dislocation
and migrations both inside Britain and between her and the outside world, putting
pressure on boundaries separating the discrete forms of British/foreign, public/pri
vate, and male/female. Some of this mobility, like the movement of men to enlist
and the arrival of colonial troops, was celebrated. Thus the Times enthused about
"the rush of recruits" "flocking to their country's standards" and praised "the men
who are hurrying to our shores from across the seas ... to safeguard the empire."31
Mobility on women's part, however, was seen as the blurring of gender bounda
ries. Observers censured women's self-mobilization, including their formation of
war charities and search for nursing classes, as a "frenzied rush" and "flapping
and running around" which caused "jar, . . . friction . . . [and] confusion."32 By
1915 even Belgian refugees, who had formerly been welcomed to Britain, were
seen by some as encroaching upon national and personal space. Campbell Lee,
the London-based proprietor of Vanity Fair, reflected such hostility by describ
ing the influx of Belgians into London as "the invasion of the gay old town" by
"outlandish hordes" who committed a "painful atrocity" against the sanctity of the
breakfast table by forcing their British hosts to talk during the meal!33
The dislocation of the existing geographical order and the need to make sense
of the new wartime world generated two sets of spatial discourses about "home"
and "front." The first set to emerge can be called traditionalist due to its attempt
to restore absolute spatiality and its pessimistic view of the future. Therefore, it
constructed the two places through oppositional discourses of modernity, as dis
tinct, differently gendered, widely distanced, and firmly bound entities. "Home"
was represented as a female Utopia, set in the idyllic rural past. Propaganda post
ers depicted villages of thatched cottages and medieval churches with picturesque
gardens among rolling hills inhabited exclusively by women (Figure l).34 Defined
by their familial roles as mothers, wives, and sweethearts, they were portrayed
by popular songs and postcards in domestic settings in their gardens and drawing
rooms. Their main role, as the song suggested, was to "keep the home fires burn
ing," which included thinking of their soldier boys, writing them letters, and wait
ing for their return.35 This world was peaceful and civilian, with no reminders of
the war, such as enlisted men. The only way soldiers could appear in this realm was
30. "The Story of Liège;" "Stirring Speech by Mr. Lloyd George;" and Rudyard Kipling, "For All
We Have and Are," Times (August 10, September 20, and September 2,1914).
31. "The First Phase;" "The Imperial Link," Times (September 2 and August 22, 1914).
32. Lady Wolseley, "The New Army of Women," Weekly Despatch (December 20, 1914); Cicely
Hamilton, "Women in Wartime," Liverpool Daily Post (September 28, 1915).
33. Campbell Lee, "London Taken by the Belgians!," Vanity Fair 3, no. 4(January 1915).
34. George Clausen, "Mine Be a Cot Beside the Hill" (London: Underground Electric Railways
Company, 1916), Imperial War Museum [IWM], PST 13661.
35. "Somewhere a Voice is Calling (1)" (Holmfirth: Bamforth, n.d.), 4794/1; "In All My Dreams
I Dream of You (3)" (Holmfirth: Bamforth, n.d.), 4818/3. For Bamforth song postcards, see Peter
Doyle, British Postcards of the First World War (Oxford: Shire, 2010), 25-27.
'HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 327
by having their image

superimposed on it in a
different size or in a sepa
Your Country^ Call
rate frame when enter
ing women's thoughts

to indicate their physical
absence.36 War was safe
ly distanced, "far away . .
of the war was related
to the objective of this

construct. Jay Winter
has argued that wartime
popular culture sought
to boost soldiers' morale
through idealized images

of a "British way of life,"
which they were alleged
ly fighting for, and Susan
Kent has shown how the
re-establishment of sepa
rate gendered spheres isn't
isn't this
this worth
worthfighting
fightingfor?
for?
aimed to provide reassur
ance amid the disruption
early in the war.38 This is
ENLIST NOW
conrirmed by the act or Figure 1. Anon., "Your Country's Call. Isn't This Worth
the London Underground Fighting for?" (London: Parliamentary Recruiting
Company, which sent out Committee [PRC], 1915), Library of Congress, Prints
such "homely" images to and Photographs Division [LOC, PPD], WWI Posters
[LC-USZC4-10829]
British troops in France
home."39
as "a reminder of home."
The traditionalist construction of the "front" was the binary opposite of "home":
a futuristic and dystopian place of destruction, barbarity, and wilderness. Maga
zine images portrayed a nightmarish world of war where soldiers forced their way
through wire entanglements, fought fierce night battles, and died heroic deaths in
the process.40 The "front" represented the decline of civilization symbolized by its
lack of homes. Posters depicted abandoned towns in ruins and deserted villages in
36. See Figure 1 and postcards in n. 35.

37. For the lyrics of the song, see Max Arthur, When this Bloody War is Over: Soldiers' Songs of
the First World War (London: Piatkus, 2001), 17-18.
38. Jay Winter, "Popular Culture in Wartime Britain," in European Culture in the Great War: The
Arts, Entertainment, and Propaganda, 1914-1918, ed. Aviel Roshwald and Richard Stites (Cam
bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 330-348; Susan Kingsley Kent, Making Peace: The
Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 12-30.
39. Martin Hardie and Arthur K. Sabin, War Posters (London: A. & C. Black, 1920), 10-11, fig. 10.
40. Richard Caton Woodville, "British Infantry Forcing their Way through German Wire Entan
glements;" "The Heroic Death of Captain Mark Haggard," Illustrated London News [ILN\ (October
3 and 10, 1914).
flames, and post

showed soldiers liv
ing outdoors in open

trenches (Figure 2).41
This place was exclu
sively for men. Atroc
ity stories published
in the press portrayed
the war zone as a
site of grave danger

for women, with the
possibility of rape,
mutilation, and mur
der committed by
the Germans.42 Thus,
British women could
enter this world only

in soldiers' thoughts
and dreams and were
depicted on postcards
,h Dtifkrte-sz \ THE ONLY ROAD in separate frames
FOR AN ENGLISHMAN 1 to indicate that they
were out of place
Figure 2. Gerald Spencer Pry se, "The Only Road here.43 Their safety
for
forananEnglishman"
Englishman"(London: Underground
(London: Electric
Underground Electric in grjtajn
in Britain was UIK}er
was under
RailwaysCompany,
Railways Company, 1914-15),
1914-15), LOC,WWI
LOC, PPD, PPD, WWI Posters r*A u.,
Posters
[LC-USZC4-1125] 'lined
[LC-USZC4-1125] lined by portrayals of
by portray
Belgian
Belgian women,
women,
who who
*es. Castburning
were shown on posters fleeing from their in the role of the
villa
villages. Cast in
female "other," they embodied the object
soldiersthat Britishtosoldiers we
were fighting
save.44 This representation of women< indicated
ward-lookingthe bac
backward-looki
orientation
of this
this construct,
construct, as
as it
it portrayed
portrayedthe precedent
thefuture
future of past wars
through
through the
thein precedent
which women figured as victims to be
;o reinforced
protected. al
the message
It also reinforc
of
of this
this discourse
discoursethat
thatinin
wartime the
wartime "front"
the ly placewas
"front" the the
forwas
men. or only place fo
Absolute wartime spatiality, however,

ajor contained a m
structural fault, major
being structur
accommodate transformations
unable to accommodate transformations in
atialin gender
norms
gender orabout
brought
or spatial norms
sj:
s mobilization
by the war. One such change was produced byofthe
men mass
for
ma; mobilizat
>ers of civilian
military service. Unlike in previous wars, largemen were
numt
numbers of civili
enlisting
enlisting in
in the
the New
New Armies,
Armies, who
whowere
were billeted
le civilian
billeted with
witht
population and
the civilian
trained in public areas.45 Despite their dominant
presence, visua
visual
however, their presence,
41.
41. "Remember
"Remember Belgium.
Belgium.
EnlistEnlist
To-Day"To-Day"
(London:(London:
Parliamentary
Parliamentary
Recruiting Committee
Recruiting[PRC
C
1914),
1914),IWM,IWM,PST
PST
11422;
11422;
"There
"There
is a Light
is a That's
LightBurning
That's inBurning
the Window
in the
(3)" Window
(Holmfirth:
(3)"
Bamfor
(Hol
n.
n.d.), 4894/3.
d.), 4894/3.
42.
42. Kent,
Kent,
Making
Making
Peace, 23-26;
Peace,
Grayzel,23-26;
Women's Grayzel,
Identities at War,
Women's
63-66. Identities at War, 63-66.
43.
43. "There
"There
is a Light
is That's
a LightBurning
That's
in the Window
Burning(3)" (Holmfirth:
in the Bamforth,
Window n. d.),
(3)" 4894/3.
(Holmfirth: Bamforth,
44.
44. "Remember
"Remember
Belgium. Enlist
Belgium.
To-Day" Enlist
(London: PRC,
To-Day"
1915), IWM,
(London:
PST 11422. PRC, 1915), IWM, PST 11
45. Peter Simkins, Kitchener's Army: The Raising of the New Armies, 1914-16 (Manchester, UK:
Manchester University Press, 1988), 163-320.
place was undefined in absolute wartime representations. Recruiting posters

depicting enlisted men stated that their place was "in the line" or "in the ranks,"
but failed to indicate where those places were physically located. The men shown
in these posters were literally standing and marching in a void (Figure 3).46 Hav
ing enlisted, they were no longer civilians and were, therefore, out of place at
"home," but as they were still in training, they had not yet reached the "front" as
soldiers. Thus, their places, like their gender identities, were transitional between
the two locations. Based on Foucault's definition, these men constituted "unde
sirable bodies" both at "home" and at the "front," and should have been placed
at heterotopic sites between the two areas. But in absolute spatiality, there was
no place between and beyond these binary spheres. This is illustrated by posters
depicting the map of the British and French coastlines, on which the distance
between the borders of the countries is filled by empty space.47 This rigid bina
rism was alienating to members of emerging war organizations, whose ambition
to participate in the war in different gendered roles was hindered by absolute
definitions.
STEP INTO YOUR PLACE
^4.
Figure 3. Anon., "Step into Your Place" (London: PRC, 1915), LOC, PPD, WWI Posters
[LC-U SZC4-11013]
Frustration with traditionalist representations led to the production of new,

alternative discourses about "home" and "front." These constructions can be
called "modernist" in the sense that they viewed boundaries, distances, and spatial
forms as relative and mutable and actively anticipated the future in order to take
control of it.48 The authors of these images were drawn from various sections of
46. "Come into the Ranks and Fight for your King and Country" (London: PRC, 1915), IWM, PST
5150; "There is Still a Place in the Line for You" (London: PRC, 1915), IWM PST 11509.
47. "Boys Come Over Here You're Wanted" (London: PRC, 1915), IWM, PST 5165; "Come Lad
Slip Across and Help" (London: PRC, 1915), IWM, PST 5070.
48. Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 89-108, 131-240.
the public. They included

people who, while also
seeking to boost recruit
ment, were anxious about
a possible invasion and
members of the new male
Volunteer Training Corps

who, being unable to
enlist, sought to contrib
ute to the war effort by
helping to defend Britain
from potential attacks.49
Their aim, therefore, was
IT IS FAR BETTER to expand preparations for
home defense and popu
TO FACE THE BULLETS lar involvement in it. To
THAN TO BE KILLED achieve this, they accused

traditionalists of compla
ATHOMEBYA BOMB cency for denying that
Britain could be invaded
JOIN THE ARMY AT ONCE and overstated the level

of threat to increase mili
tary preparedness.50 The

forum for their views was
provided by press debates

in the autumn of 1914.
Figure 4. Anon., "It is Far Better to Face the Bullets
when, at a time of ris
than
than to
to be
be Killed
Killedat
atHome
Homeby bya aBomb"
Bomb" (London:
(London:
Central
Central
RecruitingDepot,
Recruiting Depot, 1915),
1915), LOC,
LOC, PPD, PPD,
WWI WW1ing Posters
Posters invasion ing
fears, news
invasion fears, ne
[LC-USZC4-10972] papers and
[LC-USZC4-10972] papers and their
their readers
readers
discussed the chances of
a German assault. In these debates, advocates of modernist spatiality de

"home" as a country threatened by hostilities. They conjured up images
raids over London and of invading forces landing in Britain, burnin
shelling towns, and killing civilians.51 Such visions were partially r
December 1914 and early 1915, when the German navy shelled the nort
coast and Zeppelin raids became regular in the south. These events prod
plethora of images of Britain under attack.
49. Catriona Pennell, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of

World War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 124-131; Jo
Osbourne, "Defining Their Own Patriotism: British Volunteer Training Corps in the F
War," Journal of Contemporary History 23 (1988), 59-75.
50. "Our Real Danger. A Nation Half-Awake," Times (August 28, 1914); "Will Inv
Tried?," Times (October 15, 1914); "Deadly Complacency," Times (May 18, 1915).
51. "Invasion by Air;" "German Spies and Invasion," Times (October 16, 1914); H.
"The Civilians' Place in Home Warfare," Times (October 31, 1914); "Civilians in Warf
(November 7, 1914); "Recruiting in the Country," Times (November 26, 1914).
The modernist construction of "home" recast the imagined geography of

wartime Britain. New recruiting posters represented the country as a dystopian
land of urban danger and destruction, portraying homeless children outside their
bombed-out houses and darkened skies over London, with searchlights illumi
nating a Zeppelin menacing the city from the air (Figure 4).52 These images
conveyed the message that new technology had collapsed the boundaries between
"home" and "front," bringing these places into close proximity with each other.
Therefore, the only way in which men could protect their families was by fighting
the enemy at the "front." The caption of the latter poster, urging men "to join the
army at once and help to stop an air raid," made this point clear.53 Further recruit
ing posters underlined this argument and revealed the potential impact on gender
norms of men's refusal to enlist. These images dramatically reduced the distance
between Britain and a burning Continent and reversed gender roles by depicting
civilian men "slacking" at "home" and militant allegorical women, Britannia in
England and Erin in Ireland, standing on the coast fully armed and pointing men
the way toward the "front."54 The caption, "Will you go or must I?," reinforced
the message that if men were unwilling to fight, women might have to defend the
country themselves. These portrayals aimed to boost recruitment by jolting peo
ple out of the illusion that Britain was safe from the war. In the process, however,
they also represented "home" as a second front, where women might have to play
active roles in the conflict, far beyond their domestic pursuits.
Compared to the dystopian images of "home," modernist portrayals of the
"front" appeared positively Utopian. Although these representations acknowledged
that the war zone was a land of fighting, they also depicted it as a site of normal
ity, domesticity, excitement, and women. Such images represented the "front"
as a diverse region that, in addition to battlefields and destroyed areas, included
unharmed settlements as well, where civilians carried on with their lives and wel
comed British servicemen.55 Nor was the "front" necessarily a place of primitive
wilderness. Illustrated magazines showed soldiers making themselves at home
with improvised furnishings in their trenches, cooking meals, reading newspapers,
and playing dominos in the evenings.56 Even fighting and military duties could be
represented as enjoyable. Artists' drawings and recruiting posters portrayed thrill
ing cavalry charges against the enemy and exciting adventures of motor drivers,
escaping from German ambushes.57 Modernist discourses described the war zone
as heterogeneous in gender terms as well. Although most representations focused
on servicemen, female nurses and canteen workers also appeared in these portray
52. "Men of Britain! Will You Stand This?" (London: PRC, 1915), IWM, PST 5119.
53.Ibid.
54. Lucy Kemp-Welch, "Remember Scarborough! Enlist Now" (London: PRC, 1915), IWM, PST
5109; "For the Glory of Ireland. Will You Go or Must I?" (Dublin, 1915), IWM, PST 0554.
55. "With the British Army in France," The War Illustrated (August 29,1914), 35; "Civilian Cur
osity in the Evidences of War," The War Illustrated (December 19, 1914), 431.
56. Richard Caton Woodville, "In the Trenches at the Aisne: British Officers in a Splinter-Proo
[Shelter];" "In the Trenches at the Aisne: 'Tommy' in the 'Rabbit-Warren'," ILN(October 10,1914)
500-501.
57. Caton Woodville, "The 'Stirrup Charge' of the Scots Greys and Highlanders at St. Quentin,"
ILN (September 12, 1914), 392; John de Bryan, "A German Trap," ILN (October 17, 1914), 537.
2"CITY OF LONDON
ROYAL FUSILIERS Recru/fing Office,

THE ARMOURY, 9, TUFTON STREET.
WESTMINSTER, S.W.
, iff pt ft
Ill^
ISL^ I '3m / V
\Sm
jM * it' )
ARMY RATES OF PAY & ALLOWANCES

GOD SAVE THE KING.
Figure 5. Savile Lumley, "2nd City of London Battalion Royal Fusilier

Required at Once" (London: City of London TF.A., 1915) LOC, PPD, W
[LC-USZC4-10971]
als, looking after the men in military hospitals and near the fighting line.58 These
images sought to paint soldiering as an exciting pursuit in order to increase recruit
58. "Red Cross Heroines who Will Ride to the Battle Front," The War Illustrated (19 September,
1914), 119; Cover page, Illustrated War News (December 2, 1914); "Women in the War," T.P.'s
Great Deeds of the Great War (November 21, 1914).
ment rates. At the same time, they also depicted scenes of domesticity and wom
not out of place, but as integral parts of the "front."
The main strength of modernist discourses lay in their construction of het
erotopic sites that reconciled their messages of "home" and "front." The forme
argued that the only way men could prevent air raids and the upheaval of gend
norms was by joining the army. Therefore, they had to leave "home." Soldier
however, were also promised the pleasure of comradeship and exciting milita
duties as well as the attention of female carers and civilians. Although the "fron
satisfied both sets of requirements, modernist definitions needed heterotopic lo
tions in Britain that provided these conditions for enlisted men who were not y
in the war zone. These places had to be transitional between "home" and "front
combining their attributes, but separate from both. The solution lay in portrayi
enlisted men at a series of militarized sites in Britain, including recruiting offic
where they joined up, barracks where they stayed, public parks and roads whe
they trained, and railway stations where they entrained for the front. These place
provided all the benefits promised to soldiers, but as martial sites, they were se
rate from "home."59 This is illustrated by a recruiting poster of the Royal Fusilier
that portrays a unit of soldiers on the march, singing and enjoying the attentio
of two young women. Although the domestic area of the women and the marc
ing zone of the soldiers border each other, they are separate sites marked by t
grassy border (see Figure 5). Other images depicted soldiers watched by crow
while drilling in parks or saying goodbye to loved ones on railway platforms.6
These heterotopic sites helped remove enlisted men from "home," where they d
not belong, and they also functioned as approximations of Utopia by preparin
soldiers for their military duties and pleasures at the "front."
III. THE SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF GENDERED WAR SERVICE: WOMEN

VOLUNTEERS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MARTIAL FEMALE SPACE, 1914-1916
In 1914 leaders of the women's volunteer corps drew on both traditionalist and
modernist spatial discourses to support the formation of their units. By combining
and manipulating these discourses, however, they produced a more radical ver
sion of the relative modernist definition of the wartime world. Seeking to justify
the military organization of their new female corps, organizers of the Women's
Volunteer Reserve (WVR) fused absolute portrayals of the "front" as the only
place for men and the scene of German atrocities with modernist images of
invaded Britain as a second front where women could play active roles in emer
gencies. Thus, Evelina Haverfield, the founder of the Reserve, defined the objec
tive of her corps as the protection of women in a potential invasion. Recalling
the "barbarities and violation, which have been the fate of . . . [our] unfortunate
59. See these points in Adrian Gregory, "Railway Stations: Gateways and Termini;" Cronier, "The
Street;" and Winter, "Hospitals," in Winter and Robert, eds. Capital Cities at War, 23-56, 57-104,
354-82.
60. "Learning How to Use the Rifle and Bayonette," The Penny War Weekly (PWW) (November
14, 1914), 296; "Recruits at Physical Drill in Hyde Park," PWW (November 14, 1914, 217); "Off to
the Front," Color plate, iVewvies' I lust rated (May 22,1915); V. A. Fry, "There's Room for You. Enlist
To-day" (London: PRC, 1915), IWM, PST 12246.
sisters in Belgium and France," she argued

sort of preparation as a shield . . . against s
She argued that this "shield" should be for
"men can be at liberty to go to the front
"in the hands of an organised, trained and
the following months officers of the Res
they sought to protect and specified the na
constituency as the "helpless members of t
an invasion they would evacuate them from
them.63 Throughout this period, the Belg
ence point in these arguments. However, f
the Scarborough raid to justify their existe
for "a band of organised women."64 By foc
traditionally women's concern and combini
volunteers were able to carve out a niche
zation of war service.
Claiming the role of protecting the helpless was merely a pretext for the vol
unteers to further their real ambition: the performance of military support jobs
in a potential invasion. As corps leaders explained, this included the provision
of transport, catering, and communications services for the troops fighting the
invaders.65 These roles were controversial, since they had to be performed near
the fighting line. What made them even more problematic was the volunteers'
admission that they would bring women into contact with the enemy. Thus, the
leader of a new signaling corps warned potential recruits that they should be
prepared "to put up with the penalties of belligerents."66 Consequently, most vol
unteer units took up training in marksmanship, along with instruction in auxiliary
tasks. To defend training for these duties, the volunteers combined elements of
the rival spatial constructions again. Relying on absolute discourses that fight
ing was the only job for men in wartime, whereas women's role was supporting
their men and doing domestic tasks, the volunteers argued that by performing
auxiliary duties for the soldiers, they would assist the men and release more of
them for the fighting. Corps leaders stressed repeatedly that they were "out to
help" their men and "simply wanted to supplement" their work by "cook[ing]
for camps of soldiers."67 They also argued that by "taking the place of men" who
were employed "as signallers, dispatch riders, telegraphists and motorists," the
volunteers would free them for their "proper place ... in the firing line."68 How
61. "Women's Volunteer Defence Corps," Evening Standard (September 4, 1914).

62. Ibid.
63. "Lady Volunteers!," Hampstead Chronicle (December 21, 1914); "The Call to Arms," Morn
ing Post (February 13, 1915).
64. "Women and Invasion. Lessons Taught by the Raid on Scarborough," The Star (December
17, 1914).
65. "Women in War. Purposes of the Corps," Evening Standard (January 29, 1915).
66. "Women Signallers," Evening Standard (October 1, 1914).
67. "Women's Volunteer Reserve," Northern Mail (February 5, 1915); "Amazons to the Fore,"
Lady's Pictorial (February 20, 1915).
68. "Women's Volunteer Reserve, Times (January 28, 1915); "Women Organising," Leicester
Mail (February 23, 1915).
ever, while paying lip service to the idea of separate spheres, the volunteers al
drew on modernist images of women taking on active roles in emergencies. Th
consistently described conditions in Britain as a "crisis" and argued that corp
members would be armed only "as a last resort to defend themselves and the
fellow women from barbarity."69
Besides these verbal arguments, the volunteers also deployed physical spati
strategies to further their goal of obtaining martial work. These practices focu
on entering militarized heterotopic areas and performing the same activities as t
troops. The most important of these acts was carrying out route marches on pub
roads. After perfecting their technique indoors or on secluded country lanes a
acquiring their khaki uniforms, companies of the WVR went on regular fort
nightly marches across their local area. The first such parade was carried out b
the Marylebone unit of the Reserve in January 1915, when 120 members march
from their headquarters to Hampstead Heath.70 Two months later over 500 me
bers paraded in Birmingham, and several other units added drummers to the
march.71 These performances had multiple objectives. First, they aimed to g
publicity for the volunteers' activities by alerting newspapers and their photo
phers to these events and, through these channels, sought to publicize the corp
intention to participate in the war in a new, military capacity. One caption c
veyed this message by stating that these "women are convinced that their place
not at home, and that even the hospital is not the limit to their usefulness."72 Mo
specifically, the parades aimed to secure martial employment for the corps.
marching firmly in step and moving in formation with their heads up, shoulde
squared, and eyes front, the companies sought to demonstrate their qualities
discipline, efficiency, and esprit de corps to military authorities. An advocate
the corps summed up this intention by arguing that the greatest value of thes
sights was to advertise the readiness of "hundreds of able-bodied, healthy wom
disciplined and trained to be of use."73 Further examples of this strategy includ
staging drilling and signaling practices in public parks and commons.74
These performances generated intense public debates in the press about the
volunteers' activities. Opponents of the corps drew on absolute spatial discourse
in these discussions, dividing the wartime world into a secluded "home" f
women's domestic work and a separate "front" for men's military duties, with
spaces and roles in between. Criticism first emerged in early 1915, in the conte
of broader debates about women's ambition to play combat roles.75 Pointing
the martial training of the WVR, the Daily Graphic argued that the formati
of the corps is sufficient proof of such ambitions, claiming that the Reserve
69. "Defence Relief Corps," Evening Standard (October 1, 1914); "For Their Own Defence
Oldham Evening News, December 17, 1914.
70. "Women Volunteers Do a Route March," Daily Mirror (January 11, 1915); "Women's Volu
teer Force Marches Past Buckingham Palace," Daily Sketch (February 8, 1915).
71. "Women's Volunteer Movement," Birmingham Daily Mail (March 12,1915); "Women's Vo
unteer Corps," Northern Echo (March 8, 1915); No title, Daily Graphic (April 12, 1915).
72. No title, People's Journal (January 13, 1915).
73. Lady Frances Balfour, '"Of What Use?'," Evening Standard (July 15, 1915).
74. See photo in Lady's Pictorial (April 24, 1915).
75. See Nicoletta F. Gullace, "The Blood of Our Sons" : Men, Women, and the Renegotiation
British Citizenship during the Great War (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 60-63.
"demands the right to fight" in a poten

volunteers of "trying to be men" and int
Opponents adhered to traditional definit
tasks according to their location. Thus,
carrying is not well within a woman's sc
field," and Violet Markham rejected the
kind in the neighbourhood of the firing
front."78 In July a new wave of opposit
protested against the volunteers' activiti
uniformed bodies "strike a wrong and ja
in hospitals, canteens, and patriotic conce
"front," Markham stated that khaki uni
fallen on the blood-stained fields of Flan
Critics argued that corps members shou
legitimate sphere." They urged the volun
in hospitals" or to "put on sunbonnets a
fruit and make jam."81 These statements
lic, rural, and domestic "home" of women
Corps leaders and their supporters coun
both traditionalist and modernist spatial
used the language of separate spheres, in
trying to do the same as men" and that t
by attempting to become soldiers."82 Co
differently gendered tasks and places w
son, from the Newcastle WVR, stated th
some of 'the 4 or 5 millions of single m
the Government should call them up," a
quarters, argued that they only wanted "to
the same time, the volunteers stretched t
arguing that if men's proper duty was fi
work. Mrs. Smithett asserted that "camp
patch carrying are all well within a wom
Newcastle company, stated that the Reser
ambulance waggons, [and] act as dispatch-
duties."84 As before, corps leaders and t
of the "home" threatened by an enemy
gressions. Praising the volunteers' martia
76. "Women Who Want to Fight," Daily Graphic

77. Letter from Wilfrid G. C. Lambert, Norther
78. Letter from "W.C.G.L.," Newcastle Chronicl
field Independent (June 30, 1915).
79. Letter from Violet Markham, Morning Post (J
80. Ibid.
81. Letter from "A Woman," Morning Post (July 16, 1915).
82. Letter from Smithett, Northern Mail (March 12, 1915); Letter from Minnie G. Davison, New
castle Chronicle (March 31, 1915).
83. Letter from Smithett, Northern Mail (March 12, 1915).
84. Ibid:. Letter from Minnie F. Reay, Newcastle Chronicle (March 31, 1915).
against "living in a fool's paradise" believing that invasion was impossible, and
another pointed out that the trained and disciplined women would be more useful
"should invasion come" "than picking fruit and making jam."85
Simultaneously with this criticism, the volunteers' parades earned significant
praise from local military authorities. In early 1915, as enlistment rates were
declining, recruiting officers of the army were deploying new methods to secure
more recruits.86 One such method was using the parades of uniformed women
to shame the men into enlisting.87 Therefore, army officers supported their local
WVR companies by appearing and speaking at their inaugural meetings, lending
them drill sergeants and bands, and inviting them to their barracks for parades,
inspections, and tea. Having marched to Glen Parva barracks behind the regimen
tal band of the depot, the Leicester unit of the WVR was drilled and inspected
by Captain Buckley, after which soldiers, who had been watching the parade,
entertained the company to tea.88 In North Dulwich and Worcester, army colonels
visited and inspected WVR companies on their home grounds. On all these occa
sions, officers complimented the women on their drill and told them that they
were "setting a splendid example" to the shirkers.89 The most crucial endorsement
of the volunteers by military authorities was the inclusion of uniformed female
units into army recruiting marches. Invited by Colonel Willoughby Wallace, on
April 24th, 1915, 200 members of the London Battalion of the WVR took part
in a large recruiting rally accompanied by military bands, with Colonel Mrs.
Charlesworth riding alongside Colonel Willoughby.90 Other units of the Reserve
participated in similar processions across the West End of London, in Warwick,
and Birmingham.91 The endorsement of military authorities was a powerful argu
ment for the volunteers in press debates with their opponents. Although critics
protested incredulously against these "mixed band[s] of men and women parad
ing the streets together," they could not question the judgment of army authorities
in wartime.92
Similar support from local elites and newspapers provided the volunteers with
meeting, training, and advertising spaces. For municipal leaders, the female units
represented the patriotic womanhood of the town, whose aim to provide more
men for the fighting by replacing them in other jobs demonstrated the exceptional
dedication of the municipality to the national war effort, beyond the performance
85. Letters from "Dug Out" and "Veteran," Newcastle Chronicle (April 1,1915); Letter from "Yet
Another Woman," Morning Post (July 26, 1915).
86. Simkins, Kitchener's Army, 104-137.
87. For a broader discussion of women's recruiting roles, see Gullace, "The Blood of Our Sons,"
53-60,64-69,88-89, 123-125.
88. "Parade to Glen Parva Barracks," Leicester Mail (May 7, 1915).
89. "Women as Volunteers. Novel Parade and Inspection in Dulwich," Kentish Mercury (May 21,
1915); "Worcester Women Volunteers. Inspection by Col. Edwards," Worcester Advertiser (June 5,
1915).
90. Letter from Smithett, Ilford Recorder (April 16, 1915); for photographs, see "Woman Colo
nel," Daily Mirror (April 26, 1915); "Women Volunteers Show an Example," Daily Graphic (April
26,1915).
91. "Women's Recruiting March," Daily Graphic (May 17, 1915); "When the Women Call What
Man Can Hang Back," Daily Sketch (June 21, 1915); "To-Day's Military Parade in Birmingham,"
Birmingham Daily Mail (July 27, 1915).
92. Letters from "A Woman" and Markham, Morning Post (July 21 and 22, 1915).
of rival locations.93 Thus, the volunteer

Town Halls, with the Mayor or the Mayo
bles, including councillors, clergy, and bu
at the meeting of the Stratford WVR, th
of the unit, stating that "Stratford had do
[but] they expected her to do greater st
Stratford to advance its fame. ... as Stra
sacrifice, ... so it might give a lead to th
surrounded, in the organisation ... of its
from municipal leaders secured the suppo
addition, the volunteers' work provided n
opportunities at a time of restrictive cens
on the volunteers' activities, praised their
letters. These illustrated reports reveal p
public space, suggesting that for many p
tacular entertainment, filling the gap left
ments for the front. Press photos and ar
ing "much attention" from locals, who f
processions "with endless curiosity" and
helped protect the volunteers from crit
defending the corps in both local and nat
The support of military and municipal
erotopic sites for the volunteers' work, w
female areas. These places ranged from
worked as orderlies, to munitions factori
canteens for workers and servicemen.99
where the volunteers performed clerical
plans, such as the National Register and
tion in 1916.100 The most important of
93. For local recruiting efforts, see Simkins, K

rivalry as a motive for the formation of female vo
Formed at Derby," Derbyshire Advertiser (Ap
Branch," Staffordshire Sentinel (September 11, 19
94. "A Leicester Branch of the Volunteer Reserv
ter Mail (February 23,1915); "WVR. Local Corps to
13, 1915).
95. "WVR. Auspicious Start at Stratford," Stratford upon Avon Herald (April 9, 1915).
96. See this point in Adrian Bingham, Gender, Modernity and the Popular Press in lnterwar
Britain (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004), 50.
97. "Women's Corps March Out," Evening Mail (March 6, 1915); "Parade to Glen Parva Bar
racks," Leicester Mail (May 7, 1915); "Women Volunteers On the March," Daily News Leader
(January 11, 1915); "Route March of the Women Volunteers," Daily Mirror (February 22, 1915).
98. Letters from "Francois," "A Veteran," and "Dug Out," Newcastle Chronicle (March 31 and
April 1, 1915); and from "An Englishwoman," "Another Woman," and "Yet Another Woman,"
Morning Post (July 20 and 26, 1915).
99. E. Londonderry, "Women's Volunteer Reserve. Varied Activities," Morning Post (June 5,
1915); "The Central Station Canteen," Newcastle Chronicle (December 20, 1915).
100. "Woman's Work in Birmingham," Picture World (December 17,1915); "Miss Atkins Enrols
Thomas," Daily Graphic (January 27, 1916). For details of new enlistment schemes, see Simkins,
Kitchener's Amy, 138-161.
roads, where corps members did door-to-door canvassing in residential areas,

collecting registration forms and interviewing and attesting registered men
well as raising funds, doing ambulance duty and fire drill, and acting as stewa
and patrols.101 The volunteers deployed physical spatial strategies to retain t
military association of these places. Thus, they always worked as a unit under t
orders of an officer, wore their regulation khaki uniforms, and marched in for
tion to and from their shifts.102 At the same time, corps members also femini
these sites through various domestic practices to define them as female areas
and thus secure public acceptance for their work at these places. This include
transforming old shacks and a workhouse into canteens and a military hospital
scrupulous scrubbing, polishing, and fitting up, decorating tea trolleys with va
of flowers, wearing aprons or overalls atop their uniforms when serving foo
and turning railway canteens into soldiers' rest-rooms by furnishing them wi
writing desks, magazines, and sleeping accommodation.103
Verbal strategies were equally important in constructing these heterotopic sit
as areas of women's martial work. As with their physical practices, the volunte
highlighted the military nature of these places. Unlike critics who spoke simp
of hospitals, the volunteers always referred to "military" hospitals or "War Off
depots" when describing their workplaces.104 They also emphasized that it w
their martial organization that secured them government sanction to work a
these sites and stressed that wearing uniforms was an official condition of the
employment.105 Thus, Mrs. Smithett asserted that Sir Frederick Donaldson, th
Chief of Woolwich Arsenal, gave the Reserve permission to start a canteen onl
"because we were a drilled [and] disciplined body of women under orders
supporter argued that a recognized uniform was essential for corps members
working in a military hospital, since the general public was not admitted to th
site.106 Furthermore, the volunteers stressed the patriotic nature of their duti
Describing the canteen work of the WVR, leaders of the corps argued that b
serving food and "non-intoxicant beverages" to munitions workers inside the
factories, they would reduce "excessive drinking among the men" and th
increase munitions production.107 They also boasted that members of the Reser
had "helped materially to recruit for the Army" by addressing working men i
101. "National Register," Birmingham Daily Mail (August 17, 1915); "Birmingham Wome
Ambulance," Birmingham Mail (May 16, 1916); "Women as Wartime Firemen," Daily Grap
(April 3, 1916).
102. Women's Reserve Ambulance, Booklet, IWM, Department of Documents (DD) SUPP. 55
"Munition Workers Canteen," Picture World (June 28, 1915).
103. "Munition Workers Canteen," Picture World (June 28, 1915); "Glasgow Station Cantee
Bulletin (14 December, 1915); "A Home Away from Home for Overseas Troops," Daily Grap
(March 1916), IWM, DD, 38/145.
104. Letters from "A Uniformed Woman" and "Another Woman," Morning Post (July 20, 1915)
105. Londonderry, "Organised Women," Evening Standard (June 5, 1915); "Uniform Comp
sory," title unknown (June 1915), IWM, DD, SUPP. 38/58.
106. Letter from Smithett, Express and Star (May 29,1915); and from "Another Woman," Mo
ing Post (July 20, 1915).
107. Londonderry, "Organised Women," Evening Standard (June 5, 1915); Smithett, "Wome
Volunteer Reserve," Express and Star (May 29, 1915); B. Hopkins, "Refreshments for Munitio
Workers," Birmingham Post (July 8, 1915).
their dinner hour and persuading them t

out that members gave their services vo
and exacting" work day and night "in al
Zeppelin raids over military locations.10
portrayed their work at these sites as the
zone. Several newspapers embraced this
"soldier women" or a "disciplined and eff
During late 1915 and 1916 the volunteer
and began colonizing "home" locations to
women's war work. These included mu
garages, and farmland, where corps mem
ical strategies, such as the establishment
tated women's entry into these job sites.1
more vital role in opening up these place
on a discursive remapping of Britain a
networks of heterotopic sites where "kh
diers, ammunition for the guns, and men
on modernist spatial images of "home" a
utes into one definition through the posi
described a "growing body" of women, "
breach" left by enlisted men, and creating
The volunteers' work was depicted as eff
driving cars and tractors, and using m
futuristic Utopia depended on the remov
still in Britain doing "women's work," in
army. They represented an inefficient, w
the opposite of modernity. Therefore, c
employers to give these jobs to women a
they could expand into numerous regime
108. Smithett, "Answering the Call," Daily Grap

109. "Munition Workers Canteen," Picture Worl
Munitions Workers," Birmingham Post (July 8, 1
shire Post (June 7, 1915).
110. "English Women Aid in Getting Recruits,"
"Travelling Canteens," Birmingham Gazette (June
111. "The British School of Motoring," Sporting
Land. Training Scheme at Bawtry," Yorkshire Pos
112. "Khaki Women," Every Woman's Weekly (F
for the Fighting Men," Sunday Pictorial (Novem
ham Gazette (January 19, 1916); "The Work of th
Magazine 1, no. 8 (August, 1916), 150.
113. "War Work for Women," Daily Telegraph
for Munitions Workers," Birmingham Post (July
(March 10, 1916).
114. "Leaves from the Branches," Women's Volu
138-139; Smithett, "Women Chauffeurs and Van-Drivers," Car Illustrated (October 9, 1915);
"Women as Motor Mechanics," Derby Daily Express (May 31,1916); "Women at the Plough," Daily
Express (June 20, 1916); "New Army Cooks," Daily Mirror (March 28, 1916).
115. "The Women's Legion," Evening Standard (January 13, 1916); "Girls Who Face Fires,"
Daily Express (January 22, 1916).
"HOME," "FRONT;' AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT 341
portrayal implied that "home" and "front" were no longer binary opposites. T
were linked through the expanding heterotopic sites into "a national machine"
which men took their places by fighting and women by working for victory.11
This construction of "home" and "front" utilized and was supported by shifti
hegemonic definitions of gendered wartime space. During this period new po
trayals of Britain and the war zone took the place of representations created in
first year of the war. Traditionalist images of the country as an idyllic femin
Utopia merged into the concept of "Blighty": the idealized concept of "home"
imagined by British soldiers.117 By contrast, in Britain, a new version of mode
ist portrayals became dominant. This fused the formerly dichotomous images
"home" and "front," depicting these places as strikingly similar. The prevaili
symbol of Britain in this period became the munitions factory staffed by wom
whose smoking chimneys, barbed-wire fences, and utilitarian canteen huts par
leled the smoking gun barrels, barbed-wire entanglements, and recreation h
of the "front."118 Both locations were portrayed as increasingly urban, industr
and mechanized. The pastoral idyll of picking fruit in sunbonnets was replac
by portrayals of women in drab uniforms, making shells in factories and drivi
tractors on the land. Likewise, images of the "front" as a site of cavalry charg
and open-air trenches in the countryside were superseded by photographs of
steel-helmeted and gas-masked soldiers with heavy guns who lived in elaborate
constructed wooden cabins called "trench-town."119 The unity of the two plac
was stressed by visual images showing soldiers in parallel positions or shakin
hands with munitions workers (Figure 6).120 This new discourse developed fro
the growing dominance of modernist arguments in 1915. Declining enlistme
rates, the shell shortage, and the use of new military technology by the enem
gave justification to modernizing political forces, who blamed the dragging-
of the conflict on the traditional methods of the British war effort and urge
more efficient organization of resources through conscription, greater mechan
tion, and women's mobilization.121 The reorganized operation was portrayed
a "great national machine" whose component parts of fighting men and worki
women were united by their joint effort for future victory.122
116. "The British School of Motoring," Sporting Times (April 1, 1916).

117. "Blighty" (which means "foreign" and even "English" or "British" in Urdu) was the Brit
soldiers' affectionate slang word for "home." For a discussion, see Winter, "Popular Culture," 333.
118. For images of munitions factories symbolizing wartime Britain and comparisons of m
tions workers' labor with soldiering, see Angela Wollacott, On Her Their Lives Depend: Munit
Workers in the Great War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 1,5-11; Monica Cos
Lloyd George's Munitions Girls (London: Hutchinson, 1916), dustjacket image; Bessie Marchant
Girl Munition Worker (London: Blackie, 1916), dustjacket image; Rebecca West, "Hands That W
The Cordite Makers," Daily Chronicle (July, 1916).
119. "The Lull in Flanders before the Coming Storm;" "Present from Home;" "Luxury in the Fi
Line: 'Home, Sweet Home' in the Trenches of Northern France," The War Illustrated, (Septem
18,1915), 102; (December 25,1915), 443; (January 22,1916), 540-541.
120. Cover image, The War Worker (June 1917) in Woollacott, On Her Their Lives Depend,
lowing page 112.
121. Simkins, Kitchener's Army, 104-161; David French, British Economic and Strategic P
ning, 1905-1915 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982), 138-149,165-167; H. G. Wells, "The Mobilizat
of Invention," Times (June 11, 1915).
122. "Civic Sunday," Midland Country Express (November 20, 1915); A. G. Hales, "'Onward
Be Our Watchword," The War Illustrated (August 21,1915), 2-4.
Were both needed to serve the Guns
Figure 6. Anon., "We're Both Needed to Serve the Guns!" (London: PRC, 1915) LOC,
PPD, WWI Posters [LC-USZC4-10830]
IV. CONCLUSION
This essay has sought to demonstrate the usefulness of a spatial approach

exploring women's entry into military employment in First-World-War Br
have argued that the gendered organization of war service was spatially arr
assigning men to the "front" and women to the "home." However, as war
tions undermined the traditional absolute conceptualization of space on w
this model was based, the renegotiation of gendered war work became po
Leaders of the female volunteer corps took a leading part in this proc
manipulating competing spatial constructions, they carved out a discursive
for themselves in the war effort and utilized heterotopic locations for the
tary training and work activities. In the ensuing debates, the volunteers suc
in overpowering their critics partly because their spatial representation of
activities was in accord with the dominant discourses about gendered war
places at the time. A further advantage that the volunteers had over their
was the broader range of spatial strategies at their disposal. Besides takin
their critics in the press, where they combined traditional and modern dis
to verbally define their martial workplaces, they could also enact these defi
by entering heterotopic military sites in Britain and performing martial t
and work activities there. Against such a range of representations, the occa
letters to the press written by their critics were ineffective, particularly
appeared along with supportive letters and articles by sympathetic memb
the public and the press. In this respect, the different scalar level of critici
the corps' activities was crucial. Whereas most criticism appeared in n
newspapers, the volunteer units operated at the local level of towns or su
where they enjoyed overwhelming support from the municipal elites and the
press. The volunteers' success in obtaining military catering and transport jobs in
Britain laid the foundations for performing these and other noncombatant roles
for the armed forces in the war zone in the second half of the war.
The exploration of competing spatial definitions in prewar and wartime Britain

identifies this period as a key stage in the transition of spatial paradigms. The
decades straddling the turn of the century formed an important early phase in
the evolution of globalization characterized by the expansion of international
transport, telecommunications, and media networks, global financial and trading
organizations, and increasing volumes of worldwide emigration and travel. These
processes, which were reinforced by the war, along with scientific discoveries
and modernist forms of artistic expression, were eroding the traditional Euclidean
concept of space that critics of the volunteers, among many others, were trying
to maintain. Although conceptions of absolute space with its dichotomous places
survived until the late twentieth century, during the period under examination
they were being replaced by the multiple and overlapping geography of modern
relative space, which forms a link between the traditional absolute and postmod
ern relational concepts.
University of Roehampton

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CONSTRUCTIONS OF "HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT IN

CONSTRUCTIONS OF "HOME," "FRONT," AND WOMEN'S MILITARY

In First-World-War Britain, women's ambition to perform noncombatant duties for

Keywords: female volunteer corps, hegemonic understandings of space, perform

of women's war work reveal this principle.

production, such as the occupation and reorganization of public space, which

interaction or these qualities. Conceived

11. Daphne Spain, Gendered Spaces (Chapel Hil

long-term, gradual transition of dominant Western understandings of space, fro

I. ABSOLUTE SPATIALITY UNDER SIEGE: GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATION AND THE

In Britain, hegemonic spatial understandings were increasingly th

moved to the factory, male workers soug

Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chrono

II. "HOME" AND "FRONT":

in parts of Belgium and France. They also

by having their image

ing women's thoughts

ly distanced, "far away . .

of the war was related

to the objective of this

through idealized images

36. See Figure 1 and postcards in n. 35.

flames, and post

ing outdoors in open

site of grave danger

enter this world only

Absolute wartime spatiality, however,

place was undefined in absolute wartime representations. Recruiting posters

STEP INTO YOUR PLACE

Frustration with traditionalist representations led to the production of new,

the public. They included

Volunteer Training Corps

THAN TO BE KILLED achieve this, they accused

JOIN THE ARMY AT ONCE and overstated the level

tary preparedness.50 The

provided by press debates

a German assault. In these debates, advocates of modernist spatiality de

49. Catriona Pennell, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of

The modernist construction of "home" recast the imagined geography of

ROYAL FUSILIERS Recru/fing Office,

ARMY RATES OF PAY & ALLOWANCES

Figure 5. Savile Lumley, "2nd City of London Battalion Royal Fusilier

III. THE SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF GENDERED WAR SERVICE: WOMEN

sisters in Belgium and France," she argued

61. "Women's Volunteer Defence Corps," Evening Standard (September 4, 1914).

"demands the right to fight" in a poten

76. "Women Who Want to Fight," Daily Graphic

of rival locations.93 Thus, the volunteer

93. For local recruiting efforts, see Simkins, K

roads, where corps members did door-to-door canvassing in residential areas,

their dinner hour and persuading them t

108. Smithett, "Answering the Call," Daily Grap

116. "The British School of Motoring," Sporting Times (April 1, 1916).

Were both needed to serve the Guns

This essay has sought to demonstrate the usefulness of a spatial approach

The exploration of competing spatial definitions in prewar and wartime Britain

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