Widows of the Great War is the first major account of the experience of women who had to cope with the death of their husbands during the conflict and then rebuild their lives. It explores each stage of their bereavement, from the shock of receiving the news that their husband had been killed, through grief and mourning to the practical issues of compensation and a widow's pension. The way in which the state and society treated the widows during this process is a vital theme running through the book as it reveals in vivid detail how the bureaucracy of war helped and hindered them as they sought to come to terms with their loss. Andrea Hetherington also describes often overlooked aspects of bereavement, and she features many telling first-hand accounts from the widows themselves which show how they saw their situation and how they reacted to it. Her study gives us a fascinating insight into the way in which the armed services and the government regarded war widows during the early years of the twentieth century.

The Second World War widows were the 'forgotten women', largely ignored by the government and the majority of the population. The men who died in the service of their country were rightly honoured, but the widows and orphans they left behind were soon forgotten. During the war and afterwards in post-war austerity Britain their lives were particularly bleak. The meagre pensions they were given were taxed at the highest rate and gave them barely enough to keep body and soul together, let alone look after their children. Through their diaries, letters and personal interviews we are given an insight into post-war Britain that is a moving testament to the will to surviv of a generation of women. The treatment of these war widows was shameful and continued right up to 1989. This is their story.

Widows of the Great War is the first major account of the experience of women who had to cope with the death of their husbands during the conflict and then rebuild their lives. It explores each stage of their bereavement, from the shock of receiving the news that their husband had been killed, through grief and mourning to the practical issues of compensation and a widow's pension. The way in which the state and society treated the widows during this process is a vital theme running through the book as it reveals in vivid detail how the bureaucracy of war helped and hindered them as they sought to come to terms with their loss. Andrea Hetherington also describes often overlooked aspects of bereavement, and she features many telling first-hand accounts from the widows themselves which show how they saw their situation and how they reacted to it. Her study gives us a fascinating insight into the way in which the armed services and the government regarded war widows during the early years of the twentieth century.

Using extensive data - mostly gleaned from the National Archives - this book examines the way in which British widows of servicemen who died in the First World War were represented in society and by themselves, exploring the intertwining discourses of social welfare, national identity, and morality that can be identified in these texts. Focusing on two widows, the book encourages their individual stories to emerge and gives a voice to an otherwise forgotten group of women whose stories have been lost under the literary tomes of middle-class writers such as Vera Brittain and May Wedderburn Cannon. The discussion is further informed by a wider reading of 300 other such files, which allows wider observations to be made about the nature of the discourses examined, and offers the most complete possible picture for such data. Offering a streamlined adaptation of the Discourse-Historical Approach to critical discourse analysis, Discourses Surrounding British Widows of the First World War demonstrates how this model of analysis can be used to investigate a large body of data from a wide variety of sources, covering a long period of time. As such it will be useful to all scholars in their analysis of historical corpa.

An examination of German women's art produced during the First World War that places the artists' visual responses within the civilian war experience. Traces the thematic evolution of women's art from visual expressions of support for the national war effort to more nuanced and distraught representations of grief over wartime death.

Essays analyze the two world wars in respect to gender politics and reassesses the differences between men and women in relation to war

This collection of fourteen, academically rigorous and accessible chapters explores the British Home Front in the last 100 years since the outbreak of WW1. The wide range of case studies include war widows allowances, Landgirls, the role of factory inspectors in WW1 and canal boat women, national savings, Guernsey evacuees and clothes rationing in WW2. The meaning and images of the British home and family in times of war are interrogated in the past and in contemporary culture to challenge prevalent myths of how working and domestic life shifted in times of national conflict. This volume is intended to encourage a reappraisal of the place of the Home Front in British conceptualisations of war and conflict.