A little serendipity. I told you about how I came across Mary Borden? At the same time I also came across Irene Rathbone. Unfortunately my library does not own any of her books, so I went to our trusty interlibrary loan department and found a library that does own her We That Were Young. So, I've got a little more WWI reading lined up, and although this was not published until 1932, it's a nice first hand account, at least as told from the female perspective. The serendipity is that E.M. Delafield wrote the introduction when it was published. Another case of one book leading to another.
Rathbone based the book on her own experiences during the war. She worked in two YMCA camps in France and was a VAD nurse in London. I've yet to get my hands on the Borden book, so I will start here. Both served as nurses, which I suppose was the only war work open to women at the time?
E.M. Delafield was only two years older than Rathbone, so they would have been contemporaries. Delafield also worked as a VAD nurse, though I don't know if any of her books deal directly with her experiences. I'm very tempted now to start looking for Delafield's other books. I really like her work and am finding there is more to her than meets the eye. There's something that runs below that calm, happy surface of her stories I'm discovering.
At the time Rathbone wrote her book the war had been over for thirteen years. I've been told some novels and memoirs weren't published directly after the war as the experience was still too raw and it was not a popular subject. Delafield writes that with each passing year Englishwomen have had to set aside their memories of the war, but that means recollections grow dim. She calls Rathbone's novel a "faithful and unromanticised story about women's war work". Although characterization of the novel may not be strong, it's strong point is in the rendering of the atmosphere of the era.
"To a very great number of middle- and upper-middle-class young women--myself amongst them--the War brought release. We had been brought up in the tradition that a girl did not work: she was worked for, by a male relation, usually her father. Her aim in life was to find another man who would take it upon himself this obligation by marrying her. In return, she became his housekeeper and the mother of his children."
"To some young women this ideal was satisfying: to others it was not. Only the bravest and most honest-minded failed to conform to it, for the usual alternative was to be the 'daughter at home'."
I'm really looking forward to this book--written from several young women's perspectives ca. 1914. I find this period endlessly fascinating, but I promise to try and not let it monopolize all my blogging time.