Writing silence: Grieving mothers and the literature of war

Abstract

This chapter considers silencing in relation to women’s writing on the First World War. Women claimed spaces to voice war’s impact both during the conflict and long after cessation of hostilities in November 1918, while negotiating expectations for emotion to be contained, grief to be observed in quietude and male heroism to be revered and privileged. Focussing on practices and motifs of silencing, we cut across prevailing notions that women’s war writing is merely trite and in thrall to duty, heroism and sacrifice for nation and empire to identify sites of conflict, compliance and disruption and speculate on the creation of empathetic communities through writing.

RAS ID

24936

Document Type

Book Chapter

Date of Publication

2017

School

School of Arts and Humanities

Copyright

subscription content

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Comments

Murphy, F., & Nile, R. (2017). Writing silence: Grieving mothers and the literature of war. In D. Das & S. Dasgupta (Eds.), Claiming space for Australian women’s writing (pp. 37-59). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Available here.

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Link to publisher version (DOI)

10.1007/978-3-319-50400-1