AustLit logo
World War I in Australian Literary Culture
From the first shot to the centenary
(Status : Public)
Coordinated by WW1 Project
  • Women Writing Women's Roles

    Throughout World War I, a succession of women writers, working especially in short fiction for magazines, turned out story after story about the war: the works of Sumner Locke and Gertrude Hart, only two examples of such writers, are explored in individual exhibitions.

    But one aspect of these short stories is the ways in which they sought to define, explore, or even create the woman's role on the home front while the men were off at war. The stories showcase stoic women, selfish women, over-eager women, weak women, strong women–a plethora of roles that the women waiting at home could either adopt or avoid.

    The other's face worked strangely. "You have a great admiration for courage, haven't you, Miss Sybil? Got no time for any one who could just offer you love and a wondering life?"

    Sybil's heart beat a trifle faster. "No time indeed," she said scornfully, "a man's no man these times who offers a woman his love and life when he won't offer them to his country. If ever I marry," she looked at him defiantly, "God send me a soldier, and if He is extra good, may it be one who has proved himself in battle."

    (From Lilian Pyke's 'The Benefit of the Doubt', Weekly Times, 6 October 1917, p.6.)

    This exhibition explores short stories written both during and immediately after the war that explore women's roles in particularly brutal, circumscribed, or unusual ways.

    This is only a sampling of the short stories by women writers that filled Australian newspapers and periodicals during the war years. For a complete list of short stories by women in the World War I dataset, click here.

  • Explore the Stories

    • (Display Format : Landscape)

      The Advent of Tilly Ann (1914)

    • (Display Format : Landscape)

      Traitor or Patriot (1914)

    • (Display Format : Landscape)

      A Christmas Fairy (1914)

    • (Display Format : Landscape)

      Women and Wartime (1914)

    • (Display Format : Landscape)

      The Casualty List (1917)

    • (Display Format : Landscape)

      Mother's Christmas Eve (1917)

    • (Display Format : Landscape)

      The Question (1917)

    • (Display Format : Landscape)

      Tempest's Girl (1917)

    • (Display Format : Landscape)

      The Red Feather (1918)

    • (Display Format : Landscape)

      The Shirker (1917)

    • (Display Format : Landscape)

      A British Subject (1918)

    • (Display Format : Landscape)

      The Reason Why (1918)

    • (Display Format : Landscape)

      The Secret Garden (1919)

You might be interested in...

X