Gildersleeve, Jessica (2017) Hyperaesthesia and futile rage: gender, anxiety and protest in Non-Combatants and Others. In: Rose Macaulay, gender, and modernity. Gender and Genre, 16. Taylor & Francis (Routledge), United Kingdom, pp. 25-38. ISBN 978-1-138-20617-5
Abstract
In 1916, Rose Macaulay worked in the Women’s Land Army on a farm near Cambridge as part of the female labour force made available by the government to farmers who had seen their usual labourers join the armed services. The series of poems she wrote during this period, collectively titled ‘On the Land: 1916’, are striking for their record of this wartime work, and for the ways in which the experience causes Macaulay to draw parallels between the physical contributions of both men and women, albeit in different contexts, to the war effort. Similarly, her novel Non-Combatants and Others (1916) makes important observations about the effects of war on civilians: that they feel helpless, angry, and anxious. This chapter will use the affective conditions of ‘futile rage’ and ‘hyperaesthesia’, as they are termed in the novel, to explore Macaulay’s wartime poetry and novel as a commentary on the impact of war on non-combatants, ultimately suggesting that the duty of women, the ‘others’, is to protest, rather than to protect, ignorance – of combatants and non-combatants alike.
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| Item Type: | Book Chapter (Commonwealth Reporting Category B) |
|---|---|
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Chapter 2. Permanent restricted access to published version in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. |
| Faculty / Department / School: | Current - Faculty of Business, Education, Law and Arts - School of Arts and Communication |
| Date Deposited: | 23 May 2018 03:59 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Sep 2018 03:35 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Rose Macaulay, poetry, Non-Combatants and Others, First World War, women, anxiety, pacifism, affect, trauma |
| Fields of Research : | 20 Language, Communication and Culture > 2005 Literary Studies > 200503 British and Irish Literature 20 Language, Communication and Culture > 2005 Literary Studies > 200525 Literary Theory |
| Socio-Economic Objective: | C Society > 95 Cultural Understanding > 9505 Understanding Past Societies > 950504 Understanding Europe's Past |
| URI: | http://eprints.usq.edu.au/id/eprint/33268 |
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