Vera Britain and V.a.d Nursing During the First World War

he First World War broke out in Britain on the 4th of August 1914 and lasted until the 11th of November 1918, over the four year duration of the War the lives of women dramatically changed from the traditional views of how women should act into a much more modernized notion of women. When War began, the two spheres perspective of men and women was still widely accepted by the middle and upper classes. Therefore women were still being sheltered from public life and the idea that women, “[view] the world as if it were, from a little elevation in her own garden, where she makes an exact survey of the home scenes, but take not in the wider range” (More, 1800) was still believed but ratified slightly with the fact that women had begun to gain status in education. However, the outbreak of War significantly changed these ideals because abruptly hundreds of thousands of men were sent to the front lines of the War. This abrupt change in British society caused much upheaval in the daily lives of everyone because transportations workers, doctors, factor workers and an array of other workers were no longer working due to there deployment.

Thus many jobs opened up and had no traditional men workers to fill them. These changes in British society is what caused women to be taken from the confines of there homes and places into the traditional jobs of men. All the women who began work following the start of the War did so willingly in part because they wanted to be part of the War effort and wanted to keep the home fires burning. After the outbreak of War a record 2 million more women were in the work force, doing an array of difficult and sometimes dangerous jobs.

Before the War few women had jobs but those who did usually came from a working class background; with some middle class women working in class “approved.”

jobs.

Women from the working class had jobs because their family’s survival depended on it, while middle class women took jobs because they wanted to. Women of the Aristocracy never worked because they had the luxury of doing almost anything they wanted. Before and during the War aristocratic women would spend most of there time working on philanthropy project. As the War evolved the projects the women focused on changed. Before the War the philanthropy project these women organized where aimed at the deserving poor; while during the War the women worked hard on fundraising for ambulances, medicine and drug boxes. They would also hold regular parties dealing with comfort boxes, bandage rolling and knitting.

This is quite a different life compared to the lives being lead by middle class women before and during the War. Before the War, middle class women could choice to work with the approval of her father – seeing how at this time married women could not work due to the bad reputation it would give a family. Unmarried middle class women if elected were allowed to work and did so usually in offices or as nurses because these were class “approved” jobs. Women of the middle class prior to the war were also working militantly on women suffrage through out Britain. During the War, women of the middle class could be found in every type of work and married middle class women have also joined the work force. While those who had been devoted to suffrage changed gears and used their power to get support for woman in the work force. The women of the working classes were the only women socially visible in the work force before the War.