Anxious Days and Tearful Nights: Canadian War Wives During the Great War

by Martha Hanna

Overview

What was it like to be a soldier's wife in Canada during the First World War? More than 80,000 Canadian women were married to men who left home to fight in the war, and its effects on their lives were transformative and often traumatic. Yet the everyday struggles of Canadian war wives, lived far from the battlefields of France, have remained in the shadows of historical memory. Anxious Days and Tearful Nights highlights how Canadian women's experiences of wartime marital separation resembled and differed from those of their European counterparts. Drawing on the letters of married couples separated by wartime service and the military service records of hundreds of Canadian soldiers, Martha Hanna reveals how couples used correspondence to maintain the routine and the affection of domestic life. She explores how women managed households and budgets, how those with children coped with the challenges of what we today would call single parenthood, and when and why some war wives chose to relocate to Britain to be nearer to their husbands. More than anything else, the life of a war wife - especially a war wife separated from her husband for years on end - was marked and marred by unrelieved psychological stress. Through this close personal lens Hanna reveals a broader picture of how war's effects persist across time and space.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780228004608
Publisher:	McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date:	10/22/2020
Series:	Carleton Library Series , #252
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Martha Hanna is professor in the Department of History at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Illustrations follow page x

Introduction 3

Part 1 Off to War

1 "Daddy, why did you go to war?" Recruitment and Enlistment 27

2 "Trenches are not good places to write letters": Marriage by Correspondence 56

Part 2 Staying Home

3 Coping 87

4 Returning to the Old Country 117

Part 3 Après La Guerre

5 Après la guerre: The Postwar Lives of Canadian War Wives 149

6 Till Divorce (or Desertion) Do Us Part 172

Conclusion: The Invisible Wounds of War 199

Appendix: Building a Database of Manitoba War Wives 217

Notes 219

Index 277

Editorial Reviews

By focusing on the marital relationships and domestic concerns of married couples in wartime, the book makes it clear that geographic distance and imminent danger complicated but did not sever the intertwined emotional and economic bonds of marriage. Even more powerfully, it demonstrates that the psychological impacts of WWI were not limited to men, nor to those living close enough to see the carnage first-hand.” Canadian Journal of History


“Hanna creates arresting immediacy throughout her book, bringing anecdotes to life to demonstrate the psychological impact the First World War had on everyday lives. Anxious Days and Tearful Nights vividly captures the impact of a defining conflict on women who embarked on emotional and physical journeys, both at home and abroad.” Literary Review of Canada


“In September 1917, Secretary of State Arthur Meighen spoke of Canadian women spending their 'days in anxiety and their nights in tears'. Taking this as her inspiration, Hanna spotlights the disparate experiences of the war wife, an under-analysed historical subject. There is always a danger in attempting to position a particular group within a hierarchy of emotional suffering. ... By illuminating the specific circumstances and hardships endured by Canadian wives, Hanna's fresh perspective adds greatly to our understanding of the effect of the Great War on the civilian populations of the combatant nations.” Medicine, Conflict, and Survival


“Rich in analysis and uncommonly sharp insights, Anxious Days and Tearful Nights recounts evocative stories of women experiencing the war at home. It is a compelling read, tragic and awful in places, but also revealing of the stoic courage of many women who worried and waited at home, and then found ways to fend for themselves. It will become a foundational text for understanding the complex and nuanced war experience.” Tim Cook, Canadian War Museum and author of The Fight for History: 75 Years of Forgetting, Remembering, and Remaking Canada's Second World War

From the Publisher