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Anxious Days and Tearful Nights: Canadian War Wives During the Great War (Volume 252)
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.
328 pages, Paperback
Published October 22, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 6, 2022
I find it hard to believe that, in 2020. a book could be written that was supposed to be about women's experiences but not include women's voices.
The majority of the information in this book, and certainly the quotes, were from the male perspective and from the letters written by the men. I understand that letters at the home front (the ones written by the men) were more likely to survive than those sent to the Front. But this means the book is based on the now outdated premise that, if the man dictated it, the woman must have done it. Just because one person does something suggested by another does not mean that the reasoning is the same. But that is exactly what this book presumes. If a woman does something mentioned in the letter that came from her husband, she must have been following his wishes. Not that the wife had made the decision and the husband was just agreeing with her. There are also no timelines provided, if a husband suggests something, it is presumed the wife did it after receiving the letter. However, in an age where things took longer to complete than they do in our age, it is entirely possible that the wife had put things into effect before communicating with her husband, making the decision hers. But this book makes all wives out to be dutiful and submissive. If that had been true and men were really running the family businesses and farms from the Front through a postal system that took months to deliver a letter, I doubt Canada would have been as successful as it had been.
Another issue I have with this book is the women that are being discussed are all of British origin, either having been born there and immigrated to Canada or having been, at most, 2nd generation Canadians of British extraction. I use British in the broad sense of including those of Scottish, Irish, and Welsh extraction as well. There are no other women involved. I think it is both arrogant and extremely tone deaf in 2020 to pretend there were no other women in Canada. And I would suspect the war experience of a German or Austrian wife would be substantially different from that of a wife of Anglo-Canadian descent. Canada has the great shame of interning men of Gallaecian origin in camps where some of them were joined by their families when the wife was not capable or had the resources to survive without her husband. It's hardly a stretch to think that the war experience of these women would be very different from that of the women in this book. As would those of First Nation, Black, and Chinese wives, to just name a few. And I am sure these wife's days were just as anxious and their nights just as tear filled as an Anglo-Canadian wife. Though I doubt their resources were as fulsome.
This book was an attempt to recreate other books written on women's experiences in the Great War who lived in Britain, France, and Germany. But the author tried to hard to mimic those books and did not spend enough time understanding the nuances of how life in Canada differed from those countries in peace and so did not fully grasp how the differences when Canada was at war. In addition, European countries had a much more homogeneous population, so the diversity in Canada was totally ignored. It is a shame, because I feel the author had an opportunity to write a very interesting book, but missed.
The majority of the information in this book, and certainly the quotes, were from the male perspective and from the letters written by the men. I understand that letters at the home front (the ones written by the men) were more likely to survive than those sent to the Front. But this means the book is based on the now outdated premise that, if the man dictated it, the woman must have done it. Just because one person does something suggested by another does not mean that the reasoning is the same. But that is exactly what this book presumes. If a woman does something mentioned in the letter that came from her husband, she must have been following his wishes. Not that the wife had made the decision and the husband was just agreeing with her. There are also no timelines provided, if a husband suggests something, it is presumed the wife did it after receiving the letter. However, in an age where things took longer to complete than they do in our age, it is entirely possible that the wife had put things into effect before communicating with her husband, making the decision hers. But this book makes all wives out to be dutiful and submissive. If that had been true and men were really running the family businesses and farms from the Front through a postal system that took months to deliver a letter, I doubt Canada would have been as successful as it had been.
Another issue I have with this book is the women that are being discussed are all of British origin, either having been born there and immigrated to Canada or having been, at most, 2nd generation Canadians of British extraction. I use British in the broad sense of including those of Scottish, Irish, and Welsh extraction as well. There are no other women involved. I think it is both arrogant and extremely tone deaf in 2020 to pretend there were no other women in Canada. And I would suspect the war experience of a German or Austrian wife would be substantially different from that of a wife of Anglo-Canadian descent. Canada has the great shame of interning men of Gallaecian origin in camps where some of them were joined by their families when the wife was not capable or had the resources to survive without her husband. It's hardly a stretch to think that the war experience of these women would be very different from that of the women in this book. As would those of First Nation, Black, and Chinese wives, to just name a few. And I am sure these wife's days were just as anxious and their nights just as tear filled as an Anglo-Canadian wife. Though I doubt their resources were as fulsome.
This book was an attempt to recreate other books written on women's experiences in the Great War who lived in Britain, France, and Germany. But the author tried to hard to mimic those books and did not spend enough time understanding the nuances of how life in Canada differed from those countries in peace and so did not fully grasp how the differences when Canada was at war. In addition, European countries had a much more homogeneous population, so the diversity in Canada was totally ignored. It is a shame, because I feel the author had an opportunity to write a very interesting book, but missed.
February 1, 2023
As a history student I have read many books in the history field. This one is definitely one of the top books I have ever had to read for class. It shows a unique side of history that has been forgotten and, in many cases, has been lost forever. The use of case studies and real people really helped enrich the history in the book! Though it’s scope was limited, mainly focusing on white British women in Ontario and Manitoba, the story told was eye opening and enjoyable.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews