Civvies: Middle–Class Men on the English Home Front, 1914–18 (Cultural History of Modern War) - Hardcover

Ugolini, Laura

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0719086019 ISBN 13: 9780719086014

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2013

Synopsis

The history of the First World War continues to attract enormous interest. However, most attention remains concentrated on combatants, creating a misleading picture of wartime Britain: one might be forgiven for assuming that by 1918, the country had become virtually denuded of civilian men and particularly of middle-class men who – or so it seems – volunteered en masse in the early months of war. In fact, the majority of middle-class (and other) men did not enlist, but we still know little about their wartime experiences. Civvies thus takes a different approach to the history of the war and focuses on those middle-class English men who did not join up, not because of moral objections to war, but for other (much more common) reasons, notably age, family responsibilities or physical unfitness. In particular, Civvies questions whether, if serviceman were the apex of manliness, were middle-class civilian men inevitably condemned to second-class, ‘unmanly’ status? -- .

About this title

About the Author

Laura Ugolini is Reader in History at the University of Wolverhampton

From the Back Cover

Civvies explores the experiences of middle-class men on the English home front during the First World War. Although the conflict continues to attract enormous interest, most attention remains focused on the experiences of servicemen, rather than the majority of adult men who were not enlisted into the armed forces: we still know very little about those men who spent the war years on the home front. This book thus focuses on those middle-class English men who did not join the armed forces not because of moral or political objections to war, but for a variety of other (much more common) reasons, notably exemption, age, family responsibilities or physical unfitness, questioning whether and to what extent practices, relationships and identities were disrupted by the experiences of war on the home front.

Civvies focuses on four inter-linked areas that were central to most English middle-class men's lives, and where the challenges of war on the home front forced middle-class men to rethink conventional understandings of appropriate, 'manly' conduct: the war effort, work, family and relationships, and consumption and leisure. The ways in which middle-class men navigated their way through these areas of life and negotiated the pressures and hardships of war on the home front, as well as their shifting relationships with 'others', either combatants or civilians, are all considered.

Overall, this book questions whether, at a time when strong links were forged between manliness and military service, middle-class civilian men found themselves automatically condemned to 'unmanly' status, or did they develop alternative ways of being 'manly' civilians?

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0719086019
• ISBN 13: 9780719086014
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352