Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald
Seminar: World War 1in Canadian Literature and the Arts

How World War 1 changed the lives of canadian women
shown on the example of L. M. Montgomery`s ‘Rilla of Ingleside’ and Mary Swan`s ‘The Deep’

by

Vanessa Lengert

Contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Canada and World War 1  4

3. Women at home during World War 1  5

3.1 Rilla of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery 5
3.2 How World War 1 changed Rilla`s world 5

4. Women at the front during World War 1  9

4.1 The Deep by Mary Swan  9
4.2 How World War 1 changed the twins` lives  9

5. Comparison 12

6. How World War 1 changed the lives of Canadian women in general  13

6.1 Canadian women before World War 1 13
6.2 Canadian women during World War 1 14
6.3 Canadian Women after World War 1 16

7. Conclusion  18

8. Bibliography  19

1. Introduction

War always has a great influence on a country and the people that fight in it. This was also the case for Canada, when England declared its entrance into World War 1 in August, 1914¹. Thousands of men enlisted during the first days of war, ready to fight and die for their homeland and what they thought to be a better world. Of course this meant a dramatic change in life for them. Leaving behind family and work, not knowing whether one would live to see Canada again. orce on the men of a country, but most often women are affected just in the same way. This is also the case for Canada during World War 1. Women in those days had to face all kind of problems they were not used to by this time. They found themselves fear about the beloved ones and in psychological conflicts on what they could do to support their homeland. Some decided to work at the home fronts, while others wishing to be close to the battlefield, decided to follow their men overseas. In addition to such mental conflicts, a family had to be financed, and a country`s economy had to be kept stable. So, one could argue that women lives also underlay enormous changes under the influence of World War 1.
The aim of this paper is to look at Canadian women`s roles in the course of the war and how they are reflected in Lucy Maud Montgomery`s Rilla of Ingleside and Mary Swan`s The Deep, which show two kind of contrastive but for the time realistic pictures of women. These fictional personal experiences will give an idea of what the individual woman had to face at war time. In addition, some historical information will focus on the changes that World War 1 brought to Canadian women in general, and will round and complete the image of women`s position in World War 1.

2. Canada and World War 1

When Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, Canada being a part of the Empire was automatically involved in it. Because of the loyalty towards the “mother home”, that Britain still was at that time, and the unquestioned belief that the war would be over in the course of only a few months, the idea of war was meet with great enthusiasm by the people.

Few Canadians questioned the recruitment propaganda and newspaper
reports that depicted the war in terms of a struggle between democracy
and tyranny. Without opposition, Parliament passed the War Measures
Act, which gave the federal government broad emergency powers to
suspend civil liberties and to regulate any aspect of society or the
economy deemed essential for the conduct of war.²

The urge to fight was so big that only two months after the war`s beginning 30,000 men were ready to leave Canada for Europe³.

By the end of the war, some 625,000 men and women were mobilized
for the armed forces, over two thirds of them served overseas. The toll of
Canadians casualties included upwards of 60,000 killed in action (…)
and more than 200,000 wounded. The Canadian fighting effort was truly
remarkable for a country of only 8 million people.⁴

All that men that went overseas, not only left behind their families but also a economy that wanted to be maintained. However this is were women stepped in. As the women`s movement was starting to see efforts right before the Great War, they now could prove that they were able to replace men in the working world. Also in many other regards “World War 1 was a turning point for Canada as a nation. The Canada of 1919 was profoundly different from the Canada of 1914 in several fundamental aspects – demographic, economic, political and social.”⁵

3. Women at home during World War 1

One picture of women during World War 1 is that of women staying at home while there male family members and friends went overseas to fight for their homeland.⁶ Those women tried to support their country by doing work in caritative organizations and gave of mental support to their husbands, brothers and sons at the front. The picture of such women is shown in Lucy Maud Montgomery`s Rilla of Ingleside⁷.

3.1 Rilla of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery

[...]

1 Riendeau, Roger: A brief History of Canada. New York: Facts on File, 2000. P. 189.

2 Riendeau, Roger: A brief History of Canada. New York: Facts on File, 2000. P. 189.

3 Brown, Craig (ed.): The illustrated History of Canada. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1997. P. 410.

4 Riendeau, Roger: A brief History of Canada. New York: Facts on File, 2000. P. 189.

5 Prentice, Alison: Canadian Women – A history. Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988. Page 213.

6 A closer look to women at home during World War 1 will be taken under chapter 6.2

7 Montgomery, Lucy Maud: Rilla of Ingleside. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1985. (On the following pages only the abbreviation Rilla and a page reference will be used)