The First World War provided great opportunities for those whose pleasure in life was expressing disapproval of others.
Here’s an article from the Daily Mail of 1917:
Rose Allatini: A Woman Writer
Recent Comments
PGW and the Romantic… on Wodehouse and Wittgenstein Robin Helweg-Larsen on Remembering? George Simmers on Handbook of British Literature… Barry Matthews on Handbook of British Literature… Dr Tom Wareham on Remembering? Please Note:
Contact Me
Some Blogs
- A Century Back
- Airminded
- armsandthemedicalman
- Blindfold and Alone
- Centenary News
- Great War at Sea Poetry Project
- Historic Battlefields
- History News Network
- John Allen Wyeth blog
- Literary Taste
- Move Him Into the Sun
- New Statesman competitions and poets
- Reading 1900-1950
- Reeding Lessons
- Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship blog
- Snakeskin's Blog
- The Bibliophilic Blogger
- The Passing Tramp
- Trench Fever
- UKNIWM
- War Poetry Blog
- Wellington House
- WW1 Historical Association
Some Links
- Centre for First World War Studies, Birmingham
- Commonwealth War Graves Commission
- Everyday Lives in War
- First World War Poetry Digital Archive
- Great War Dust Jackets
- In Flanders Fields Museum, Ieper
- Legacies of War
- Reading Sheffield
- Scarletfinders
- Sexton Blake
- SHARP Web
- The Heritage of the Great War
- The Historial, Peronne
- The Imperial War Museum
- The John Buchan Society
- The Kipling Society
- War Poets Association
- WW1 Document Archive
- WW1 Virtual Library
Verse
-
Great War Fiction 
5 Comments
One wonders whether the conspicuous consumption of chocolates at a time of shortages was not simply a disdainful display of wealth. Not something of which one might expect the Mail to disapprove per se, of course, so perhaps it is the frivolity and the fact it is being done by women and in public that makes it problematic.
The shortages are the excuse for the complaint, yes. But don’t you think there’s a real misogyny underlying this? That repetition of ‘big fat chocolates’, as though the women were under the control of some perverse desire. There’s disgust here, and surely a hint that ‘big, fat’ might refer to the women as well as the chocolates. Very like the daily mail of a century later, with its constant hints that women should keep their desires and figures under control.
To me the psychology of the writer of the article seems a lot more problematic than the sweet-eaters.
Yet the women are described as “dainty” and “well-dressed”. The only clearly pejorative term is “unoccupied”. But you’re right that there is something unhealthy here, even if the original intention was to encourage people to comply with voluntary sugar rationing. Of course, I’m a bit unclear what the “better use” of the sugar might be. Baking cakes to send to the troops perhaps?
This and your post on “TRibunal Exemptions” a few days make it look rather as though the Daily Mail was hinting at civilians and/or women dodging their duty or behaving irresponsibly. Is it just the occasional article or are these a regular or even frequent feature of the paper?
Much as today, self-righteousness was a pretty permanent feature of the Daily Mail, and the war gave plenty of opportunity for pointing the finger at anyone who seemed to be doing less than his or her patriotic duty.