When Willa Cather published One of Ours, in 1922, many criticized her for attempting to write a war novel as a woman. Ernest Hemingway accused her of stealing scenes from Birth of a Nation to tell her war story. This negative reaction...
moreWhen Willa Cather published One of Ours, in 1922, many criticized her for attempting to write a war novel as a woman. Ernest Hemingway accused her of stealing scenes from Birth of a Nation to tell her war story. This negative reaction emphasizes the widely held notion that women and war do not mix. Yet American women have always been present at war—not just through their efforts at home, but also at the front. This presence has been captured and memorialized in the songs of the First World War. This chapter will analyze the evolution of the representation of women as they actively participate in the war: many female members of service and civilian volunteer branches were present at the front in 1917 and 1918. Changes in military policies made it possible for American women to integrate military structures and “Free a Man to Fight.”
The objective of this study is to establish how women’s representation in popular and soldier songs evolved over the course of World War I due to the new war-related opportunities they experienced. First, we will study the roles of women at home and their relationship to the songbook Songs of the Soldiers and Sailors U.S. (1917) and the lyrics it includes about women. These lyrics may be divided into several categories: love songs, songs about maternal women, songs using women’s first names, and finally, songs in which a female character brings comfort. After establishing how the soldier songs employ these female images, we will then examine the new militarized opportunities for women in WWI. Our analysis will demonstrate that there are both songs about women in the military and songs by women in the military. Finally, we will conclude by following one woman in the war to the Front: Elsie Janis. Janis wrote and performed powerful songs specifically for soldier shows, such as “The Yank Speaks,” “Blind,” and “The Slacker.” In her memoir, The Big Show: My Six Months with the American Expeditionary Forces (1919), Janis explained why she penned each of these songs. Janis’s experience at the Front is transported back to the stage of the Palace Theater in London as she wrote and performed Hullo America, a war-inspired Vaudeville show. Specific pieces created for this show clearly demonstrate her own, “female,” war experience. Songs such as “Give Me the Moonlight,” and “When I Take My Jazz Band to the Fatherland” reveal how a woman can find her place in the war and at the Front. As the lyrics of these different songs reflect, this period is significant for the transition of the roles available to women in times of war from “weeping women” who wore tulips and sent curls, to women working in the military as “yeomanettes,” volunteers making donuts, and entertainers singing and dancing to jazz on improvised, battle-front stages.