The inward scream: Shell -shock narratives in twentieth-century British culture
Abstract
Images of shell shock abound in modernist British fiction and memoirs of the Great War, and the range of reactions to shell shock in literary, medical, military, and political texts emanating from the conflict demonstrate a profound ambivalence toward the disorder. The shell-shocked soldier occupied a politically charged position at the nexus of debates on discipline, masculinity, psychiatry, and sexuality emerging at the beginning of the century. Drawing on New Historicist, narrative, gender, and cultural theories, I argue that “shell-shock narratives” participate in processes of recovery-the recovery of individual or cultural history, disciplinary or political control. The earliest representations of shell shock appeared in medical journal articles and case studies that were published during the war, such as the ones examined in this study by Lewis Yealland, W. H. R. Rivers, and W. J. Adie that describe various and competing shell-shock treatments used to re-establish disciplinary control over traumatized soldiers during the war. These doctors also contributed to the 1922 War Office Committee of Enquiry into Shell Shock report, which attempted to recover political control over the use of the term “shell shock” in order to anticipate another psychological crisis in future conflicts. Novels and memoirs by veterans Siegfried Sassoon and Ford Madox Ford and works by Virginia Woolf, Evadne Price, and May Sinclair attempt to claim authority for the voices of male veterans and female civilians and combatants who found their experiences marginalized or ignored in the years following the war. Concurrent with these representations, popular cultural productions presented images of shell shock that supported the status quo established in the earlier medical and political texts. The mysteries of Dorothy Sayers and the 1942 film adaptation of James Hilton's Random Harvest describe cures for shell shock that enact a conservative return to normative gender and sexual roles. Ultimately, this project positions shell shock not only as a disorder suffered by individual soldiers, but also as a collective trauma impacting British culture in the years following the Great War.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Rowe, Purdue University.
Subject Area
British and Irish literature|European history
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