Angels and Citizens : British Women As Military Nurses 1854-1914

London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Good with no dust jacket. 1988. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. 0710214790 . Library stamps/marks/labels/pocket glue residue, well toned, otherwise light wear. Solid hardcover.; "Thus British women prepared for war, seeing it not so much as the organised destruction of mothers' sons, but as symbolising citizenship, social legitimation and personal challenge. If in this they were not very different from their male contemparies, it is because the gap between the social opportunities and expectations of women and men had begun, very slowly, to narrow. The mid-Victorian 'women's mission' was disappearing. But it was not replaced by a strong dissenting feminist voice, or one which had much power to bargain over the conditions of women's participation in the public sphere. After 1902, female nurses were brought into the army hospital system largely as numerical substitutes for men. ... At the heart of these changes and disappointments, the figure of the war nurse can be seen: a symbol of motherhood and domesticity, required to play a part on the public stage of international war; a symbol of healing, required to consent to a policy of collective slaughter; a symbol of service and self-abnegation, encouraged to respont to challenge and responsibility. Her history embodies all the contraditions of the social position of women in the Victorian and Edwardian eras." - Introduction. ; Ex-Library; xii, 371 pages .