Firing Lines by Debbie Marshall

Author:Debbie Marshall [Marshall, Debbie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War I, Women, Biography & Autobiography, Editors; Journalists; Publishers
ISBN: 9781459738409
Google: 5FJsDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2017-02-18T15:55:26+00:00

PARIS, France, March 1917. As she rushed to her morning interview, Elizabeth stopped briefly in the shadow of the white columned Pantheon, the burial place of the heroes of France, from Voltaire to Victor Hugo. Only one woman was buried there — Sophie Berthelot, chemist Marcellin Berthelot’s wife. It seemed to Elizabeth that France now had many heroines worthy of the Pantheon, women who had produced “a mass of fine, solid, often unnoticed achievement as any country might be proud to recall.” They included the woman whom she was en route to meet, the formidable Aline Boutroux, a wealthy intellectual whose contributions were often overshadowed by those of her husband and famous brother.

The beloved younger sister of the renowned mathematician Henri Poincaré, Boutroux was married to the French philosopher Émile Boutroux. Before the war, she and her husband had lived in and presided over the scientific research institution Fondation Thiers. When the war began, she transformed the Fondation into a hospital for French officers. Now Boutroux was undertaking a new plan — to mobilize women for national service in a scheme similar to the one already in place in Britain. The organization she was to direct was known as the Association de l’Enrôlement Volontaire des Françaises.

“Four thousand applications have been received since the first of January,” Boutroux told Elizabeth. “As in England, the two most pressing needs are for munition and agricultural workers, but the French passion for multiplying office work of every description entails a vast amount of secretarial labour which can easily be accomplished by women. While visiting many French military hospitals I have noticed that in the last two months a great change has taken place in the secretarial staffs, which are now nearly all composed of women. The railways are also employing numbers of women secretaries as well as women to fill the more humble roles.”[8]

Many working-class women, struggling hard to make ends meet, were glad to accept paid war work. Yet such jobs came at a high price. “[The Union Française pour le Suffrage des Femmes has] just held a meeting to organize a system of lady superintendents on the English pattern to look after the health and hygiene of the women factory workers…. A good deal of attention is being drawn to the fact that the high wages given to munitions workers has [sic] caused many women to risk their own health and their children’s. The new movement proposed by the Assemblée Feminine will include the establishment of crèches for the tiny children where they will be kept while the mothers work, cantines [sic] where good food will be provided and rest rooms for all the women.”[9]

Boutroux’s efforts would pay off, as Elizabeth would write a few months later. Women across France were rolling up their sleeves and coming to the aid of the war effort. “So much ink has flowed over the creation of the volunteer women’s movement in England that one is apt to overlook the silent revolution that has taken place in France in this respect,” she wrote.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.