Women’s Counter-Memories of the First War World: Two emblematic case –studies Vera Brittain, and Mary Borden

The tradition of canonical war writing has long been seen as something belonging to men, on the contrary, for many women the First World War was a sort of catalyst for developing a public voice while at the same time creating a different gender perspective on the same historical event. This aspect has become evident since the last two decades of the Twentieth Century when cultural historians, Memory Studies and Gender Studies pointed out not only the inadequacy of a monolithic memory but also the many traces left by women’s controversial memories of the same event in the collective consciousness. My paper will highlight some of the many thorny issues war female writings arise with particular regards to English historical context and to same case- studies such as Vera Brittain and Mary Borden’s works.