Emotions under occupation: Women's self-writing in the occupied countryside of Belgium and northern France, 1914-1918

Debruyne, Emmanuel;Van Ypersele, Laurence;Folie, Clara;Dauw, Ilona
(2024) Die ländliche Gesellschaft im Zeitalter des Ersten Weltkrieges Herausforderungen und ihre emotionalen Folgen — ISBN: [9783631917176], p. 219-246, published

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This article examines the emotions expressed in the wartime diaries of 12 women – 5 young and 7 adults – living under German occupation in France and Belgium. They are put into perspective with those of 23 other male or urban diarists, also living under occupation. We identified the emotions explicitly expressed in the diaries and related to the diarists themselves. They formed 32 types of emotions, regrouped into three main categories: pleasant, unpleasant and ambivalent. The rural female authors expressed generally their emotions more often than the other diarists, and these emotions, mainly caused by the war and dominated by sadness, were also more constant and unpleasant, especially for the adult women. However, the expression of emotions was affected by the passage of time. While the two key moments of the beginning and the end of the war and of the occupation reveal peaks of emotional intensity for all diarists, these two moments of change and adaptation were less significant for the women in rural areas, whose emotional expression was more constant. After a few months of decrease following the initial outburst of the first months, the expression of emotions reached a plateau and stabilised from the autumn 1915 onwards, reflecting a certain withdrawal into the problems of daily life under occupation, dominated by unpleasant emotions. Actually, rural women appear to have been less responsive than other diarists to distant events and more sensitive to highly localised factors and to the weather. Isolation, weariness and boredom heavily weighed on their emotional regime, but Nature provided a “safe place”, a source of comfort lacking to those living in urban environment. On the opposite, “significant dates”, and more especially traditional festive days, were particularly painful for these women by reminding them that life was definitely no longer the same under occupation. Separation, restrictions and scarcity deprived these occasions of all their pleasure. The passage of time was also affected by the tenuous flow of information and the soundscape of the war. Expressions of weariness were often accompanied by complaints related to the scarcity of news about the war and, especially for those rural women, about their relatives from whom they were separated by the front line. The impossibility of maintaining continuous correspondence with mobilised relatives reinforced the isolation of occupied women. This absence of regular correspondence generated anxiety and fear, and the rare arrivals of letters became moments of intense emotions. The scarcity of news about the war led also to a particular attention to the sound of the cannon, as it enabled those who could hear it to track movements of the front and the intensity of the fighting. Its variations could thus provoke emotions as diverse as fear or hope, especially while its approach and intensification could signify a possible forced evacuation of the village but also an upcoming liberation and victory. Conversely, the silence of the artillery often prompted a certain despair among the occupied diarists. The presence of the enemy raised feelings of oppression and sadness. Such feelings were especially powerful near the front, where soldiers were often billeted in the homes of the occupied, and from 1916 onwards, when the exploitation of the occupied territories intensified. This invasion of the home itself deprived it from its status of intimate refuge. The departure of the occupiers from home generated thus feelings of joy and relief, especially for the younger women. This initial study reveals for these rural women emotional regimes strongly characterised by a lack of ties which nourished abundant and painful expressions of emotion. No doubt this lack of external stimuli and the confinement within a small and enemy-occupied space encouraged these women to create and invest themselves in a new space allowing respite (but also transgression to the gender and occupation orders): their own wartime diary.
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Debruyne, E., Van Ypersele, L., Folie, C., & Dauw, I. (2024). Emotions under occupation: Women’s self-writing in the occupied countryside of Belgium and northern France, 1914-1918. In Harald Heppner, Christian Promitzer, (Ionela Zaharia-Schintler (ed.), Die ländliche Gesellschaft im Zeitalter des Ersten Weltkrieges Herausforderungen und ihre emotionalen Folgen (p. p. 219-246). Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/b21779