Mothers of Heroes, Mothers of Martyrs: World War I and the Politics of Grief (review)

In this study, the author's focus is not on the experience of mothers per se willing to sacrifice their sons for the nation in times of war, producing heroes and martyrs. She is analyzing instead how 'their stories have been used and modified in different historical contexts to create a martyrology' (x), that is 'to inspire (people) to support and promote the cause with their resources including their lives' (15). This discourse analysis is meant to fill a gap, as the use of the mother figure in stories contained in government propaganda or other 'texts,' including newspaper reports, poems, and commemorative statuary, have not drawn the focused attention of scholars interested in representation and memory in times of war. Although her interest is foremost on representations of Canadian mother figures during the First World War, she begins by placing the mothers of sons off to fight in a wider context, looking at their stories as recounted across time, and more significantly 'in various religions traditions.' Her frequent references to modern-day mothers of martyrs, most often those of contemporary Palestinian women, further underscore her contention that there is such a thing as a persistent, timeless archetypical representation of mother of heroes, mother of martyrs directly inspired by world religions. This study, while certainly filling a gap in its subject matter, ends up biting off more than it can chew, contained, as it is, in scarcely more than 200 pages. One need only consider the subjects covered in its first forty pages (chapter 1) to appreciate the author's overly ambitious objectives. Here she produces a comparative analysis of 'Stories of Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Sikh Mothers of Martyrs.' Not surprisingly, her generalizations are based on information gleaned from secondary sources. But her synthesis of this material too often suggests a lack of historical consciousness. Statements such as 'The question of honour was just as important to this woman [wife of a Sikh soldier fighting in 1984] as it was to the mothers of the past, regardless of their culture' (39). Such statements can only invite experts in the field to look for and find anachronisms. Limiting herself to and analyzing more fully Christian stories of women martyrs, more specifically the cult of Mary, would have allowed her to provide a more pertinent context to a study of representations of Canadian mothers during the First World War. It is, in fact, when dealing with the mother figure of Mary that the author reveals a keener awareness of the importance of time and place. Thus, she acknowledges, 'Mary has gone through many character changes through the years.' Thus, in 'Victorian England she presented an appealing image to many women from different faiths and classes,' because, quoting, from Paul Fussell, motherhood was venerated at this time (26).

This lack of focus is also evident when she moves on to analyze martyrologies produced during the war. She makes it quite clear that a wide range of actors at the time inspired martyrologies, notably the soldiers themselves sacrificed at the front. The author also spends some time discussing individuals such as British nurse Edith Cavell, executed by the Germans. Interestingly the author points out that the British propaganda office 'did not make use of her (mother's) show of strength to create a mother-of-martyr legend' (46). Bringing out these other martyr figures as part of a wider context should have inspired the author to reflect more fully and in a systematic fashion on the relative importance, changing manifestations, and uses of the mother figure martyrology in the ever-changing context of the war.

The last two chapters on the mother figure's role and representation in the acts of commemoration are those in which the author provides her most focused and clearly articulated analysis. Although her conceptual analysis is surprisingly uninformed by prominent scholars who have studied memory and mourning at this...