Veuves françaises de la Grande Guerre: itinéraires et combats par Peggy Bette (review)

The 1.4 million French combatants who died as a result of the First World War left behind over 600,000 widows. This fascinating and well-researched study complements and builds on existing scholarship on German, British, American, and Italian war widows. The author mines relatively unexplored archival sources to explore the multiple ways in which French women’s lives were shaped by their widowhood. Widows were positioned initially by charitable associations as the passive victims of war. In the post-war years, as the state took the leading role in their support via the Offices nationaux, their status changed: ‘Les veuves ne sont plus des assistées, mais des ayants droit; elles ne sont plus classées avec les orphlin.e.s, mais aux côtés, comme travailleuses, des mutilés’ (p. 89). As was the case with disabled veterans, this new mindset led to a number of schemes designed to support widows to undertake waged work, as well as giving them privileged access to certain posts, for example as postal workers or telephonists. However, as Peggy Bette notes, this was limited to what was understood to be appropriate labour for women, such as working from home as a seamstress, for which sewing machines were provided, or industrial roles in the tobacco and match industries, whose workforce had been dominated by women before the war. Widows’ right to state aid was also dependent on a restrictive moral framework. To count as a war widow in post-war France women had to have been legally married to a combatant husband before his death, and not to have remarried. The 280,000 widows who had remarried by 1923 lost, for example, their right to act as the legal guardian of their children. Equally, widows frequently had to prove that they were ‘morally suitable’ candidates for support. Maria Bailly-Gay, for instance, was denied permission to take over her husband’s bar-tabac because a letter from her local mayor ‘juge sa conduite peu orthodoxe’ (p. 150). This kind of moral surveillance of war widows has also been noted by historians of Britain and Germany. But the final chapter, entitled ‘Militantes’, reveals differences between France and other belligerent nations. Unlike British widows, French widows followed disabled veterans in organizing to lobby for improved state support. Veteran organizations, particularly the Union fédéral, provided opportunities for a small number of widows to carve out roles as public speakers, and to participate in national and international political debates. The chapters on widows as workers and as political activists are considerably longer than those on widows as recipients of charitable and state support. This is not a weakness of the book, however; it is in these two chapters that the originality of the study and richness of the sources is most effectively showcased. This book is essential reading for those studying women and the First World War, and has filled an important gap in the existing scholarship.