World War I Poets: Siegfried Sassoon

Survey classes have the advantage over classes that focus just on one author or time period in that one gets to see the pendulum of ideas swing back and forth. Each new movement is a reaction against the former movement: writers, poets and artists strive to break out of the confines of recent precedent into something new. Siegfried Sassoon’s “Glory of Women” is not only a commentary about World War I but also a critique of the principles of the former Victorian age.

The Victorian age was an age of ideals, at least for the upper class. Men were to be gentlemen and women were to be ladies, and both were to always appear polished and morally spotless. Sassoon chastises the women of his own era who buy into such outdated idealism. There is an implication that the women only love heroes with all the trappings of honor and courage; they “worship decorations” (line 3). The women want a man with an idealized appearance. Sassoon writes, “You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave” (line 1). What they love, it seems, is not the soldier himself, but the idea of a soldier. They care more for appearances than for the actual man inside the uniform. As Sassoon notes, “You make us shells” (line 5).

What is interesting is that the soldiers do not even have to be physically whole to be loved; they can be harmed as long as they lived to tell about it and have served their country honorably. Sassoon ridicules the Victorian ladies’ pastime of visiting and gossiping, and the modern women for continuing it. The women love soldiers “wounded in a mentionable place” (line 2). Note that there is no compassion for any unmentionable wounds a man might suffer. If he is wounded in an unmentionable place, the woman involved cannot parade him around as much. She cannot show him off and share in the limelight. What the woman really wants, it seems, is a uniform that can talk and that affirms her preconceived ideas. The women “…listen with delight, /By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled” (lines 5-6).

Perhaps the women’s reluctance to let go of their ideal soldier is that they do not know how to deal with any other type of soldier. The women know what to do when the soldiers are at war. Sassoon writes, “You crown our distant ardours while we fight” (line 7). In other words, the women are proud of the men’s devotion to their country and try to support them from overseas. However, the fact that the women seem to make war romantic is given by the fact that they “crown” the men’s supposed zeal. The crown is an article that makes the bearer majestic, so the women are extrapolating the awful reality of war in a positive way. The women even know how to deal with the death of an honorable soldier. They “mourn our laurelled memories when we’re killed” (line 8). Again, the women idealize the soldier even after death by “laurelling” their memory. Laurels are a symbol of achievement, implying the women just focus on the soldiers’ merits in battle.

Yet Sassoon is right to critique the English women. They are buying into outdated ideas, but what is even worse is that those ideas are false. Sassoon believes that these women are perpetuating the myth of glory in war. He notes that women “believe/That chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace” (lines 4-5). The women have some idea that the war is costly in terms of lhuman ife, but also have notions of heroic charges, daring rescues, and an overall sense of humanity and decency that Sassoon does not find in the Great War. Sassoon believes that there is no glory in war, and cites an example from the battlefield to bolster his argument. He describes war not in euphemisms but in graphic detail. He writes, “You can’t believe that British troops ‘retire’/When hell’s last horror breaks them, and they run, /Trampling the terrible corpses-blind with blood” (lines 9-11). The image that Sassoon presents is the exact opposite of the courageous charges the women would have been expecting. Their soldiers are not boldly going forward, but running for their lives. It is to the soldiers’ credit, perhaps, that this is not just stage fright, but the reality that it was “hell’s last horror” that broke them is not very comforting. The image of the soldiers blinded with blood, trampling corpses is not one of glory. It is hellish and frightening. There is nothing noble in stumbling over a dead body as one wipes blood from one’s eyes.

Sassoon makes one final jab at the English women’s character when he describes the German mother. The English women, it seems, talk about the soldiers, but do not do anything practical to help them. They too are empty shells, devoid of compassion. The German mother, in contrast, is a figure of love. She is described, “O German mother dreaming by the fire, /While you are knitting socks to send your son” (lines 12-13). She does not gossip about her son, but thinks fondly about him, and is actively helping him by making his socks. The fact that Sassoon chose to make the mother German makes the contrast between the mother and the English women even more interesting. English propaganda during World War I demonized Germans, so the fact that this mother was German shows that in reality the English women are the ones who are devilish. As pointed out in podcast #15, the inclusion of the German mother also serves to give humanity to the German soldiers; they have mothers too.

The final line of the poem drives home Sassoon’s point that there is no glory in war and those who think so are fools. His ending image is of stark reality as he chronicles the German soldier’s fate, “His face trodden deeper in the mud” (line 14). The English women can no longer ignore the fact that they are wrong; there is no way to politely explain away this image. Their beloved soldiers are trampling the German mother’s beloved son into the mud as the soldiers flee. Such is the grim reality of war.


* “Glory of Women” is on page 1099 of our anthology.