The Unknown Sock Knitter: Voluntary Work, Emotional Labour, Bereavement and the Great War
2001; Liverpool University Press; Issue: 81 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/27516802
ISSN1839-3039
Autores Tópico(s)Crafts, Textile, and Design
ResumoThis paper explores the nature and extent of Australian women's unpaid work during the Great War. It examines the class basis of war work and considers the patriotic and philanthropic motivations behind it. Many accounts have dismissed war work with an empty tally of knitting and sewing. This paper considers the emotional labour invested in unpaid labour and recovers women's crucial role as the mediators of loss and bereavement. It identifies the paradoxical nature of war work, surveying the tension between militarism and humanitarianism and concludes that the movement at once challenged and enforced traditional gender roles. In the early months of the war, Grace Cossington Smith embarked on one of the most memorable portraits of her career. The subject was her sister Madge but the portrait was entitled simply The Sock Knitter 1915'. The garments Madge knits are a dull brown colour: these socks are destined for soldiers serving overseas. And the anonymity of the portrait was almost certainly deliberate: what Cossington Smith sought to capture on her canvas was not so much a study of her sister as the
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