Analysis Of The Women Who Went To The Field

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Clara Barton’s ‘The Women Who Went to the Field’ describes the work of women and the contribution they made on the civil war battlefield in 1861. Barton highlights the fact that when the American Civil War broke out women turned their attention to the conflict and played a key role throughout as nurses. Therefore, at first glance this poem could in fact be seen as a commemoration of the women who served in the American Civil War as its publications in newspapers and magazines in 1892 ensured that all Civil War veterans were honoured and remembered, including the women. However, when reading this poem from a feminist perspective it can be seen instead as a statement on the changing roles of women; gender roles became malleable as women had the …show more content…

Barton poses a series of rhetorical questions to the reader (‘did these women quail at the sight of a gun?...did they faint at the blood?’) which may lead a reader to infer that this poem was written to address the males in society. The continuous use of ‘he’ suggests that since it was the men who decided that women would be of no use on the battle field because of their innate weakness and inability to deal with the nature of war, it wsas now the men who needed to realise that women could do more than ‘wait patiently till victory comes’; women had shown that they were capable of much of the same things that men where including staying calm in the face of war and running the home with absolutely no male influence. This view is supported by radical feminist sociologists such as Kate Millett who believe that ‘patriarchy is not ascribed but rather socially created and therefore capable of being challenged and deconstructed’1. Therefore, ‘The Women Who Went to the Field’ can be interpreted as not only a statement about the changing roles of women in society, but, also as a statement for the need for the recognition of

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