WORLD WAR I: THE WAR THAT LIFTED AND THRUSTED BORDERS
WORLD WAR I: THE WAR THAT LIFTED AND THRUSTED BORDERS

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the effect of the phenomenon of war on human relations through the metaphor of “border” by the New Historicist approach in the context of the First World War. Crossing the border, both literally and metaphorically, is a cause for conflict. Border is of importance in terms of measuring and distinguishing the phenomena, such as woman-man, right-wrong, normal-abnormal, friend-foe, etc. The First World War that lasted four years created new borders for some human relations and removed the borders of others. Before the war, women were mostly concerned with housework and raising children, but women filled the positions left vacant by men's participation in the war, and this removed the boundaries between male and female roles. In addition, young boys who have finished their school and gone to the war and never had an adult life before the war became alienated from the society they had left, and the war made the society they were born into alien to them. In addition, men who experienced the horrors of the war most deeply felt alienated due to ineffability of their unimaginable experiences, and invisible boundaries were drawn between their relationships with their families and wives. On the other hand, an unexpected intimacy developed among the “all-male” army constitution, and the boundaries of English class system also got eroded during the war. Despite the suffering endured by the fighting soldiers, the normal course of life in the country continued, which alienated the soldiers from the society they were born into. Again, the spouses who changed due to the traumas of the war became a source of pain. In addition, it has been observed that while soldiers who went through similar experiences removed the boundary between friend and enemy, which civilians always maintained. This study examines the boundaries that the war lifted and thrusted on English society drawing examples from works of writers and poets.

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