Correspondence, Constructs, and Qualification in World War I

Abstract

This paper examines the archival correspondence of Vera Brittain and three companions to demonstrate the workings of censorship and self-censorship in wartime. Using Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of dialogism, I replace the traditional active soldier-writer/passive civilian-reader model with a model that envisions both reader and writer as active and influential, and as shaped by past and future discussions and "worldviews." Censorship thus becomes a site of active subversion, and self-censorship becomes a site of complexity, both subject to the construction of the audience and the relationship between the writer and reader. Finally, this exploration demonstrates the importance of archival work, where signatures, stamps, handwriting, enclosures, and corrections become significant clues to the writers' and readers' intentions.