Margaret Postgate Cole’s Poetry of the First World War

Abstract

The First World War marks an inevitable transformation in the traditional gender roles of women from being passive domestic sustainers of family into active contributors in the social life as voluntary nurses, ambulance drivers, and factory workers. Nevertheless, women’s poetic contribution to literary representations of war continue to be precariously neglected till the publication of Catherine Reilly’s Scars Upon my Heart in 1981, a war anthology of seventy-nine women poets. Margaret Postgate Cole (1893-1980) is among these women war poets who provide a distinguished feminine insight into the experience of war, different from male perspective. Far from displaying an amateurishly sentimental and romanticized engagement with war, Margaret Postgate Cole shows a great artistic aptitude in unmasking the conniving ideological roots of war that is reinforced by the patriarchal authorities. Cole, in her poetry, concentrates on the unjustifiable ideology of war, preying on the innocent young soldiers. The aim of this article, therefore, is to analyze Cole’s poetry of the First World War to demonstrate her profound awareness of the meaninglessness of the war that is promulgated by the rulers and decision makers.