Separating the Men from the Boys: Masculinity and Maturity in Understandings of Shell Shock in Britain

Abstract

This article examines gendered discourses of shell shock in Britain during the First World War. Located within the context of the ideas about shell shock as a form of male hysteria put forward by Elaine Showalter, it examines the ways in which the contemporary discourses of soldiers, medical professionals and popular novelists used ideas of maturity and self-control to understand a condition that appeared to undermine both the war effort and national masculinity. It argues that contemporary understandings of authority and maturity helped to normalize shell shock as a medical condition, thereby lessening its perceived threat to society.