The First World War in Women’s Autobiographical Writing. What, in What Way, and Why Was Omitted?

Abstract

Summary This article deals with omissions, lacunae and understatements in women’s personal diaries featuring the First World War, in particular the Diaries of Zofia Nałkowska, the Diaries of Maria Kasprowiczowa and Memoirs of Podolia by Helena Kutyłowska. Their content provides ample clues for identifying the characteristic features of women’s wartime autobiographical writing shaped by both the historic context and the personality of the female author. In their autobiographical accounts the war is an eye-opener, making people see things in a more nuanced way, and as an menacing force intruding upon their private worlds. Each narrative works under its burden, and yet none of them is overwhelmed by it. If only for that reason women’s wartime diaries and memoirs remain an interesting historical and personal record, capable of yielding new insights both to historians and historians of literature.