The girl who wanted to go to war: female patriotism and gender construction in Australia’s Great War

Abstract

On the very first Anzac Day commemoration, a young coal miner’s daughter from Kurri Kurri in regional NSW was arrested and charged for illegally wearing the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) uniform. This was the third time that Maud Butler had impersonated a soldier: on the first two occasions, she had actually managed to get aboard a troopship before being discovered by the authorities. Butler’s ‘nonsensical escapades’ (as one reporter termed them) offer an insight into the unstable constructions of gender difference and female patriotism during wartime. This article considers the controversies that surrounded her thwarted attempts to ‘pass’ as a male soldier, in the wider context of patriotism, masculinity and militarism during the First World War. Dissent of anti-war women in Australia in this period challenged masculine control of public space, but it is clear that the activities of pro-war women could do the same. As the authorities’ bemused interventions and the discussions that ensued highlighted, such female enthusiasm for the war effort that Butler displayed threatened existing gender norms and social order. Reframing Butler’s actions to shame reluctant men into enlisting could only imperfectly resolve the challenge her transgressions posed to Australian society, at a time of profound social change and upheaval.