“The streaming eyes of all the many men”: Revisiting male weeping in British commemoration of the First World War

Abstract

Abstract This article argues that commemoration practices performed in the aftermath of the First World War, on occasion of the British Armistice Day, and during the two minutes’ silence in particular, served as incubators for a change in feeling rules for the British population. It will show how British society engaged with, challenged, and finally shifted what the “emotional regime” of the period – commonly referred to as the “stiff upper lip” – commanded them to feel. A very short lapse of time – two minutes – turned into a moment where a fundamental change in an important subset of feeling rules specifying this emotional regime became manifest: those applied to male weeping. The two minutes encapsulated a challenge to the harsh contempt for expressive mourning through the shedding of tears, a verdict that was inherited from the nineteenth century but increasingly seemed inappropriate, not the least in the wake of the emotional turmoil that Britons had faced during the “Great” War.