School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemHomefront hostilities: the first world war and domestic violence in Victoria( 2004)This thesis examines the influence of the First World War on domestic violence in Victoria, Australia. A reading of court cases, newspaper reports, official records and oral testimonies reveals a connection between the war and individuals' violent behaviour within marriage, apparent during the war and in the decade following the cessation of hostilities. This connection explains what appears to be an increased incidence of domestic violence in the immediate aftermath of the war. A link between veterans' war trauma and domestic violence - frequently assumed in the historiography - existed, but this was just one aspect of the war's impact on domestic violence and did not account for all cases of returned-soldier wife abuse. The war contributed to both veterans' and civilian men's wife abuse by idealising male aggression and by provoking a range of experiences that personally disempowered men. Against the masculine ideal of the fearless Anzac, many men's self-esteem diminished. Failure to enlist, failure to fight, and failure to cope with horrifying memories of battle were some of the ways in which men fell short of their own and society's expectations of manliness. Male insecurity was further exacerbated by women's increased self-assertions. The war afforded many women greater social and economic autonomy, a situation which made wives' separation from violent husbands more viable. The war was influential, too, in shaping social responses to domestic violence. The new masculine hierarchy of wartime affected judicial determination of who was, and who was not, accountable for acts of violence. Official leniency towards returned-soldier perpetrators was noticeable both during and after the war, and in the post-war years such leniency also extended to civilian defendants. While the outbreak of war sparked renewed enthusiasm for male chivalry towards women, this ideal disappeared rapidly after 1918. ln a context of male antagonism towards women's apparent advancement, a new male ambivalence towards wife abuse emerged within the public realm. The notion of men as victims, rather than as brutal tyrants, informed much official reaction to actual cases of domestic violence. Greater official indifference to men's violence against their wives after the First World War was the result not only of men's fears of female encroachment on male privilege, but of a changing interpretation of the causes of domestic violence. The widespread phenomenon of shell shock in soldiers served to further the currency of psychological theories of human behaviour. In the post-war decade, the stereotype of the disturbed violent veteran both emerged from, and influenced, the proceedings of cases of domestic violence in Victorian courts. The idea that returned-soldier violence was a product of battle nerves weighed on cases of wife abuse, regardless of whether the facts of individual cases evinced such a connection. The violence of civilian men also increasingly came to be understood in a psychological framework during the 1920s. As the community's awareness of psychological factors burgeoned, the belief that domestic violence was an outcome of extraordinary stresses on ordinary men's minds began to prevail in the public sphere. Such an understanding helped to dismantle the dominant pre-war stereotype of the working-class 'wife-beater'.
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ItemJourneys to war: experiences of Australian recruits in the Great War( 1999-09)Debates over 'the' experience of Australians in the Great War have attempted to characterise the way that Australians approached and experienced this war. This thesis is concerned with the experiences of recruits for the Australian Imperial Force from the point of enlistment, to their first experiences of battle. Those Australians who enlisted between 1914 and 1918 imagined their war before they experienced it. Recruits expected to pass through certain defining moments on their way to the front, moments by which they could chart and later recount their war. Recruits anticipated a quick passage through these stages, but the reality was a consistent rising and falling of expectations as they encountered extended periods of inactivity that did not accord with their imagined narrative of war. With battle essential to any war experience, recruits pictured themselves at the height of battle, perhaps in the midst of the old world in Europe, but more importantly, their vision was only made complete by imagining their homecoming. Under the illusions of previous wars, early recruits envisaged returning after a short conflict to a welcoming society. This vision suffered under the realities of a protracted war, and a growing awareness of the real conditions at the front. As this knowledge found its way back to Australia, recruits found themselves between two worlds of war, one constructed through newspapers and propaganda, the other becoming more apparent in attitudes gleaned from returned men and letters from those at the front. Both claimed to know the war, yet recruits knew neither world to be entirely true. Increasingly, recruits came to a closer understanding of the war, the corollary of which was that their vision of home changed in its emphasis. Men continued to be drawn by the war, but by 1917 and 1918, sought to return to homes they came to regard as a haven. They no longer anticipated that the war would enhance their social status after they returned. What they retained was a desire to reach the war and see battle, in order that they might earn the right to return home.
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ItemAn iconography of suffering: VD in Australia 1914-18( 1995)During the Great War, it was widely held that venereal disease had become ‘rife’ in Australia. This ‘rifeness’ related not only to a perceived rise in its incidence, but to the belief that it was becoming more prevalent in populations traditionally unaffected. By early 1915, a new wave of alarm had swept the nation as the presence of infected soldiers in Australia was made public in the mainstream media. The repatriation of AIF venereal cases from the Middle East in May, and startling reports of the rise of the new ‘amateur prostitute’, added to mounting concern that VD was spreading into populations ‘hitherto unaffected'. To many, these events signified that the ‘foul undercurrent’ of venereal disease was actually penetrating the ‘general population’. The perception that venereal disease was 'rife' was accompanied by the emergence of new regulating discourses, and an increased production of knowledges about VD. The period saw the unprecedented explosion of public discourse in the form of pamphlets, essays, books, lectures conferences, cartoons, and films. This thesis concerns itself with this ‘epistemic epidemic’. (From introduction)