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Palgrave Macmillan

Bodies, Love, and Faith in the First World War

Dardanella and Peter

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Nancy Christie

    1. University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

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    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Michael Gauvreau

    1. McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

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    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Charts the relationship and marriage of Gwyneth Murray and Harry Logan, through their personal correspondance from 1911-1919
  • Explores conflicted and complex attempts to frame male and female self-identity during a period of cultural flux
  • Demonstrates that ‘normative’ heterosexuality was not a fixed category in Edwardian society, but had to be constantly rearticulated

Part of the book series: Genders and Sexualities in History (GSX)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: Making Love Sexual in the Edwardian Age

    • Nancy Christie, Michael Gauvreau
    Pages 1-17

  3. The Emotional Body: Religion and Male Friendship at Oxford

    • Nancy Christie, Michael Gauvreau
    Pages 19-68

  4. Phallic Thumbs: Conceiving a New Eden

    • Nancy Christie, Michael Gauvreau
    Pages 69-103

  5. The Carnal Brother Body: Emotion, Interiority and the Epistolary “Talking Cure”

    • Nancy Christie, Michael Gauvreau
    Pages 105-145

  6. The Gendered Body: Marriage and “A Home of My Own”

    • Nancy Christie, Michael Gauvreau
    Pages 147-190

  7. Purring Vaginas and Waggling Penises: Sexting World War I

    • Nancy Christie, Michael Gauvreau
    Pages 191-250

  8. The Maternal Body: Pregnancy, Child-Rearing and Birth Control

    • Nancy Christie, Michael Gauvreau
    Pages 251-274

  9. “Are the Thumbs Still Wagging?”: Gwyneth, Harry and the Psyche of an Age

    • Nancy Christie, Michael Gauvreau
    Pages 275-288

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 289-319
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Keywords

About this book

This book explores the courtship and marriage of Gwyneth Murray, an English woman, and a Canadian, Harry Logan, who wrote in the personae of their vagina (Dardanella) and penis (Peter) during World War I.  Through an analysis of their extensive daily correspondence over nearly a decade, it uncovers the couple’s changing attitudes to the intersection of sexuality and religion, to marriage and childrearing, as they navigated the transition from Victorian to modern values.  By focusing on first-person narratives, this book enriches our understanding of gender identities revealing how porous the boundaries remained between notions of 'heterosexual' and 'same-sex' friendships.  This study offers an unprecedented perspective on one couple’s sexual practices, which included mutual masturbation and oral sex, and constitutes one of the most intensive examinations of female attitudes to sexual pleasure in an era of female emancipation.  

Reviews

“Historians of gender, sexuality, and religion will find a great deal to interest them in this valuable volume.” (Mo Moulton, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 60 (1), January, 2021)

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

    Nancy Christie

  • McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    Michael Gauvreau

About the authors

Nancy Christie is Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Previous publications include Engendering the State: Family, Work and Welfare in Canada (2000), which was awarded the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for best book in Canadian history in 2001, and A Full-Orbed Christianity: The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canada (1996).



Michael Gauvreau is Professor of History at McMaster University, Canada. Previous publications include The Catholic Origins of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution (2005), which was awarded the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for best book in Canadian history in 2006, and The Hand of God: Claude Ryan and the Fate of Canadian Liberalism, 1925-1971 (2017).

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Bodies, Love, and Faith in the First World War

  • Book Subtitle: Dardanella and Peter

  • Authors: Nancy Christie, Michael Gauvreau

  • Series Title: Genders and Sexualities in History

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72835-3

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-72834-6Published: 07 May 2018

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-10273-9Published: 26 January 2019

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-72835-3Published: 25 April 2018

  • Series ISSN: 2730-9479

  • Series E-ISSN: 2730-9487

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XV, 319

  • Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations, 2 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Cultural History, Social History, History of Modern Europe, Gender and Sexuality

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