Lot 75: E. KEALEY WOMEN OF BRITAIN SAY "GO!". 1915.

30x20 inches. Hill, Siffken and Co., London.
Condition B+: restoration along vertical and horizontal folds.
Framed within the window of their home, two women watch as their men march off to war. "The double message of the text--directed simultaneously at women and by women at their men--manipulated the image of mother, wife and child within the home into a noble motivation for enlisting, but also assigned women the responsibility for ordering men into war." (Paret p. 52). "The role of the female as government spokesman, whether as wife, sweetheart, mother, daughter, or battlefield guardian angel, was common to the war effort... [but] it was in Britain in the first 18 months that it had the longest and hardest run" (Rickards p. 11). Rawls p. 32, Rickards 40, Gallo p. 189, Paret 68.