The Labour of Loss: Mourning, Memory and Wartime Bereavement in AustraliaThe Labour of Loss, first published in 1999, explores how mothers, fathers, widows, relatives and friends dealt with their experiences of grief and loss during and after the First and Second World Wars. Based on an examination of private loss through letters and diaries, it makes a significant contribution to understanding how people came to terms with the deaths of friends and family. The book considers the ways in which the bereaved dealt with grief psychologically, and analyses the social and cultural context within which they mourned their dead. Damousi shows that grief remained with people as they attempted to re-build an internal and external world without those to whom they had been so fundamentally attached. Unlike other studies in this area, The Labour of Loss considers how mourning affected men and women in different ways, and analyses the gendered dimensions of grief. |
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Contents
Theatres of Grief Theatres of Loss | 9 |
The Sacrificial Mother | 26 |
A Fathers Loss | 46 |
The War Widow and the Cost of Memory | 65 |
Returned Limbless Soldiers Identity through Loss | 85 |
The Second World War | 103 |
Absence as Loss on the Homefront and the Battlefront | 105 |
Other editions - View all
The Labour of Loss: Mourning, Memory and Wartime Bereavement in Australia Joy Damousi No preview available - 1999 |
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Popular passages
Page 1 - tramples in blind fury on all that comes in its way as though there were to be no future and no peace among men after it is over. It cuts all the common bonds between the contending peoples and threatens to leave a legacy of embitterment that will make any renewal of those bonds impossible for a long time to come.
References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Labour of Loss: Mourning, Memory and Wartime Bereavement in Australia Issue 7 of Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare |
| Author | Joy Damousi |
| Editors | Paul Kennedy, Jay Winter |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, 1999 |
| ISBN | 052166974X, 9780521669740 |
| Length | 212 pages |
| Subjects | › › › History / Australia & New Zealand History / Wars & Conflicts / World War I History / Wars & Conflicts / World War II / General History / World Psychology / General Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social Social Science / Death & Dying |
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