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. |
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 |
Common terms and phrases
Aboriginal Alfred Allen & Unwin Anzac Day April Argus assistance August Australian badge became boys Canberra Chaplain claimed cultural Daily Telegraph dear death deceased December Derham Papers died disabled soldiers emotional enlisted expressed Falkiner Fathers Association feel Folder 11 France Frank Garton Gender George George Vasey grief H. B. Higgins History homefront honour hope husband ibid identity January Jay Winter Jessie Vasey John July June killed letters Limbless Soldiers Association living London loss lost March Marilyn Lake Melbourne University Press military November October organisations Oxford pension prisoners prisoners of war Raymond Evans received remember Repatriation returned soldiers Roberts sacrifice Second World Second World War September 1916 shillings Sites of Memory Sites of Mourning social son's sons South Wales sustained Sydney Sydney Morning Herald Trobe Library Vasey's Victoria wartime welfare Widows Guild wife wives women wrote
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.