Separating the Men from the Boys: Masculinity and Maturity in Understandings of Shell Shock in Britain

This article examines gendered discourses of shell shock inBritain during the First World War. Located within the contextof the ideas about shell shock as a form of male hysteria putforward by Elaine Showalter, it examines the ways in which thecontemporary discourses of soldiers, medical professionals andpopular novelists used ideas of maturity and self-control tounderstand a condition that appeared to undermine both the wareffort and national masculinity. It argues that contemporaryunderstandings of authority and maturity helped to normalizeshell shock as a medical condition, thereby lessening its perceivedthreat to society.