ABSTRACT
The above passages show how assumptions of reality affect what individuals are able to see. In other words, people often perceive what they expect to perceive. The above writers expected to see only men in military uniforms. The identity of a soldier implied as much to them. But in each case this reality is exploded as the writers discover that the soldiers under observation are women. The importance of these letters is not that women were posing as men, but rather that they were not seen as posing as men. Since, in Victorian society, the definition of the good soldier included the element of maleness, war stories could only include heroic soldiers qualified by that gender.
