ABSTRACT
Agriculture and munitions workers remained close to home, bounded by the shores of England, which were protected by that symbol of Imperialist power, the Royal Navy. This chapter deals with the Land Army and investigates documents, memoirs and works of fiction to see whether the alternativism of country life could be added to the armoury in women’s battle for social change. It also deals with munitions workers, and builds on the image of women as ‘other’ to war to see what part it played in industrial propaganda. The account, nevertheless, ends with the humbling of middle-class ‘unbounded confidence’. The image of the working classes ‘blackening’ London’s green spaces suggests more than degradation as a result of class or race. ‘Blackening’ also suggests a form of cultural inferiority that corresponds to anonymity. The Land Army offers a chance to recapture one’s individuality.
