"A Message to the Emperor" & "The Battle of the Cradle": Gendered Nationalism and Identity Politics in the Great War

Abstract

Olive Schreiner, an outstanding feminist, political activist and prose writer from South Africa, is one of those remarkable late 19th century English cultured women who locate themselves within and beyond the categories of war, peace, empire and nation. In refusing to accept 'all the boundaries, dichotomies, and divisions, which are the hallmark of sexist society' she aims to 're-make art and society' as Liz Stanley rightfully observes (235). [...] Most interesting in the context of gender and war is her claim for an ultimate deconstruction of any fixed socio-cultural and sexual identity. In acknowledging the interaction of parameters like ethnicity, culture, social status, setting, class and gender in traditional concepts of identity construction, Schreiner envisions a universal identity and acknowledges that this can only be achieved through a prior dismantling of all boundaries and borderlines, especially those which limit women's freedom and liberty in the private, regional, national and international sphere.

It is our intention to enter into the domain of war and to labor there till in the course of generations we have extinguished it. (Olive Schreiner, Woman and Labour 69)