Book excerpt: In a period of high idealism, and 'titanic illimitable death' women ofter found themselves longing to play an active role alongside their male compatriots. In this fascinating work, Sharon Ouditt examines the traumatic nature of women's experiences during the Great War, and the complex ideological structures they constructed in order to legitimate their position in the public world of work and politics. Using a wealth of historical material - contemporary propaganda, journals, magazines, memoirs and fiction - Sharon Ouditt challenges the notion that women achieved sudden and unproblematic independence, and demonstrates the ways in which women mediated their attraction to a fixed female identity with their desire for radical social change.