The obsession with the First World War

So just why am I so obsessed by the First World War? I'm actually trying very hard to curb my enthusiasm in our lessons, I know how easy it would be to get carried away and give you information overload. But why is it that I was inspired to find out so much about this war?

Terry Castle, a feminist critic, suggests that it is a mixture of guilt and awe. If we believe her theory, women are far more interested in the First World War than men specifically because we were excluded from it. Excluded you cry? You only have to watch my beloved 'Downton Abbey' to see women working as nurses and land girls. They did their bit, they were not excluded. But it's not the same as being in the trenches and fighting is it and so Castle believes that women are "haunted by feelings of cowardice". Now I can be a bit pathetic sometimes, just think about how I reacted to the loud bangs at the end of 'Journey's End' but I wouldn't say I'm haunted by cowardice.

So I'll have to look for another theory. Which led me to the college library which is a spooky place when you're alone in the dark but even more spooky when you head upstairs (thinking you're alone) and are then startled by a sixth former who jumps out from behind the book shelves. However, I managed to find the passage that I was looking for in Paul Fussell's 'The Great War and Modern Memory'. On page 315 he states that "the whole texture of British daily life can be said to commemorate the war still" and perhaps this is why we feel such a connection with this war in particular. If it wasn't for the First World War we wouldn't wear wristwatches - they were first used in the trenches because a pocket watch was impractical when going over the top. (Incidentally Barker uses this phrase quite nicely in one of her novels when Prior is in the pub and hears a man drinking saying that he went a bit over the top last night, meaning that he had had too much port. Prior is outraged knowing the real meaning of the phrase. Why is this passage etched on my memory? Because my university professor asked me what going over the top meant. I thought that he was joking but no, he had grown up in South Africa and knew nothing about the First World War. Cue my embarrassment at having just made a joke at his expense).

Anyway, wristwatches, catchphrases, banknotes, pub closing times, they all date from the First World War. Nearly a century later it continues to permeate our lives without us even knowing it. So every time you look at your watch or hand over a bank note in the tuck shop you have the First World War to thank for the fact that your pockets are not laden down. We're all obsessed with the First World War, even if sometimes we don't know it.