Glory of Women (p.1099)

The poem, Glory of Women, by Siegfried Sassoon was an interesting critique on how women interact with men.  I read the poem a few times and each time came away with something different.  The first time I read the writer’s take on how women “love us when we’re heroes, home on leave,/ Or wounded in a mentionable place.”(lines 1&2) I thought how the writer was actually being critical of women rather than praising them.  The fact that he refers to the reasons the women loved the men implied that the reasons were superficial or misguided.  If a man is loved when he is heroic or home on leave, it might mean that the women are not so loving or devoted when the men are less than heroic or away from home.  If a man is loved when he’s wounded in a mentionable place, it implies that a man suffering from an unseen injury, as Sassoon was when treated for “shell shock”, is less lovable and less heroic and therefore not worthy of a woman’s love.  Maybe it was that undercurrent of misogynistic sarcasm that struck me after several readings.

The writer also seems to be critical of women’s intelligence when he says, “You worship decorations; you believe/ That chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace.” (lines 3&4) The writer seems to imply that only men, especially the poet, are able to discern the ravages of war and the disgrace that is involved in modern warfare.  “You make us shells.  You listen with delight,/ By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.” (lines 5&6) Again, I took it that the poet believes women only listen to men to be delighted by their tales of heroism and daring.  The cheap thrills they get from those tales betray the actual horror of the lives broken and ended prematurely by the fighting.

Sassoon ended his poem with a grim commentary on the true feelings he harbored inside.  “O German mother dreaming by the fire,/ While you are knitting socks to send your son/ His face is trodden deeper in the mud.” (lines12-14)  What attack on women could be more mean-spirited than to attack the relationship between a mother and her son?  The picture of a woman knitting socks to send her son while enemy troops defile his dead body by trampling his face into the mud gives the reader an advance preview on how devastated the mother will be when the death of her son is reported.  Moreover, that her son’s death was not mourned and that men trampled his lifeless corpse into the mud with complete disdain for his passing.  The poet makes it a point to mention the woman is German as if those women are worth even less than the English women.

After reading this poem a few times I was convinced that the writer was deeply bitter and held special resentment for women.  Why he felt this way isn’t clear in the poem but I found his prejudice and disdain for women to be shallow, insulting and thought provoking.  Why did he feel the horrors of war escaped the intellect of women?  Was it because women did not fight?  Certainly the horrors of war would become entirely real for the German woman knitting socks to send to her son when the news of his death reached her.  Unlike the dead soldier, however, the mother would be left to feel her loss and contemplate the horrors of war each day for the rest of her life.