Homework Assignment #2- Home Front

Welcome to your final online homework submission!

As you know, this task has been posted on Monday and you must submit your answers at the latest this Friday by 12 midnight.

We have discussed the attitudes to the War on the Home Fronts in class, and this exercise is an extension of this. By the end of the task you should have increased your knowledge about the former, plus you should be more aware of the gender ideas that underpinned the concept of the Home Front.

Task:

Using the links below, navigate to the following three audio files of popular songs from the World War I era. The lyrics are somewhat difficult to understand so I've included links to them beneath the songs.This requires your computer to have Quicktime, so if it doesn't you'll need to either download it or use one of the computers at school to listen to it.

1) Keep the Home Fires Burning (c.1914) by Ivor Novello and Lena Ford

Lyrics here.

2) Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts for Soldiers (c. 1914) by R. P. Weston with music by Herman Darewski.

Lyrics here

3) Have You News of My Boy Jack (c.1917) by Rudyard Kipling and Louis Kirkby-Lunn

Lyrics here


Questions (Copy/paste into a comment form to complete)

a) Listen to the audio files and jot down your ideas about the image of the home front being created in the sources.

b) Examine references to men and women in the lyrics. What expectations of women are being expressed in the sources?

c) What expectations of men are expressed?

d) The first two aural (audio) sources are from the early part of WWI. The last is from 1917, just before the end of the War. Is there any difference between them?

e) Write a paragraph of no more than 150 words discussing the usefulness of songs as historical sources.