During the First World War, the horror of facial mutilation was evoked in journalism, poems, memoirs and fiction; but in Britain it was almost never represented visually outside the professional contexts of clinical medicine and medical history. This article asks why, and offers an account of British visual culture in which visual anxiety and aversion are of central importance. By comparing the rhetoric of disfigurement to the parallel treatment of amputees, an asymmetrical picture emerges in which the `worst loss of all'---the loss of one's face---is perceived as a loss of humanity. The only hope was surgery or, if that failed, prosthetic repair: innovations that were often wildly exaggerated in the popular press. Francis Derwent Wood was one of several sculptors whose technical skill and artistic `wizardry' played a part in the improvised reconstruction of identity and humanity.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Reznick, Jeffrey S.;
(2009)
John Galsworthy and Disabled Soldiers of the Great War: With an Illustrated Selection of His Writings
(/isis/citation/CBB001031296/)
Book
Andrew Bamji;
(2017)
Faces from the Front: Harold Gillies, The Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup and the Origins of Modern Plastic Surgery
(/isis/citation/CBB123455930/)
Book
Suzannah Biernoff;
(2017)
Portraits of Violence: War and the Aesthetics of Disfigurement
(/isis/citation/CBB626555795/)
Article
Magowska, Anita;
(2014)
The Unwanted Heroes: War Invalids in Poland after World War I
(/isis/citation/CBB001214593/)
Article
Linker, Beth;
(2007)
Feet for Fighting: Locating Disability and Social Medicine in First World War America
(/isis/citation/CBB000771376/)
Article
Lovesey, Oliver;
(2013)
“The Poor Little Monstrosity”: Ellice Hopkins' Rose Turquand , Victorian Disability, and Nascent Eugenic Fiction
(/isis/citation/CBB001200836/)
Article
Hallett, Christine E.;
(2010)
Portrayals of Suffering: Perceptions of Trauma in the Writings of First World War Nurses and Volunteers
(/isis/citation/CBB001024902/)
Thesis
Gagen, Wendy Jane;
(2004)
Disabling Masculinity: Ex-Servicemen, Disability and Gender Identity, 1914--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB001560534/)
Book
Jessica Meyer;
(2019)
An Equal Burden: The Men of the Royal Army Medical Corps in the First World War
(/isis/citation/CBB041364626/)
Article
Anne Hardy;
(2017)
Lives, Laboratories, and the Translations of War: British Medical Scientists, 1914 and Beyond
(/isis/citation/CBB617046384/)
Book
Tracey Loughran;
(2017)
Shell-Shock and Medical Culture in First World War Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB472571862/)
Book
Harrison, Mark;
(2010)
The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War
(/isis/citation/CBB001230977/)
Article
Jones, Edgar;
(2010)
Shell Shock at Maghull and the Maudsley: Models of Psychological Medicine in the UK
(/isis/citation/CBB001034278/)
Book
Kent, Susan Kingsley;
(2009)
Aftershocks: Politics and Trauma in Britain, 1918--1931
(/isis/citation/CBB001035872/)
Article
Meyer, Jessica;
(2009)
Separating the Men from the Boys: Masculinity and Maturity in Understandings of Shell Shock in Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB001030551/)
Article
Linden, Stefanie Caroline;
Jones, Edgar;
(2014)
“Shell Shock” Revisited: An Examination of the Case Records of the National Hospital in London
(/isis/citation/CBB001422169/)
Article
Changboo Kang;
(2020)
Between Mars and Eros: British Army's Fight Against Venereal Disease during the First World War
(/isis/citation/CBB233174106/)
Book
Harrison, Mark;
(2010)
The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War
(/isis/citation/CBB001212749/)
Article
Jones, Edgar;
Wessely, Simon;
(2010)
British Prisoners-of-War: From Resilience to Psychological Vulnerability: Reality or Perception
(/isis/citation/CBB001030545/)
Thesis
Epting, Susan;
(2012)
Casualties of the Spirit: The Development of Military Psychology and Psychiatry in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, 1914--1945
(/isis/citation/CBB001562791/)
Be the first to comment!