The Cultural Experiences of British Nurses in the North of France During the First World War

Weens, Hélène (2026) The Cultural Experiences of British Nurses in the North of France During the First World War. Doctoral thesis, Liverpool Hope University.

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Abstract

During the Great War, thousands of British nurses crossed the Channel to take care of soldiers in the North of France, and they soon encountered French people and their customs.
This thesis demonstrates that each nurse lived a unique time there during the war and their accounts offer a large range of descriptions of the North of France between 1914 and 1918
through the analysis of their personal accounts (unpublished and published letters, diaries and memoirs). The first purpose is to identify the main impressions the nurses describe in their testimonies about the environment, the customs and French language. The second goal of this
project is to understand the reasons behind this variety of cultural experiences. The first chapter illustrates this variety of impressions. Some nurses depict a thrilling adventure in France, embodying the role of saviour, others present their time as seaside holidays, while a few nurses
describe a traumatic experience, suffering from a more intense culture shock than others. The second chapter focuses more on the cultural aspects, with the nurses’ knowledge of French language and French culture, their interactions with the local population and the environments
surrounding them impacting their adaptation in the French society. Furthermore, the thesis analyses the reasons behind such different representations and difficulties to adapt. The nurses belonged to several classes of the society: those from the upper class often received a better education in modern languages, and notably French, but often served as V.A.D.s and had never had a job before the war, while those with a middle-class background were not often fluent in
French language but were often professional nurses. Through the analysis of the writings of Monica Salmond, Margaret Allan Brander, Dorothy Cator and Vera Brittain, the third chapter highlights that not only did the social background of each nurses impact their perception of France, but the location of the hospital they were stationed in and the hospital itself influenced the cultural adaptation of those four nurses. This chapter also sheds light on the reasons for the nurses to write their adventures in the North of France during the Great War. Therefore, this thesis goes further than just analysing the cultural experience of British nurses in the North of France during the First World War: each account is unique because of the social background of the nurses, their role in the hospital and the location of the hospitals they worked in.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Additional Information and Comments:	Copyright © The Author 2026. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request.
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Creative Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities
Depositing User:	Matthew Adams
Date Deposited:	14 May 2026 14:47
Last Modified:	14 May 2026 14:47
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4909

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