"Glory of women" by Siegfried Sassoon

The poem "Glory of women" can be considered to be the typical style of poetry written by the English war time poet, Siegfried Sassoon. Through the use of poetic techniques, Sassoon's words had painted a picture conveying his anti-war messages, in attempt to break the popular romanticized beliefs the majority population held towards war, conveying the ignorance of the public, however at the same time praising the love and dedication of the women on the home front.

Sassoon's poem "Glory of women" can be categorized as a war time lyric poem. Like all lyric poems, Sassoon had expressed a single speaker's thoughts of fear and general state of mind through his work. The poem began with a scenario of an ideal image of war and how it was made to be perceived subsequent to the government's propaganda. The first two lines had depicted the successfulness of the false ideas of war that has been placed in the minds of women. The ignorance of women back on the homefront was shown through the use of words in the first few lines of the poem. One of such examples is the use of "you", by establishing a second person throughout the poem, "you", directed at women creates an emotional distance between the audience and women. The use of second person establishes the idea that during war, women were ignorant outsiders, who relied solely on the media.

Sassoon had successfully invited the essence of an ideal image of the war into the opening of the poem, through the his use of juxtaposition in the poem "glory of women", transforming it to not only a simple work relating to women, but also an anti war tool for the war time population. One clear example of this was evident through the lines one and two, when "love" was juxtaposed with "wounded" in the subsequent line. By stating that the reason for "love" was due to the fact that they were "wounded in a mentionable place", had conveyed the idea of the romanticized beliefs of heroism during the war promoted by the government. Once again the