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We know that literature is always changing. Keeping with this tradition, British literature has changed tremendously dating
back to the Romantic era (mid 1700s-late 1830s). However, British society has also been significantly altered as well. One
of the factors in these changes is warfare.
During the Romantic era, British society was greatly affected by the French Revolution. As the Revolution brought about
many changes in France, the people in neighboring Britain were also trying to deal with and express their thoughts about what
was happening. Some of the individuals who were able to express these thoughts and feelings were literary figures.
Two figures of the Romantic period who wrote in reaction to the events of the French Revolution were Mary Wollstonecraft
and William Blake. Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Man in response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the
Revolution in France. She later continued with the same idea of gender roles in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
But changing gender roles was just one effect that the French Revolution had on British society. William Blake wrote
a poem called "London" about the poor, whose living conditions were intolerable during the Romantic era. In this
poem, Blake insinuates that the war is being funded by the poor people's money, thereby making their situations even worse
than they had been.
About 150 years later, when the Modernist era was ushered in, another war was about to alter British society again. The
Great War, as World War I is known in Britain, began in 1914. Along with it came works from many people who became known
as World War I poets. Among these poets were Siegfried Sassoon and Thomas Hardy.
Sassoon, the author of "They," came from a wealthy Jewish family. He served in the war, seeing his first action
in France at the end of 1915. He was given the Military Cross for assisting a wounded soldier to safety, and was wounded
twice himself. In "They," Sassoon writes about a bishop who tells others that the men who have gone to fight in
the war will never be the same once they come back. This was just one of the many ways that British society experienced change
during this time.
Thomas Hardy, however, explores another element of the times that also had an effect on Britain, as well as other countries
all over the world. In his poem, "Channel Firing," he writes about dead people who are awakened by the sound and
vibration of gun shots. This shows us how new technology impacted the war and what some people may have felt about it. We
also see the dead wondering if the world will ever become a more sane place to live in than when it was when they were alive,
a question that most likely haunted the minds of so many people.
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