Stoic and Sentimental: The Emotional Work of the Edwardian Greetings Postcard

Abstract

For both Edwardian migrants and First World War soldiers, communicating home involved a choice as to the appropriate emotional regimes to use. Should they display stoic reserve, or communicate sentimental feeling? Research on correspondence has normally focused on letters, but this paper examines how emotion was dealt with through the multimodal medium of the greetings postcard. It argues that whilst handwritten texts on postcards remained primarily stoic, the pre-packaged visual vocabulary on greetings postcards allowed users to send strongly emotional arguments for the maintenance of their relationships without ever having to put these into their own words. Postcards, it seems, gave the Edwardians the option of being both stoic and sentimental.

‘A War Imagined’: Postcards and the Maintenance of Long-Distance Relationships during the Great War

“…As Peter Gilderdale has argued, if one accepts that there were many meanings and messages included in postcards then they can provide important insights. 30 What follows draws on the postcards found in a number of archives around the United Kingdom as well as in the digitized Great War Archive. Family members kept and treasured these objects as the most tangible link they had to their absent sons, husbands, loved ones, or friends.…”