The Labour of Loss Mourning, Memory and Wartime Bereavement in Australia

The Labour of Loss, first published in 1999, explores how mothers, fathers, widows, relatives and friends dealt with their experiences of grief and loss during and after the First and Second World Wars. Based on an examination of private loss through letters and diaries, it makes a significant contribution to understanding how people came to terms with the deaths of friends and family. The book considers the ways in which the bereaved dealt with grief psychologically, and analyses the social and cultural context within which they mourned their dead. Damousi shows that grief remained with people as they attempted to re-build an internal and external world without those to whom they had been so fundamentally attached. Unlike other studies in this area, The Labour of Loss considers how mourning affected men and women in different ways, and analyses the gendered dimensions of grief.

Part I. The First World War: 1. Theatres of grief, theatres of loss; 2. The sacrificial mother; 3. A father's loss; 4. The war widow and the cost of memory; 5. Returned limbless soldiers: identity through loss; Part II. The Second World War: 6. Absence as loss on the homefront and the battlefront; 7. Grieving mothers; 8. A war widow's mourning.

This book explores how people dealt with the grief process during and immediately after the two world wars. Based on an examination of private loss through letters and diaries, this study makes a significant contribution to understanding how people came to terms with the deaths of friends and family.