Women of Britain say "Go!"
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Other · File:7 Collection Eybl Great Britain - E. Kealey - Women of Britain say – GO.jpg · Public domain · Catalog record
The pins
Context
For discussion
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Slogan GO! One word, underlined, in the largest type on the sheet. The argument for enlisting is reduced to a command, and the command is put in the mouth of someone the viewer cannot argue with.
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Bandwagon The marching column The men who have already gone pass in a line below the window, faceless and uncounted. The viewer is the one not in it.
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Transfer The women at the window The women's beauty, the yellow dress, the cottage window, and the green hills carry the feeling of home onto the act of leaving it. The poster never shows what the men are marching toward.
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Appeal to pity The boy A small boy clings to his mother's skirt and watches the soldiers. He is both the reason to go and the one who will ask, later, why you did not.
A Parliamentary Recruiting Committee poster of 1915. A woman, her sister or servant, and a small boy watch from a cottage window as a column of soldiers marches past under the trees. The men are tiny and anonymous; the women fill the frame. The poster speaks for the women of the country as a body and tells the man who has not enlisted what they think of him, without showing him at all.
- Who is the poster addressed to, and who is shown speaking?
- What does the window do? Try describing the scene without it.
- The men marching away have no faces. Why not?
See also
Same era, or the same techniques.
