‘Doing’ masculinity: Enactments of masculinity and manliness in drawings of rifles and bayonets in the Australian Imperial Force, 1914–1918

Abstract

During the First World War, a number of Australian soldiers used drawing as a way to communicate and record their experiences of active service. As a neglected body of archival material, these drawings offer unique insights into how men of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) understood and conceptualised their masculinity and manliness while abroad. In this study, I analyse depictions of rifles and bayonets in 91 drawings by Australian soldiers to explore the ways in which a number of the men of the AIF enacted militaristic and ‘working-man’ masculinity. I argue that while both of these masculinities existed concurrently in soldiers’ drawings, the bayonet was commonly used to further militaristic virtues of aggression and martial prowess, whereas the rifle tended to reassert the pre-war ideals of the working man. For the first time, Australian soldiers’ drawings fall under the gaze of the historian and they present a nuanced, sometimes contradictory, understanding of how soldiers imagined and enacted their own masculinity and manliness at war.