Abstract

This essay investigates how British women in the Balkan military zone of WWI wrote on the sanitary crisis, which demonstrated itself in epidemics. It researches how these narratives figured in developing and strengthening their agendas which were part of their cultural and personal background. The military crisis was a way for the British women to prove their worth in the theatres of war, as a prerequisite for obtaining suffrage. The health crisis in the war-stricken Balkans was the main danger of life for these women, and dying in an epidemic was viewed as the closest thing to dying in a battle, which in turn endorsed the possibility of obtaining suffrage.