Everyday Canvas

Working in 1914

Prompt: If you had lived 100 years ago, what kind of job would you have had?
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The year is 1914. World War I has just started and the jobs vacated by men are now open to women. I have been a part of the suffragette movement already, having successfully fought earlier against the corsets and the consumption of liquor.

With the onset of the war, I have trained as a nurse and am staying in that position for life. Besides, other jobs might not be available after the end of the war. Nursing is the best opportunity to continue working unless one could manage domestic service. Yet, domestic service may not be as rewarding due to the whims of the employers.

Working in the jobs held by men when men go to war has given a bigger hand to the women in the financial and economic sense and also greater confidence in their own capabilities. I watch all this, and rejoice inside myself, for I don’t want to give up my newly found freedom when the war is over. That is why I am going to stick with nursing. Besides, tending the wounded and the sick gives me an enormous satisfaction. I am so glad I chose this profession. I plan to stay in it until the day I die.

My strength comes from a gifted mentor, my mentor. She is Clara Barton. Even though I haven’t met her, I have been told so many stories about her dedication during the Civil War. I keep her words inside my waist-pocket. The paper is twisted and crumbled in time, but her words will always ring true for me and light my darkest hours, and I'll keep on reading them over and over to regain my courage.

Clara Barton said: “You must never so much think as whether you like it or not, whether it is bearable or not; you must never think of anything except the need, and how to meet it.”

Nursing is the fever in my blood now, and it will never go out of my system, although the hours are long, the work hard, the pay not enough, and the energy required is immense. If I could only stop taking every death so personally…