Layne Parish Craig, Texas Christian University
Vol. 39, No. 1 (Spring 2020), 39-60

This article shines new light on a lesser-known modernist woman writer whose use of the obscene was no less revolutionary than that of her male contemporaries. Ellen N. La Motte’s World War I memoir The Backwash of War was celebrated upon its publication in 1916 for its frank treatment of the human body; however, scholarly work on La Motte has focused on her biography as a nurse-essayist and downplayed her explicit depictions of male soldiers’ physicality. This paper analyzes La Motte’s use of obscenity and taboo in order to recover her place not only as a bold and transgressive documentarian of the war but also as a progenitor of a modernist writing style heavily influenced by changing understandings of the role of the body in art.