Despite acts of female heroism, popular memory, as well as official memorialization in monuments and historic sites, has ignored French women's role in the First World War.French Women and the First World War examines the ways French women served their country -- from charity work, nursing and munitions manufacture to volunteering for military service and espionage. In tracing stories about war heroines, as well as villainesses like Mate Hari, this fascinating study shows what these stories reveal about French understanding of the war, them hopes and fears for the future. While the masculine war story was unitary and unchanging, the feminine story was multiple and shifting. French women's relationship to the war called into question ideas about gender, definitions of citizenship and national identity.