Ellen La Motte and Mary Borden

Abstract Ellen La Motte and Mary Borden worked together at the same field hospital during the war, an experience that prompted them to write their best-known works, The Backwash of War and The Forbidden Zone. La Motte and Borden have often been compared, and even described as collaborators. This chapter, however, contrasts their approaches to war writing and demonstrates that, moreover, the works for which they are commonly associated with the war do not typify their literary reaction to it. La Motte moved away from fiction-writing to concentrate on the opium trade. Borden, meanwhile, broached the war in a variety of novels throughout her prolific career—in works that eschew the fragmented aesthetics of The Forbidden Zone and focus on the nuances of interpersonal relations that are all but absent in her most noted work.