Domestic life in Britain changed forever during and after the Great War of 1914, when almost 10% of the people who lived under British sovereignty were killed or wounded. Naturally, the casualties were mostly young, eligible men, and as a result many women faced a new world where their chances of marrying were slim. They were known as Surplus Women. But things changed for men too–the very young and the very old–as their culture and their social structure was suddenly more feminine. They watched as their spinster aunts and sisters made their lives in a world for which they had not been prepared but which gave them a surprising, and sometimes a confusing, new autonomy. In this class, we will focus on works by three Modernist writers, E.M. Forster, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, in order to analyze what was the new social structure and how was it reflected in the literature during and after World War One.