“Not So Quiet” as representative of gender in WWII Essay

Evadne expenditure wrote the book non So compose in 1930 under the pseudonym Helen Zenna Smith. Price was an established author and dramatist by the time she wrote Not So silence, best kn confess for her serialized coquette invigorateds. She overly wrote childrens books and articles for wowork forces magazine. But Not So serenity was a very different kind of piece, partly because of its far more than serious nature, partly because it was somewhat autobiographical. She was initi on the wholey approached by a British publisher to write a satire on All muted on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, but Price argued that she would rather write an account of a womans welcome with domain of warf are instead. Price thence contacted a British ambulance driver who had kept war diaries as a basis for her story, then elaborating the story to wrap around a fictional version of herself named Smithie.Taking this very personal, internal story of a woman, as strong as her alre ady inhering skill of writing for women, Price created a story whose voice is plainly fe manly. The reader feels Smithies confusion, crossness and isolation in her struggle to make up a new identity in the wake of a total loss of innocence. In this, more then anything, Price has created a war story that is not only closely women, but one that speaks to women and resonates with them, a true rarity. It is through with(predicate) Prices novel that a distinct view of the war through the eyes of a very female, upper crust experience help give the reader a very lite idea of many another(prenominal) of the issues faced by women of the war years as they try to maintain what party has always told them is feminine behavior in an increasingly bloody reality.The nature of the book Not So Quiet is reflective of All Quiet on the Western Front in that both are pacifist responses to war, but in the case of Not So Quiet, the pacifist voice is female. The ideas about war expressed by Smi thie are often reverberative of other pacifist womens responses to war and draw attention to the womens peace movement that started during the starting time realism contend. Many of Smithies comments, such as her sarcastic annoyance with Mrs. Evans-Mawning for creation proud that she could be proud her son was murdered for murdering another begets son, is phrased very similarly to thoughts of leading female pacifists. Clara Zetkin, a German socialist feminist, is one who comes to mind and her words Who endangers the well-being of the fatherland? Is it the men who, clad in other uniforms, stand beyond the reckonier, men who did not want this war any more than your men did and who do not know why they should have to murder their brothers? (Zetkin, pg. 145).Zetkins radical ideas, create during the first war, are a display of the already ever-changing disposition, button to action for the cause of peace. Lida Gustava Heymann, another female pacifist during World War I, refl ects another position of Smithies pacifist transformation-anger. Like Smithie, who spends some(prenominal) of the novel searching for community to blame for her pain, Heymann puts blame directly on men, describing male nature as inherently violent and fundamentally opposed to female nature, which is pacifist. other important pacifist during World War I who is reminiscent of Smithie is Sylvia Pankhurst, daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, organizer of radical womens groups, and Richard Pankhurst.Her radicalism led to a major(ip) rift with her make afterward the groups they belonged to decided not to commit arson, which, to Sylvia, make them not radical enough. She also mat her mother and her sisters were to focused of fosterage middle class privilege and gave to little attention to the needs of all women. During the war, when she joined the womens peace army, she found herself at correct great rift with her mother and sister, who both supported the war. Her lifetime of feelings of anger and monomania from the older generation, despite her mothers staunchly liberal ideas, certify Smithies exact feelings that pushed her toward the distaste for the war that the novel ends on.Smithies anger and large transformation are a result of her unmasked experience with war. For just about women, however, the experience of war was masked and covered behind nationalism and propaganda. Although much of the book takes place on the front, hints of what is happening back sign of the zodiac are frequently given, mostly through letters received by Smithie from her mother and through the character of B.F. Mrs. Evans-Mawning, throughout the novel, serves as a figure of the conquer kind of feminine nationalism, boasting about Roy but not having the limit on Smithies mother because she has only her one son to turn over as opposed to Smithies bigger family. Smithie also notes that she is sick of interpreting positive news about wonder war girls in the news, canvas her expe rience to having a baby because once you get started your trapped in it. (Smith, pg. 134).Women on the home front were being coddled into believing everything was going well because this was still a time in which men saw women as more erogenous then they were intelligent and therefore needed to be defended (Thebaud, pg. 95). This sort of sugar-coating gave women false impressions about the war, which was particularly disappointing to those who enlisted. In one letter from Smithies younger sister, Trix, she writes Why the dickens they specify you up in a pretty cap and make you count youre going to smooth the patients fevered brow beats me hollow. (Smith, pg. 84). Another letter in the book that is very reflective of home front feelings is the one Smithie receives from B.F, who expound her encounter with Toshs uncle and comments on his pretermit of patriotism because of his being more upset about Toshs death then the war. In her own, somewhat ignorant, way B.F is describing the shifting attitudes felt by people back home whose nationalism faded with ruthfulness over lost loved ones.While this war marked an fabulous change in society in a variety of areas, no group was more changed by the two wars then women were. Women, even those who were educated and gently bred were called in to be a part of a down in the mouth war and through the experience of Smithie the loss of innocence is felt. Heymann, after the First World War, noted that everything in the past is in a state of man, which makes force, authority and fear its principles. Heymann felt that women had so long been slaves to men that curtly their very natures were enslaved (Heymann, pg. 149). However, war forced women into very different position then they had ever been in before, the wars forced them to take a more offensive role in public life and start to reclaim their own identities. Zetkin also notes during the war how the existence of it threw in womens faces the view of society that m en need to go die in order to protect their weak women, but the death of their men caused a much larger burden to fall upon their apparently small shoulders.The change experienced by women is manifested not just in Smithie and other named characters, but also in the two most notable events that involve girls just passing through the ambulance-driving world. The first, in which Smithie shows two new girls to their bunk and they tell her they shall have a tea, represents the old woman- even faced with clearly dire circumstances, the female is to sensitive for it and buries her head in frivolous passion. However, later on, on page 132, when the seeing-Francer stands up to explain why she is leaving, she not only well articulates her complaint, but also shows a lot of bravery in doing so.The moment displays womens changing levels of aggression as more and more of them took jobs they never would have before. in that location are also signs of the sexual emancipation experienced by many women, most clearly manifested by Smithie when she actually says aloud how not shock she is by the generals proposition of sex (Smith, pg. 145) and then when she sleeps with a soldier, Robin, whom she barely knows. This was directly following the interwar years, in which novelists and magazines already began to prominently rollick the new woman, with her short hair and sexual liberation.While there were many positive changes for the overall position of women as a result of the war, the novel Not So Quiet also notes the physical trauma it brought for them. This aspect of the book might be its finest one in that it describes difficulties faced by women, who were not regarded with the same sensitivity as returning soldiers. After Smithie returns home for a few geezerhood, clearly traumatized, she is chastised by her mother for mooning about for days and how strange it was that she was still not over her traumatic experience with war.Ernst Simmel, who wrote about war as a cause o f mental illness, described war psychosis as rarely curable, caused by all things to horrible to grasp. Simmel also described war psychosis as a damage that can be seen even when all external wounds are healed, making it therefore invisible. The feelings of this illness intrusion is manifested by Smithie in the most beautiful passage of the book when she describes her desire for men who are whole and her concern for what is to happen like people like her, if they survive, how they are meant to lead a normal life after experiencing such horrific things and being so internally broken.BibliographyHerminghouse, Patricia A., and Magda Meuller, eds. German libber Writings. Vol. 95. invigorated York The German Library, 2001.Simmel, Ernst. War Neurosis and Psychic Trauma The legacy of the War.Smith, Helen Z. Not So Quiet New York The Feminist P, 1930.Sohn, Anne-Marie. Between the Wars in France and England. A History of Women in the West, Volume V Toward a ethnical Identity in the Twent ieth Century (History of Women in the West). By Georges Duby. Vol. 5. New York Belknap P, 1994. 92-119.