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

Evadne Price wrote the book non So Quiet in 1930 under the pseudonym Helen Zenna Smith. Price was an established author and playwright by the succession she wrote Not So Quiet, best known for her serialized romance novels. She also wrote childrens books and articles for womens magazine. But Not So Quiet was a very unalike kind of piece, partly because of its far more serious nature, partly because it was somewhat autobiographical. She was initially approached by a British publisher to write a chaff on All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, but Price argued that she would rather write an account of a adult females experience with fightfare instead. Price then contacted a British ambulance driver who had kept war diaries as a basis for her degree, then elaborating the story to revolve around a fictional version of herself named Smithie.Taking this very personal, intimate story of a woman, as well as her already essential skill of writing for women, Price create d a novel whose voice is distinctly female. The reader feels Smithies confusion, anger and isolation in her struggle to build a new identity in the wake of a total loss of innocence. In this, more then eachthing, Price has created a war story that is non only about women, but angiotensin-converting enzyme that speaks to women and resonates with them, a true rarity. It is through and through and through Prices novel that a distinct view of the war through the eyes of a very female, upper-class experience help give the reader a very clear idea of many of the issues faced by women of the war years as they try to maintain what society 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 grounds of Not So Quiet, the pacifist voice is female. The ideas about war expressed by Smithie are often reminiscent of other pacifist wom ens responses to war and draw attention to the womens peace movement that started during the First World War. Many of Smithies comments, such as her sarcastic annoyance with Mrs. Evans-Mawning for being uplifted that she could be proud her son was murdered for murdering another poses 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 frontier, men who did not want this war any morethan your men did and who do not know why they should have to murder their brothers? (Zetkin, pg. 145).Zetkins radical ideas, formed during the first war, are a demo of the already changing disposition, pushing to action for the cause of peace. Lida Gustava Heymann, another female pacifist during World War I, reflects another aspect of Smithies pacifist transformation-anger. exchangeable Smithie , who spends much of the novel searching for people 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. Another 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 mother after the groups they belonged to decided not to commit arson, which, to Sylvia, made them not radical enough. She also felt her mother and her sisters were to focused of fostering marrow 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 even greater rift with her mother and sister, who both supported the war. Her spirittime of feelings of anger and alienation from the older generation, despite her mothers staunchly liberal ideas, manifest Smithies exact feelings that pushed her toward the averting for the war that the novel ends on.Smithies anger and large transformation are a result of her unmasked experience with war. For near women, however, the experience of war was masked and cover behind nationalism and propaganda. Although much of the book takes place on the front, hints of what is happening back place 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 worst kind of feminine nationalism, boasting about Roy but not having the edge on Smithies mother because she has only her one son to sacrifice as opposed to Smithies larger family. Smithie also notes that she is sick of cultivation positive news about wonder war girls in the news, comparing her experience to having a baby because once you get started your trapped in it. (Smith, pg. 134).Women on the home front were be ing coddled into believing everything was going well because this was still atime in which men saw women as more crude then they were intelligent and therefore needed to be protected (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 dress you up in a pretty cap and make you think youre going to smooth the patients excited 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 described her encounter with Toshs uncle and comments on his lack 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 displacement attitudes felt by people back home whose nationalism faded with sorrow over lost loved ones. plot of ground this war ma rked an improbable 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 light bred were called in to be a part of a gruesome war and through the experience of Smithie the loss of innocence is felt. Heymann, after the First World War, famed 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 presently their very natures were enslaved (Heymann, pg. 149). However, war labored women into very different position then they had ever been in before, the wars forced them to take a more aggressive 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 men 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 app arently small shoulders.The change experience 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 mountain pass in frivolous desire. However, later on, on page 132, when the seeing-Francerstands up to explain why she is leaving, she not only well articulates her complaint, but also shows a passel 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. There are also signs of the internal emancipation experienced by many women, most clearly manifested by Smithie when she actually says aloud how not shocked she is by the generals proposal of marriag e 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 feature 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 harm 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 days, 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 of mental illness, described war psychosis as rarely curable, caused by all things to horrible to grasp. Simmel also described war ps ychosis as a damage that can be seen even when all external wounds are healed, making it therefore invisible. The feelings of this illness onset 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 Feminist Writings. Vol. 95. New York The German Library, 2001.Simmel, Ernst. War Neurosis and psychical 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 Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century (History of Women in the West). By Georges Duby. Vol. 5. New York Belknap P, 1994. 92-119.