City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 10-2014 Straight Record and The Paper Trail: From Depression Reporters to Foreign Correspondents Magdalena Bogacka-Rode Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/405 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] STRAIGHT RECORD AND THE PAPER TRAIL: FROM DEPRESSION REPORTERS TO FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS BY MAGDALENA BOGACKA-RODE A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Center Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2014 ii Copyright 2014 Bogacka-Rode, Magdalena All rights reserved. iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Jane C. Marcus ______________________ _______________________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Mario DiGangi _______________________ ______________________________________________ Date Executive Officer Jane C. Marcus Mario DiGangi Michele Wallace Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv STRAIGHT RECORD AND THE PAPER TRAIL: FROM DEPRESSION REPORTERS TO FOREGIN CORRESPONDENTS Abstract By Magdalena Bogacka-Rode Adviser: Professor Jane C. Marcus Straight Record and the Paper Trail: From Depression Reporters to Foreign Correspondents engages with Martha Gellhorn’s The Face of War (1959), Virginia Cowles’ Looking for Trouble (1941) and Josephine Herbst’s The Starched Blue Sky of Spain and Other Memoirs (1991) as documentaries of struggle. Documentary as a mode of writing and image making reveals dissonance, contradictions and varied perspectives which undermine the official historical record. The three writers, I argue, by republishing their Spanish Civil War (SCW) journalism in book form intended to set their record straight. This was motivated by their commitment to the 1930s struggle and the need to recover much that had been relegated to the margins as human interest stories (HIS), or woman’s angle. This patronizing and denigrating label which was applied to their SCW articles dismissed the documentary value of, what I call, their human experience record (HER), as an affectation of uninformed and class biased women writers. Their documentary texts, much like those of Nancy Cunard, Muriel Rukeyser, Gerda Taro, Gamel Woolsey and Virginia Woolf, were not composed under auspices of the dominant party lines as they eschewed formal membership in political as well as international organizations. In these, they recognized the very same patriarchal constraints and limitations v which they sought to expose using the ‘masters’ tools’ they acquired by belonging, or at least being able to pass for “daughters of educated men” yet remained fully aware that being citizens with passports they were in position to help, but by no means to become the face of the cause(Woolf). The main criticism of The Face of War, Looking for Trouble and The Starched Blue Sky of Spain and Other Memoirs has been that Gellhorn, Cowles and Herbst did not tell the whole truth, that dates and names of key players are missing, and that they had no definite answers about the politics and propaganda in Spain. But these were not the objectives these women set for themselves when they went to Spain and later when they decided to republish their SCW journalism. What Gellhorn, Cowles and Herbst omitted from journalism and their subsequent accounts in book form -- moments of doubt, consternation, idleness -- remains in their archival repositories, the recovery project of which this dissertation aims to initiate. vi Acknowledgements To Jane C. Marcus, my dissertation adviser, I remain in debt and awe for her support, encouragement, generosity and mentorship. It is she who inspired me to put away Hemingway, and turn to writers who have fallen between the cracks of the modernist canon. She gave me a copy of Woolf’s Three Guineas and told me go to the archive and be relentless with their gate keepers and find my material. Without her who is a scholar, feminist, writer, mother, mentor and fighter, this project would have never come to be. Also I would like to express my thanks to the two other members of my Dissertation Committee. To Mario DiGangi, whose feedback on my writing helped me find the path amidst the forest of research, I remain grateful. To Michele Wallace, I am thankful for her insights and for opening her library to me. As most of the research for this project was conducted in various archives, I would like to express my appreciation to all the librarians and staff without whose help I could not have completed my research. To everyone at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Center at Boston University, the JFK Library in Boston, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and the Imperial War Museum in London, I am very grateful. Here I must also thank Alexander Matthews, the executor of Martha Gellhorn’s estate, and Harriet Crawley, Virginia Cowles’ daughter, for their generosity and positive response to my project. To my Graduate Center fellow colleagues and scholars working on incredible women writers, activists, artists and archivists who deserve to be in vogue, I am grateful for their support. Most importantly to my parents, Danuta and Szczepan Bogaccy, for their encouragement, hard work and sacrifices, I am deeply thankful. To my loving husband, Kurt Rode, I am grateful for always being supportive and willing to hear about my research. I dedicate this project to my family. vii Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………..IV Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………VI List of In-Text Citation Abbreviations………………………………………………………IX List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………..X Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1: “A single plot in war”: Martha Gellhorn and Gerda Taro’s Spanish Civil War Documentaries…………………………………………………………....23 Images of Martha Gellhorn in Spain……………………………………………………28 Images of Gerda Taro in Spain………………………………………………………….37 Dressed for War………………………………………………………………………...41 Myth of Gellhorn According to Hemingway……………………………………………47 Making of a Renegade………………………………………………………………..…49 The Face of War………………………………………………………………………….57 Journalist and Private Citizen…………………………………………...……………….67 Exile in Gellhorn’s Fiction……………………………………………………………….74 Taro Record……………………………………………………………………………...82 Chapter 2: The Class Informant in Virginia Cowles’ Looking for Trouble and Gamel Woolsey’s Malaga Burning: An American Woman’s Eyewitness Account of the Spanish Civil War…………………………………………………………………………………………….93 American Girl in Madrid………………………………………………………………99 The Cowles File…………………………………………………………………..……102 Another Wealthy American Woman in Spain- Gamel Woolsey………………………105 Becoming a Class Informant………………………………………………..…………106 Looking for Trouble……………………………………………………………………126 Republican Spain………………………………………………………………………127 A House with a View………………………………………………………………….123 Nationalist Spain………………………………………………………………………135 Committed Documentarian…………………………………………………………….142 viii Chapter 3: “Fighting for Some Beyond”: Josephine Herbst’s The Starched Blue Sky of Spain and Muriel Rukeyser’s Savage Coast……………………………………………..146 Photographs of War Citizens……………………………………………………….150 1930s Struggle……………………………………………………………………...153 Becoming an Active Observer……………………………………………………...158 Personal Politics……………………………………………………………………..163 Special Assignment and Woman’s Angle…………………………………………..165 TSBSOSAOM………………………………………………………………………180 Telling the Truth…………………………………………………………………….187 War and Fiction……………………………………………………………………..197 Afterword: The Afterimage of 1930s …………………………………………………….201 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………...206 ix List of In-Text Citation Abbreviations WSSD We Saw Spain Die TFOW The Face of War TVFTG The View from the Ground AS A Stricken Field LFT Looking for Trouble MB Malaga Burning TG Three Guineas ROG Rope of Gold TSBSOSAOM The Starched Blue Sky of Spain and Other Memoirs TSBSOS The Starched Blue Sky of Spain SC Savage Coast x List of Illustrations Figure 1: Photograph of Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway Spanish Civil War, 1937 or 1938 from JFK Library Figure 2: Robert Merriman and Martha Gellhorn- Spanish Civil War, 1937 or 1938 from JFK Library Figure 3: Photograph of Martha Gellhorn, General Robert Merriman and another officer from JFK Library Fig. 4 Gerda Taro in Paris May 1, 1937. Copyright International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos. Fig. 5 Gerda Taro in University City, Madrid, February 1937. Copyright International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos. Fig. 6 The endpapers from Gellhorn’s The Face of War (1959) Fig. 7 Photograph from Martha Gellhorn Collection with the following inscription on verso “View from Hotel Florida, through the floor, onto the street below, where the mane comes with his donkey to sell oranges to the housewives” Fig. 8 Gerda Taro’s photographs of women in Barcelona 1936 featured in Special Edition of Vu August 29, 1936. Gerda Taro, copyright International Center of Photography. Fig. 9 Gerda Taro’s photograph on cover of Regards June 10, 1937.Gerda Taro, copyright International Center of Photography.