Foreign Bodies: Military Medicine, Modernism, and Melodrama
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Foreign Bodies: Military Medicine, Modernism and Melodrama Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors White-Stanley, Debra Marie Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 28/09/2021 07:26:03 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/195151 FOREIGN BODIES: MILITARY MEDICINE, MODERNISM, AND MELODRAMA by Debra White-Stanley ________________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2006 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Debra White-Stanley entitled Foreign Bodies: Military Medicine, Modernism, and Melodrama and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy ________________________________________________________Date: May 30, 2006 Dr. Susan White ________________________________________________________Date: May 30, 2006 Dr. Charles Scruggs ________________________________________________________Date: May 30, 2006 Dr. Charles Bertsch ________________________________________________________Date: May 30, 2006 Dr. Caryl Flinn Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. _______________________________________________________ Date: May 30, 2006 Dissertation Director: Dr. Susan White 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: Debra White-Stanley 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people have helped me to realize my dream of earning a doctorate. I owe a debt of thanks to Dr. Susan White, my dissertation advisor, who has helped me at every stage with her compassion and her intellectual gifts. Whenever I think of your talents and your good humor, my faith in the goodness that surrounds us is renewed. I would like to extend my thanks to the professors who generously gave of their time to serve on my committee, including Dr. Charles Scruggs, Dr. Caryl Flinn, and Dr. Charles Bertsch. Each one of them helped me through the challenging process of completing the dissertation and locating an academic job. Dr. Scruggs was a believer in the project from day one. Dr. Flinn believed in me intellectually and in my capacity to write about film sound. Dr. Bertsch always gave the straight skinny on making it through the program. I can only hope to give back to my future students the kind of support that you gave to me. From the beginning of my studies my husband Scott encouraged me to pursue my interests. For all your understanding and love I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Many wonderful people at the University of Arizona have treated me with respect and kindness. I want to thank Dr. Susan Aiken and Meg Lota Brown for being wonderful directors of Graduate Study. Daniel Cooper-Alarcon helped me find a job. Maja-Lisa von Sneidern and Ed Dryden taught me much during an editorship at Arizona Quarterly. Marcia Marma and Chris Kiesel helped me with the logistics of making it through the program. Kathy Armstrong has been a good friend. Bridget Wade inspired me with her no-nonsense approach and graciousness. Barbara Foster provided logistical assistance with navigating the job market. I couldn’t have accomplished this goal without my friends. First I have to thank Joanna Hearne, my mentor in the English program who was always there to lend her support. Thank you Angela Ross, for all the help you have given me. Silvia Jaramillo, thank you for working with me and for being such a wonderful friend for so many years. Audrey Tinkham, thank you for being such a positive presence in my life. Arianne Burford, thank you for the movie nights and the gift of your friendship. Mary Crisafi, you are like an ocean wave: thank you for being such an inspiration. Juliana Piccillo, thank you for your friendship. Brian McCall and Derek Frank, keep being the free spirits and artists that you are. Also thank you to Wendy Burk, Sean Cobb, Angela Mullis, and the many other friends who have helped me along the way. Thank you to my family, especially to Charles and Joyce White, and my brothers Mathew, Daniel and Charlie for their emotional support over the years. Thank you also to the Mathisons and for Auntie Claire, so dear to my heart. 5 DEDICATION To my husband Scott, who has always believed that what I have to say is worth saying. and To Meridel le Sueur, who touched my heart with her faith in others. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………….....8 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………….10 1. UNCANNY CATHERINE BARKLEY AND THE MANY ADAPTATIONS OF A FAREWELL TO ARMS……………………………………………………..………27 Introduction……………………………………………………………….......27 A Farewell to Arms: The “Ugly, Nasty, Brutal” Foreign Body……………32 The Uncanny Old World: 1932’s A Farewell to Arms……………………..51 Restoring Home to the World: Force of Arms (1951)…………………… 60 Selznick’s A Farewell to Arms……………………………………………….68 A ghost of a breast: In Love and War……………………………………….79 2. HOME AT WAR: THE WRITINGS OF MARY BORDEN, ELLEN LA MOTTE, AND HELEN DORE BOYLSTON…………………..…………………………… 94 Introduction…………………………………………………………………...94 “The War is the World”: Borden’s Forbidden Zone....................................96 “Thus the Science of Healing Stood Baffled”: La Motte’s Backwash of War…...............................................................................................................110 Helen Dore Boylston: “It’s frightfully important to be kind”……………118 Cherry Ames: The Military in the Medical………………………………..139 3. UNCANNY SPACE, FILM SOUND, AND THE WORLD WAR II NURSE…….149 Introduction………………………………………………………………….149 Genre Trouble: Melodrama and the World War II film…………………152 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS - Continued So Proudly We Hail: Healing the Nurse through the Narration of Domestic Space…………………………………………………………………………165 Cry Havoc: Surrounding Domestic Space with Uncanny Sound………...175 They Were Expendable: “Dear Old Girl” is Left Behind………………..182 South Pacific: The Uncanny Space of Race………………………………..192 Pearl Harbor (2001): Nursing Nostalgia…………………………………...199 4. VIETNAM-ERA NURSES: “HOTLIPS” TO HANOI JANE………………………206 Introduction………………………………………………………………….206 The Problem of Genre and Gender in the Vietnam War Film…………...208 “The Mermaid Trap”: MASH – the novel………………………………...214 “Screw Her”: Robert Altman’s Margaret Houlihan……………………...221 “Married to the Army”: Margaret Houlihan’s Network Television Feminism …………………………………………………………………….231 “Gene and Katie, May 1968”: Lynda Van Devanter’s Home Before Morning….......................................................................................................241 “The Ghosts of My Past”: American Daughter Gone to War……………256 “Being there”: Witnessing the Atrocities of War………………………….268 AFTERWARD………………………………………………………………………...272 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………278 8 ABSTRACT Foreign Bodies: Military Medicine, Modernism and Melodrama traces how representations of warfare in the modernist novel, girls’ romances, nursing memoirs, and war films dramatize the humanitarian disaster of war through the figure of woman. My analysis focuses on the visual and literary poetics of violence as troped in and through the bodies of combat nurses. The “uncanny” serves as a lens to explore the complex links between gendered war work and the radical transgression of the boundaries of the nation state and the body experienced during wartime. To establish the unique explanatory power of the uncanny for gender issues, I trace how feminist and postcolonial theorists have revised Freud’s analysis of the uncanny. I trace medical metaphors of wounding and infection in the novel and various cinematic adaptations of A Farewell to Arms (1932, 1951, 1957, 1996). I read the letters and diaries of World War I nurse Agnes von Kurowsky against the censored memoirs of American nurses Mary Borden and Ellen La Motte. I show how the uncanny aesthetic adopted by Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms is subverted by these women writers. I explore how these uncanny aesthetics also manifest in adolescent nursing romances from Sue Barton to Cherry Ames. With the onset of World War II, I trace how the discourse of foreign bodies in relation to the metaphor of malaria in the