Introduction: Fighting the People's
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Notes Introduction: Fighting the People’s War 1. “Blitzkrieg” is a German compound meaning “lightning war.” The term was typically not part of official German military terminology during the war (see Frieser and Greenwood). Instead, the word became central to Allied descriptions of German bombing, beginning with its introduction to the English-speaking world in a 25 September 1939 article in Time magazine describing the German invasion of Poland. 2. Some of these scholars have taken a cultural studies approach to the literature of the Second World War, although their central arguments differ substan- tially from mine. See in particular Hartley, Lassner, Plain, and Schneider. 3. Unlike Northern Ireland, the Irish Free State, renamed Eire in 1937, remained neutral during the Second World War. Eamon de Valera, the Prime Minister of Eire, declared a state of Emergency during the war, but he also remained firm in keeping the country neutral; Eire was the only nation in the British Empire that refused to join the Allied side. Nevertheless, 124,500 men and 58,000 women left Eire for Northern Ireland or other parts of the United Kingdom during the war. Of these, 38,544 volunteered for the British armed forces; this figure includes 7000 deserters from the Irish Army. Several thousand more already living in the United Kingdom also enlisted. In 1948, Eire became the Republic of Ireland (Dear 324–5). 4. These raids on Germany began with regular area bombing by the RAF from mid-1941 onward and intensified in January 1943 when the RAF began bombing with the goal, set at the Casablanca conference, of “weakening Germany to the point where it could not effectively repel an invasion” (Dear 20). 5. See Dear 1252 (V-weapons) and 1136 (total destruction). Estimates of civilian casualties differ depending on the source. The Oxford Companion to World War II draws its information from the publications of the UK Official History Series. 6. See Titmuss, who asserts, “Not until over three years had passed was it possible to say that the enemy had killed more soldiers than women and children” (335–6). 7. In all, 264,443 British soldiers were killed during the war, and 277,077 were wounded (Dear 1151). 8. The Belseys took steps to protect their daughter in mid-October when Mrs Belsey began to consider moving into a country hostel with baby Charlotte; by mid-November, they had left London and were living in Huntingdon. 9. See Chapman for a detailed description of how the MOI and the film indus- try in Britain struggled, particularly at the beginning of the war, to articulate the manner in which wartime propaganda should work to establish the idea of a People’s War. 189 190 Notes 10. See Rose for an excellent summary of the prewar economic conditions that made promises of social equality in wartime so appealing (29–31). 11. Lassner’s British Women and “The Timeless Elsewhere” both acknowledge that little social change actually occurred, but they do contend that “British women writers interpret their World War II experiences in ways that unset- tle our conceptions of political differences, social change and gender. As they show again and again, even as ‘the discourse of wartime social policy worked to limit gender disruption’, their own literary discourse very often resisted traditional gender relations and expressed a yearning for social change” (British Women 8, quotes Higonnet 8). 12. For treatments of one or two closely related social or political issues, see in particular Bourke, Calder (Myth), Chapman, Dawson, Hartley (Millions), Lassner (British Women), McLaine, K. Morgan, Plain, Saywell, Schneider, and Summerfield (Women Workers). For treatments of one literary genre, see Aldgate and Richards, Bergonzi, Calder and Sheridan, Cawelti and Rosenberg, Gledhill and Swanson, Hewison, Klein, Lant, Mengham and Reeve, J. Palmer, Panek, Sheridan, Summerfield (Reconstructing), and Symons. For treatments of a single author, see Barnard, I. Christie (Arrows), Corcoran, Diemert, Glendinning, Jordan, Martin, Mengham (Idiom), Pollard, and Tindall. 13. See Chapter 3 of Stonebridge’s Writing for a compelling psychoanalytic analysis of Henry Moore’s wartime art. 14. The question for this September 1942 Directive was as follows: “What do you feel about the position of women in this country to-day? What altera- tions or reforms, if any, would you like to see?” 15. Harrisson was a social anthropologist who had spent the years before the war studying the “savages” in Borneo, and he returned to England wanting to study the working class in the same way. He shared with Madge and Jennings the surrealist desire to “ ‘add to the social consciousness of the time’ by presenting facts without bias and making them generally available” (Calder, “M-O” 128). The emphasis on facts and Harrisson’s commitment to social anthropology are even more closely related to the documentary than to the surrealist movement. 16. Quoted from a letter written by Jennings, Charles Madge, and Tom Harrisson to the New Statesman on 30 January 1937. 17. For criticism of Mass-Observation, see in particular Marshall and Jahoda. 18. See Stanley for statistics about the demographic composition of the panel. 19. Mass-Observation head archivist, Dorothy Sheridan, has confirmed this fact in email correspondence and conversation (2008). 1 Mobile Women in Elizabeth Bowen’s War Writing 1. The wartime stories include “Love” (1939), “No. 16” (1939), “Attractive Modern Homes” (1941), “Careless Talk” (1941), “The Easter Egg Party” (1941), “The Girl with the Stoop” (1941), “In the Square” (1941), “Look at All Those Roses” (1941), “A Love Story” (1941), “Oh, Madam ...” (1941), “A Queer Heart” (1941), “Summer Night” (1941), “Sunday Afternoon” (1941), “Tears, Notes 191 Idle Tears” (1941), “Unwelcome Idea” (1941), “A Walk in the Woods” (1941), “The Cheery Soul” (1942), “Green Holly” (1944), “The Happy Autumn Fields” (1944), “The Inherited Clock” (1944), “Mysterious Kôr” (1944), “The Demon Lover” (1945), “I Hear You Say So” (1945), “Ivy Gripped the Steps” (1945), “Pink May” (1945), and “Gone Away” (1946). Bowen also published the following novels before the war: The Hotel (1927), The Last September (1929), Friends and Relations (1931), To the North (1932), The House in Paris (1935), and The Death of the Heart (1938). After the war, she published three more novels between 1955 and 1969: A World of Love (1955), The Little Girls (1964), and Eva Trout (1969). 2. Most critics recognize Bowen’s fascination with these parallels between the individual and history; Bowen’s Court, they argue, consistently describes the public–private relationship as an issue of national identity. 3. See also Caserio, Dukes, Ellmann, Kapoor, and Mengham, “Broken Glass.” 4. See also Sarisalmi, who argues, “What cannot be uttered or represented, what is left out of a story, the entailed but unknowable other of the dis- course, blurs and confuses the signifying system of Bowen’s text. The mon- olithic dominant discourse is radically transgressed by what it excludes, by the discourses of silence and madness, as is the case with Louie in The Heat of the Day” (153). 5. See also Watson. 6. The question asked in this January 1943 Directive was as follows: “Has your attitude to any of the following things changed at all since the war began, and if so in what ways has it changed: Please answer this question in some detail, and where possible trace your attitude through the war: (a) money (b) clothes (c) security (d) people in different social classes from yourself (e) sex (f) politics (g) conscientious objectors.” 7. The women themselves often complied with these social codes and expecta- tions. A Mass-Observer stationed in the WAAF noticed in 1941 that at a call-up meeting for 42 new WAAFs, class-based social cliques developed quickly and naturally. See M-O A: TC 32/3/E, “Letter.” 8. Middle-class women certainly could and did volunteer to work in the muni- tions factories, but their cases were the exception to this general rule. 9. According to Calder, “Those who opted for the [auxiliary services] would not be posted to ‘combatant duties’ unless they volunteered for them. In any case, the tasks of the ATS and the WAAFs were clerical and culinary rather than Amazonian, though the use of women at AA [Anti-Aircraft] batteries was becoming a commonplace” (PW 268). 10. The quoted report is from M-O A: FR 2059: “Will the Factory Girls Want to Stay Put or Go Home?” March 1944. 11. The following year, the observer was even more explicit about the goals of the WAAFs: “And what is this thing we’re all after? Obviously, a man. Preferably an officer or a sergeant-pilot. I should say that about 85% of our conversation is about men, dances (where we meet men), etc. etc.: 15% about domestic and shop matters: and a negligible percentage on other matters” (M-O A: FR 1029, 1942: 3). 12. See the description of Reaveley’s circumstances in the Introduction. 13. See Saywell 13. 192 Notes 14. Rose describes the label of “good-time girls” more thoroughly: “The women and young girls who were perceived to be straying from convention and who were overtly seeking entertainment and pleasure were given the ironic label of ‘good-time girls’ or ‘good timers.’ The term ‘good-time girl’ was omnipresent in the language of moral alarm and was used to describe women who were irresponsible – who failed to consider their commitments to others” (80). 2 Immobile Women in Rosamond Lehmann’s War Writing 1. Assistant Archivist Sarah Charlton from the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England, helped me by searching the records of this period for evidence of bombing near Bourne End. 2.