Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Dissertations (2009 -) Dissertations, Theses, and Professional Projects The orbiddeF n Zone Writers: Femininity and Anglophone Women War Writers of the Great War Sareene Proodian Marquette University Recommended Citation Proodian, Sareene, "The orF bidden Zone Writers: Femininity and Anglophone Women War Writers of the Great War" (2018). Dissertations (2009 -). 800. https://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/800 THE FORBIDDEN ZONE WRITERS: FEMININITY AND ANGLOPHONE WOMEN WRITERS OF THE GREAT WAR by Sareene Proodian, B.A., M.A. A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Milwaukee, WI August 2018 ABSTRACT THE FORBIDDEN ZONE WRITERS: FEMININITY AND ANGLOPHONE WOMEN WRITERS OF THE GREAT WAR Sareene Proodian, B.A., M.A. Marquette University, 2018 This dissertation examines the texts of Anglophone women writers from the First World War. Women’s roles in the war—volunteer nurses, ambulance driver, munitions workers, and land girls—gave them the opportunity to leave the protection of their homes and enter the masculine dominated public sphere. In this dissertation, I examine different genres of women’s writing from the war and trace three aspects of simultaneity as these writings explore the new freedoms, and new and old constraints, that the war brought to women. The three principles of simultaneity explain the conflicting emotions women feel over what the war means for them in terms of gains and losses in freedom: the freedom to leave the private sphere and enter the public sphere, offset by the inability adapt to the heavily male-dominated public sphere, one in which rejects women’s entrance; the freedom to be in a place where the ideals of femininity need to be abandoned, offset by the expectation to maintain those ideals; and finally, the freedom to shake off the controlling hands of their families and engage in life-altering and dangerous experiences, while being exposed to traumatizing and dehumanizing consequences. I trace these instances of simultaneity in Vera Brittain’s The Testament of Youth (1933), Irene Rathbone’s We That Were Young (1932), Enid Bagnold’s The Happy Foreigner (1920), Mary Borden’s The Forbidden Zone (1929), and Evadne Price’s Not So Quiet… (1930), concluding with Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas (1938) as she reflects on women’s rights and roles after the Great War. This particular group of authors has not been studied as a group, and by doing so, I hope to demonstrate how they collectively show that, for women, the war liberated, failed to liberate, remade, and destroyed them, all at once. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Sareene Proodian B.A., M.A. There are many people who helped me both professionally and personally throughout this process. First of all, I would like to thank my parents and brother who have been my biggest supporters. They listened as I whined, cried, and, sometimes, cheered. They always supported me, cheered me up, and encouraged me when I needed it most. Next, I want to thank my committee for their time and dedication to this project. Dr. John Curran has been my mentor from my admittance to Marquette University, as my editor at Renascence, professor, and, finally, as my director. Without his guidance, constructive criticism, and enthusiasm, I would not have been able to finish this dissertation. Dr. Julius Ruff allowed me into his World War I class and guided me through the myriad of scholarship on the war. He has also been an invaluable resource for suggestions about the academic job market as well as general scholarship. Dr. Blair enthusiastically came on board late in the process, but her knowledge of and suggestions on trauma theory and gender history were critical to the framework of my argument. I would also like to thank a few others in the English department who helped guide me through this process and I would like to thank them as well: Dr. John Su and Dr. Leah Flack who invested their time in helping me shape this project early on; Dr. Heather Hathaway who always listened, gave sage advice, and was always ready with a box of tissues; Wendy Walsh for generally being amazing and always willing to help; and last, but not least, Dr. Rebecca Nowacek who has been one of the most important figures in my career at Marquette. Working with her at the Ott Memorial Writing Center was one of the best years of my time at Marquette. I will forever be grateful for her support. The librarians and staff at Raynor Memorial Libraries were always helpful, friendly, and encouraging, particularly Elizabeth Gibes, Heather James, Taylor Ralph, Leatha Miles-Edmonson, Kate Otto, Mary Frenn, Chris Pivonka, Molly Larkin, Joan Sommers, and Vicki Meinecke. Finally, I need to thank my Milwaukee family. The Ph.D. process is not an easy one and camaraderie is essential. The following people supported me at my lowest points and cheered with me at my successes: Katy Leedy, Danielle Clapham, Andrew Hoffmann, Tyler Monson, JT Lorino, Lindsay Galan-Skinner, Anna Berg, Patrick Prominski, Matthew Burchanoski, Jackie Derks, Elizabeth Wawrzyniak, Kerry Olivetti, Jake Clapham, Nora Leinen, Nicole Hoffmann, Lyndzi Miller, Kelsey Soya, and my amazing therapist Travis Trott. Thank you all for your love and support. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................. i INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 The Ideal of Victorian Femininity .............................................................................. 6 Women’s War Work, Experiences, and Trauma ...................................................... 15 CHAPTER I...................................................................................................................... 32 CHAPTER II..................................................................................................................... 76 Irene Rathbone’s We That Were Young................................................................... 78 Enid Bagnold’s The Happy Foreigner .................................................................... 106 CHAPTER III ................................................................................................................. 126 Mary Borden’s The Forbidden Zone ...................................................................... 129 Evadne Price’s Not So Quiet… ............................................................................... 143 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................... 172 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................... 198 1 INTRODUCTION The canon of World War I literature is dominated by men’s writing: Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Graves, and Erich Maria Remarque. These authors describe the horrors of trench warfare, mustard gas, and shell shock. Our literary understandings of the first “total war” are dominated by the images these male authors have provided us. The writings of women, particularly the women who served in war as women only could—ambulance drivers, nurses, and munitions workers—have been largely ignored. The popularity of men’s poetry and memoirs immediately after the war solidified men’s experience as the only authentic representation of war. Ernest Hemingway had said that women’s lack of experience “forced them to borrow their evidence from men who had the experience” (Higonnet, “Art and Authenticity” 101). This, of course, is an ironic claim considering the fact that Hemingway’s war experience was the same as 450 women who held the same job in the Belgian, French, and British armies (Lee 2). Yet, the myth of the soldier poet still dominates our collective understanding of the First World War. Paul Fussell’s pivotal study, The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), argues that the literature of the Great War has provided us with a myth of the war, a myth created by the aesthetics (“modern” literary tropes and motifs) of the Great War writers, particularly the poets. Though a few literary critics and historians, like Jay Winter, have criticized Fussell’s text for ignoring the experiences of soldier-writers who found “traditional” 18th and 19th century “images and metaphors” as the only way to accurately depict their experiences, many scholars continue to perpetuate that myth by continuing to study the same literature—the canon of the Great War—in the ways suggested by Fussell (Winter 5). Fussell’s study has played an influential role in the 2 ways Great War literature is read and since he focuses solely on male writers, female writers have been largely ignored. Within the last thirty years, feminist scholars and historians have begun work to recover women’s writing from the war to highlight women’s contribution to art and history. Ariela Freedman, in her 2002 article on Mary Borden, claims that the “myth of the soldier-poet as the privileged chronicler of World War I may have finally been laid to rest” (110), but the general trend contradicts Freedman’s claim. While some scholars have intervened in the Great War literary scholarship by writing about female war authors, literary studies still privilege the male authors and combat literature.1 Several scholars, including Angela Smith, Dorothy