Beyond the Home Front: Women’s Autobiographical Writing of the Two World Wars

261 Pages·1997·27.061 MB·English

by  Yvonne M. Klein (eds.)

BEYOND THE HOME FRONT
Beyond the Hotne
Front
Women's Autobiographical Writing of
the Two World Wars
Edited by
Yvonne M. Klein
Professor of English
Dawson College, Westnzount, Quebec
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-0-333-67016-3 ISBN 978-1-349-25497-2 (eBook)
DOI10.1007/978-1-349-25497-2
Editorial matter and selection © Yvonne M. Klein 1997
All rights reserved
First published in the U.S.A. in 1997 by
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
Washington Square
New York, N.Y. 10003
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and
made from fully managed and sustained forest sources.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beyond the home front : women's autobiographical writing of the two
world wars I edited by Yvonne M. Klein.
p. em.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-8147-4699-8 (cloth: alk. paper).-ISBN 978-0-8147-4702-5
(pbk. : alk. paper)
I. World War, 1914-1918-Personal narratives. 2. World War,
1939-1945-Personal narratives. 3. World War, 1914-1918-Women.
4. World War, 1939-1945-Women. 5. Women-History-20th century.
I. Klein, Yvonne.
D640.A2B56277 1997
940.4'81--dc21 97-165
CIP
Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
THE GREAT WAR
Mabel Stobart
from Miracles and Adventures 17
Sylvia Pankhurst
from The Home Front 22
Hannah Mitchell
from The Hard Way Up 27
Susanne R. Day
from Round About Bar-le-Duc 30
Gertrude Stein
from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas 34
Flora Sandes
from An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army 40
Florence Farmborough
from Nurse at the Russian Front: A Diary 1914-1918 45
Vera Brittain
from Testament of Youth 51
Enid Bagnold
from A Diary Without Dates 61
Mary Borden
from The Forbidden Zone 65
Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant
from Shadow Shapes: The Journal of a Wounded Woman 76
Kathleen Dayus
from Where There's Life 82
Irene Rathbone
from We That Were Young 87
Grace Morris Craig
from But This Is Our War 91
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
from Crusade for Justice 99
Addie Hunton and Kathryn M. Johnson
from Two Colored Women with the A.E.F. 103
v
vi Beyond the Home Front
Helen Thomas
from World Without End 108
Myfanwy Thomas
from One of These Fine Days 117
Anna Eisenmenger
from Blockade: The Diary of an Austrian Middle-Class
Woman 1914-1924 120
THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Mary Borden
from Journey Down a Blind Alley 127
Vera Brittain
from England's Hour 131
Storm Jameson
from London Calling 137
Victoria Massey
from One Child's War 140
Diana Murray Hill
from Ladies May Now Leave Their Machines 146
Mary Lee Settle
from All the Brave Promises 151
Mary Meigs
'A Lesbian WAVE' 158
Pauli Murray
from Song from a Weary Throat 161
Charlotte Haldane
from Truth Will Out 165
Elena Skrjabina
from Siege and Survival 169
Etty Hillesum
from An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 175
Charlotte Delbo
from Auschwitz and After 183
Sylvia Salvesen
from Forgive, But Do Not Forget 187
Frau Anna Fest
from Frauen,' A Job in its own Category' 193
Judith Magyar Isaacson
from Seed of Sarah 199
Agnes Keith
from Three Came Home 204
Contents vii
Lucie Aubrac
from Outwitting the Gestapo 210
Rita Kuhn
from In the Eye of the Hurricane 217
Gertrude Stein
from Wars I Have Seen 222
Christa Wolf
from A Model Childhood 226
Cristal Banghard-Jost
from Surviving the Fire 231
Muriel Kitagawa
from This Is My Own 238
Joy Kogawa
242
from Obasan
248
Additional Reading
251
Index
Acknowledgments
This anthology came about as I tried to provide readings for the students
in my course 'Women and War.' Although an enormous number of auto
biographical accounts and autobiographically-based fiction by women
about their war experiences has been published over the last eighty
years, virtually none of it remains in print. What is available, though
excellent, gives only a partial and narrowed view of the extent of the
impact of war on women's consciousness in the twentieth century. I
hope that the selections in this volume, drawn from both world wars
and chosen for their inherent literary quality as much as their historical
value, will suggest the range and interest of this body of work and
encourage its recovery.
I should like to thank all those who helped and encouraged me in
this undertaking, most particularly my students in various sections of
my course 'Women and War,' and my friends and colleagues Jessie
Taras, Ann Pearson, Judy Adamson, Dana Hearne and Karla Jay. I am
grateful to my daughters Philippa and Marina for their support and
encouragement. Most of all, however, my gratitude goes to those
women who lived through the world wars of this century and to those
who did not; it is to them that this book is respectfully dedicated.
A NOTE ON THE TEXTS
An effort has been made to present selections with little internal editing.
Where this has proved impractical, elisions have been indicated by three
asterisks. All ellipses and other punctuation are original, though obvious
typographical errors have been silently corrected. The spelling
conventions of the original texts, whether British, American, or
Canadian, have been preserved. My comments are set in a different,
sans serif, typeface.
PERMISSIONS
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to
reprint:
Aubrac, Lucie. Outwitting the Gestapo. Translated by Konrad Bieber
with the assistance of Betsy Wing. © 1993 by the University of
viii
Acknowledgments ix
Nebraska Press. Originally published as Ils partiront dans l'ivresse ©
Editions du Seuil, 1984.
Bagnold, Enid. A Diary Without Dates. London: William Heinemann,
1919. Reprinted by permission of Reed Consumer Books Ltd.
Banghardt-Jost, Cristal. 'In the Stocks'. Surviving the Fire: Mother
Courage and World War II. Seattle: Open Hand Press, 1989. Edited and
translated by Lilo Klug. Reprinted by permission of Open Hand
Press.
Borden, Mary. Journey down a Blind Alley. New York, Harper, 1946.
Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Brittain, Vera. Testament of Youth. London: Macmillan 1933; London:
Virago, 1978. Reprinted with the permission of Paul Berry, her
Literary Executor, Victor Gollancz, Ltd. London, and Virago Little,
Brown.
Brittain, Vera. England's Hour. London: Macmillan, 1941 and Futura
Macdonald & Co, 1981. Reprinted by the kind permission of Paul
Berry, her Literary Executor and Victor Gollancz Ltd., London.
Craig, Grace Morris. But This Is Our War. Toronto: Univ of Toronto
Press, 1981. © Univ of Toronto Press. Reprinted by permission of
Univ of Toronto Press.
Dayus, Kathleen. Where There's Life. London: Virago, 1985. © 1985
Kathleen Dayus. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown.
Farmborough, Florence. A Nurse at the Russian Front: A Diary
1914-1918. Constable, 1974. Reprinted with the kind permission of
the estate of Florence Farmborough.
Haldane, Charlotte. Truth Will Out. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson,
1949. Reprinted by the kind permission of RJM Burghes.
Hillesum, Etty. An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum
1941-1943. Edited by J.G. Gaarlandt. New York: Pantheon, 1984.
Reprinted by the kind permission of Fran<;oise Gaarlandt-Kist.
Isaacson, Judith Magyar. Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor. Chicago:
Univ of Illinois Press, 1990. © 1990 Judith M. Isaacson. Reprinted by
permission of IMG-Julian Bach Literary Agency, Inc.
Jameson, Storm. London Calling. New York: Harper, 1942. ©Renewed
1970 by Storm Jameson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins
Publishers, Inc. and Peter Fraser Dunlop.
Keith, Agnes Newton. Three Came Home. Boston, Little, Brown & Co,
1947. © 1946 Agnes Newton Keith. © renewed. Reprinted by
permission of Little, Brown & Co.
Kitagawa, Muriel. This Is My Own: Letters to Wes & Other Writings on
Japanese Canadians 1941-1948. Edited by Roy Miki. Vancouver:
TalonBooks, 1985. © Muriel Kitagawa. Reprinted by permission of
TalonBooks, Vancouver, Canada.
X Beyond the Home Front
Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. Markham, Ont: Penguin Canada, 1981. © 1991
Joy Kogawa. Reprinted by permission of the author and Doubleday,
a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc.
Massey, Victoria. One Child's War. London: BBC Books, 1978. ©
Victoria Massey. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.
Mitchell, Hannah. The Hard Way Up: The Autobiography of Hannah
Mitchell, Suffragette and Rebel. Edited by Geoffrey Mitchell. London:
Faber & Faber, 1968. © 1977 Reprinted with the permission of Faber
& Faber.
Murray, Pauli. Songs in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage. New
York: Harper, 1970. © Estate of Pauli Murray. Reprinted by
permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc. and Frances Collin,
Literary Agent.
Owings, Alison. Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich. New
Brunswick NJ: Rutgers UP, 1993. © 1993 Alison Owings. Reprinted
by permission of Rutgers UP and the author ..
Sandes, Flora. An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army. London:
Hodder & Stoughton, 1916. Reprinted with the kind permission of
Henry Baker and John deC. Baker.
Settle, Mary Lee. All the Brave Promises: Memoirs of Aircraft Woman 2nd
Class 2146391. New York: Scribners, 1988. © 1966 Mary Lee Settle.©
renewed. Reprinted by the kind permission of the author.
Skrjabina, Elena. Siege and Survival: The Odyssey ofa Leningrader. Edited
and translated by Norman Luxenburg. Carbondale IL: So Illinois
UP, 1971. Reprinted by permission So Illinois UP.
Stein, Gertrude. Tlze Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. New York:
Harcourt, Brace,1933. Reprinted by permission of Random House
and Calmen A. Levin, Esq.
Stein, Gertrude. Wars I Have Seen. New York: Random House, 1945.
Reprinted by the kind permission of Calmen A. Levin, Esq.
Thomas, Helen and Myfanwy Thomas. Under Storm's Wing.
Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1988. Reprinted by permission of
Carcanet Press.
Wells-Barnett, Ida B. Crusade for justice: The Autobiography of Ida B.
Wells. Edited by Alfreda M. Duster. Chicago, Univ of Chicago Press,
1970. Reprinted by permission of Univ of Chicago Press.
Wolf, Christa. A Model Childhood. Translated by Ursule Molinaro &
Hedwig Rappolt. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980. © 1980
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus
& Giroux and Little, Brown.
Every effort has been made to contact all the copyright holders, but if
any have been inadvertently omitted the publishers will be pleased to
make the necessary arrangement at the earliest opportunity.