Gender and warfare in the twentieth century

Textual representations

Angela K. Smith

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780719065750
  9780719065743
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526130709
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Social Sciences

Gender and warfare in the twentieth century is a collection of exciting, accessible and very readable essays that span the twentieth century, exploring the ways in which men and women have both represented warfare, and represented themselves as participants in warfare. A range of contributors from different disciplines explore these representations by examining a wide variety of sources: fiction, film, personal diaries, memoirs, non-fiction, letters, oral testimonies and more. The collection ranges from the trenches of the Western Front, through the shell-shocked inter-war years, the civil war in Spain and the disparate battle fronts of World War Two, to the complexities of Vietnam and the late century Hollywood workings and re-workings of these conflicts. The focus on gendered readings provides a thread that binds these essays together to create a comprehensive and interesting picture of the legacy of twentieth-century warfare at the beginning of the new millennium.

Table of contents

• Gender and warfare in the twentieth century: Textual representations
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• I ‘What part have I now that you have come together?’ Richard Aldington on war, gender and textual representation: Caroline Zilboorg
• 2 Shell-shocked in Somerville: Vera Brittain’s post-traumatic stress disorder: Andrea Peterson
• 3 Gender, war and writing in Aldous Huxley’s ‘Farcical History of Richard Greenow’: Erik Svarny
• 4 How gender serves Trotskyism: the Spanish Civil War in Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom: Alan Munton
• 5 Clothes and uniform in the theatre of fascism: Clemence Dane and Virginia Woolf: Jenny Hartley
• 6 Women and the battle of the Atlantic 1939-45: contemporary texts, propaganda, and life writing: G. H. Bennett
• 7 ‘The best disguise’: performing femininities for clandestine purposes during the Second World War: Juliette Pattinson
• 8 The war at home: family, gender and post-colonial issues in three Vietnam War texts: Marion Gibson
• 9 Chicken or hawk? Heroism, masculinity and violence in Vietnam War narratives: Angela K. Smith
• 10 Elite women warriors and dog soldiers: gender adaptations in modern war films: Jeffrey Walsh
• Select bibliography
• Index