· “Spies” by Lena Christ
· “Women and Wives” by Ellen LaMotte
· “Women in Battle” by Berta Lask
· “Stragglers in the Dust” by May Miller
Assignment: Read all four articles
Four tremendous stories, all written by women, all published in the 1920s, all having the issues concerning the First World War as a unifying theme. Reading these four stories, there are so many things swirling around the reader’s head; it is cold, the dense fog and the chill is penetrating. How powerful is the hold of a belief in the mind of a woman. How violence results in each story by threat or death. How each of these pieces is a small snapshot in time, with one idea around which the whole story is wound. Threads, there are so many intertwined treads.
In Lena Christ’s “Spies!” the story starts with a little girl who believes that a passing nun is actually a man in disguise. Her telling this to an older woman on the street who also sees the nun starts a chain of rumor that quickly spreads, mostly through women, to a whole group of townspeople who start to follow the nun convincing others along the way that the nun is actually a spy – a man disguised in a religious habit. More people join the group, calling for the nun to be stopped, revealed as a man and a spy, and then punished. As the group grows, calls for violence against the nun grow louder; “smash him to pieces”, “whack him one”, “cut him to ribbons” or even “kill him”. The idea that the nun is actually a man in a habit and a spy is so firmly ensconced in the minds of these women, that the nun runs for her life and seeks safety in a stranger’s apartment. Such “group think”, such a firmly held belief, such violence in word seeking deed.
In Hellen LaMotte’s “Women and Wives” the story starts with the bitter cold of a “Belgian winter” in a small field hospital described by a ward nurse. This woman details the conditions of ramshackle buildings housing wounded soldiers and a seemly ordinary conversation between the residents about their wives. Pictures are handed around the hut and then the descriptions of various types of women are made. LaMotte maintains that there are “lots of women” near the front line but each of them holds a different place in this ecosystem. “Women” in Belgium are sorted into ‘types’ that entertain officers and those that entertain the troops. And how all of them will be no good after the war as wives and mothers, but in the war, they provide a boost to male morale and are an asset to the war effort as they make the soldiers feel better. “Wives” are the problem. Wives remind the men of home, of hearth and of children. They are not allowed near the frontlines because they will adversely affect morale, making the soldiers want to leave the war and go home, rather than stay and serve their duty. The ward nurse is absolutely convinced of this idea that women fall into broad categories of which will ‘help’ the war effort and those that will ‘hinder’. Behind the sharing of the family photographs and the nurse’s running internal monologue, is the threat of the war’s violence as the heavy artillery continues to boom in the background, ever-present. Many of these men will not make it home to their wives.
In Berta Lask’s “Women in Battle” the story starts with a woman dock worker who bundles up and steps out into a cold dawn to join other women dockworkers who are planning a strike. They are all chilled to the bone and hungry, but determined to strike as a way to hasten the end of
the war and hopefully, see their men come home. As she walks through the dark harbor town, she is joined by other women who eventually become a large group who take up their stations near the docks. They are quickly challenged by a group of strike breakers who hurl invectives at them saying that cargo must be unloaded and to stand aside. The women give as good as they get, linking arms and standing in lines four deep to prevent the strike breakers from reaching the cargo area. No strike breaker will get through their lines to unload cargo – these women are determined. The standoff ends with the strike breakers retreating, only to be replaced by the police. A tall Lieutenant calls on them to disperse; heated words are exchanged between the officer and the women who refuse to yield. Swords are drawn; carnage ensues. “It was a long time before the police had finished with the women.”
In May Miller (Sullivan)’s “Stragglers in the Dust” the story is actually a play. In this story the play starts with an older black woman who weekly scrubs clean the brass plates and fixtures in a cemetery, most likely Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. She is absolutely convinced that one of the unknown soldiers buried in a marble crypt is her son, although there is no proof of this – it could be anybody – but she heard the dignitaries at the ceremony of internment and is sure her son is buried there. A local policeman is there to lock up the cemetery and he is joined by an older man who is looking for his son who has been seen in a terrible physical and mental state lurking around the cemetery. This is a great story with so many nuances that the reader is not really sure what is real and what is fable. The son believes that he will join the soldier who is buried in the crypt and that the man is a black soldier who saved his life in France. In the end, the son runs off to the crypt followed by his father and the policeman. They find him near the crypt, dead. Did he join the spirit of the dead soldier entombed in the crypt? Was that the son of the scrub woman? The firmly held conviction of the scrub woman that the soldier buried in the crypt was her son and the death of the other son follows the themes of all four stories.
