Amazon.com Review
In war, the voices of women often go unheard. When they
are heard, they tend to be stereotypical, affectedly feminine: women as survivors, mourners, and sufferers. Literary scholar
Margaret R. Higonnet decries this short-shrifting of women's contributions to war history, challenging the assumption that because women are excluded from combat (and even that assumption turns out to be false), their stories are necessarily secondary, inauthentic, or otherwise not "real."
World War I, in particular, proved significant for women because, as Higonnet points out, "many women ... contributed to the war effort in the expectation that they would gain the right to vote when the war was over." Their efforts were validated; with suffrage later passing in many combatant countries, the war changed the role of women for good. In Lines of Fire, Higonnet has gathered an overwhelming collection of works written by women in the midst of that conflict, works both political and poetic, from fiction to journalism to verse. Well over 100 distinct voices have been assembled, cited, and translated, representing an enormous spectrum of perspectives: a Hungarian countess recalls inspecting Russian POW camps for the Red Cross; an Italian field nurse recounts a grisly amputation; a French novelist describes prisoner prostitutes being mechanically called from their "dorm" by German soldiers ("Charlotte Z..., three chocolate bars ... Louise G..., one mark and a bar.").
The contributors to Lines of Fire include some of the century's best-known women writers--Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Anna Akhmatova--and personalities such as Mata Hari and Jeanette Rankin (America's first female U.S. representative). As a scholarly anthology, Higonnet's work is weighty and worthy, but the quality that may recommend it most is its sheer accessibility. Its nearly 700 pages will pass quickly with a snippet read here and another there--short, memorable trips into the lives of remarkable women living in a remarkable time. --Paul Hughes
From Publishers Weekly
Illustrating the diversity of experience of women in WWI, this eclectic anthology is comprised of brief excerpts from political statements (heavily oriented toward socialist and pacifist beliefs), diaries, letters, published memoirs, short fiction and poetry. Short biographies of the authorsAincluding American, British, French, German, Russian, Hungarian, Romanian, Swedish, Syrian and Indian women, among other nationalitiesAreveal many unknown writers and reflect a massive research effort. The more familiar names include Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Wharton and Katherine Mansfield, whose short fiction appears here. Over 100 pages are devoted to poetry, with notable selections by Anna Akhmatova, Eleanor Farjeon, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Louise Bogan, Amy Lowell and Dame Edith Sitwell. There are gripping eyewitness accounts of the maimed and dying in battle, the rape and pillage of Allied villages by German soldiers and the dire suffering in field hospitals. The shortest entry is suffragette Jeannette Rankin's Congressional "No" vote to U.S. entry into the war. While the literary caliber of the selections varies tremendously, the ensemble certainly proves Higonnet's thesis: that women's suffering on the homefront or in battle has never achieved recognition in the history and literature of war. This anthology provides major redress and also shows why a complete picture of the social and economic effects of war must include the experiences of women. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
