While reading Since You Went Away by Judy Barrett Litoff and David C. Smith this week I felt there was a lot that I could use for my topic but I didn’t know exactly how to frame everything. After the class discussion today I was able to formulate an idea, mostly from the V-Mail advertisement below.
The advertisement shows a woman, rocking her baby, cooking, and writing a letter to a man at the front. The woman is going in every direction and I think this connects well with the letters written by women. The women in the letters write about juggling many things; families; jobs; emotions; stress. Just like the advertisement, women were expected to write letters to the men at the front and be a little escape and connection for the men. Yet, what about the women, where was their escape? In one letter Kay writes to Jim that…
“there are two sides to it (p. 52)”
“It” is referring to the two sides of war, the home front and the front lines. Kay understood that Jim faced the violent side of war, but she faced with everything else. Kay was pressured by the government and society to stay cheerful for Jim, but she experienced horrible things as well.
Women are pressured into this position of ‘nurturer” and they are supposed to deal with everything on their own and support the men in their life. This is a prefect example of socially constructed gender roles. The men are at war, they are competitive, aggressive, violent, heroic. While the women stay at home and wait. Yet what does this waiting entail? Pain, anxiety, uncertainty, loneliness, depression etc. Not to mention any external factors that affect women as well.
WWII is often romanticized mostly because of the “heroic” man is off to fight for the good of humanity and his wife stays a loyal wife and citizen at home. Death looms near and it makes every moment a couple spends together dramatic. Along with this romantic notion about wartime the gender roles of men and women are also romanticized because of this these gender roles are thought to have value in our society, even today.
While I was reading the military section of the blog Feministing I found this article about women soldiers and PTSD. The article not only addresses the struggles of veterans, but the struggle of women veterans because they are mostly alone.
“Indeed, at home, after completing important jobs in war, women with the disorder often smack up against old-fashioned ignorance: male veterans and friends who do not recognize them as “real soldiers”; husbands who have little patience with their avoidance of intimacy; and a society that expects them to be feminine nurturers, not the nurtured.”
Exactly what women are revered for, their nurturing qualities, is what destroys women. This is very different from women waiting for their loved ones to return home from the front. Now women are the ones returning home. Yet, when they return home are they treated with the same nurturing qualities that they are expected to give their male counter parts. Just like the women of the WWII letters, these women are left alone to deal with their problems based on their forced gender roles.
Damien Cave. A Combat role, And Anguish, Too
October 31, 2009
NYTimes.com
3 comments
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November 6, 2009 at 11:12 PM
Family Matters
I thoroughly agree with your blog and think this a topic people don’t touch on enough. Although, I do think that as time has gone on, more people have started to recognize a woman’s side of the war. I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little guilty of forgetting about the women as well. But I mean, come on. When did they ever teach us about the struggles the families left at home had in history class?? All we ever heard about was the men fighting in the war and how hard the war was on them, and how awful drafting was. Not one teacher or professor I’ve ever had until this class, brought up the thoughts, feelings and struggles war wives, girlfriends, moms, lovers, and friends had during the war. I no a girl who’s husband is fighting in the Iraq War, and she’s at home with their two children. Everyday on facebook, her status updates pop up onto my homepage, reminding me how much she misses her soldier, or counting down the days until the next time she’s going to hear his voice. Yes, technology has changed since WWII but I do no believe that the means of communicating have made it any easier on the soldiers or their loved ones.
November 7, 2009 at 12:10 AM
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November 17, 2009 at 9:56 AM
clarkp
This ad is definitely a far cry from the images of women in service today including the documentary Lioness. In writing a blog recently, I was dishearted to learn how far behind the military has been in keeping up with changing face, gender, and therefore needs of women in service.