In the mass is the one In the thousand drowned, In the hundred shot, In the five crashed. Is the one.
Over the news Falls the shadow Of the one. We cannot weep At tragedy for millions But for one.
In the mind For the mind’s life The one lives on. *
This poem by Ida Procter is emblematically entitled The One and testifies to the
undeniable truth that behind women’s written works and records about war—in this case, the Second World War—always lie dramatic fragments of personal war tragedies. As Sappho had
beautifully and effectively said in her well-known lyric quoted in the Introduction, women have generally been concerned much more with their feelings-love towards their men, their families and their children above all—than with great but rather intangible ideals such as honour, heroism, bravery. The perennial value of such typically “feminine” qualities—self- sacrifice, abnegation, maternal care—has been shown during the development of our history in a long series of famous and obscure deeds which fill our common imagination. This is the reason why the female archetypes I have referred to seem to retain irrefutable validity until contemporary times. Far from emphasising the fixity of the old male-chauvinist attitude characterising a large part of the Western frame of mind, the qualities and the feminine features above-mentioned, in my opinion, assert women’s strength and moral greatness rather than their supposed subjection to male aspects and ideals.
A striking as well as unsuspected consequence of the Second World War character of “totality” has been women’s assertion of their intelligence and capacities, which enabled them to live the conflict both as tragedy and as a means to demonstrate their qualities. Although this second element might apparently be regarded as secondary to the human loss and destruction caused by war, in the long term, it has helped women on their way to emancipation. Through the testimonies I have taken into account, it is clear that both in Britain and in Italy the circumstances of war gave strong support to women’s entry in the working field. Even if this process had started already during and after the Great War, it was with the second conflict and its terrible aftermath that it proceeded towards rapid and unremitting development, not only in more “modern” countries like Britain but also in more conservative societies like Italy.
A further feature worth underlining is the active female participation in martial enterprises: in Britain this assumed the well-planned structures of volunteering and conscription, in Italy the heroic features of fighting and dying in the anonymous troops of the partisans. Together with those extreme forms, women’s involvement in war has meant their working away from home in all kinds of jobs, their careful care of sons and parents under the menace of enemy attacks, their feeding and clothing of children and elderly people, their exploiting of all possible resources.
During the frantic activities of wartime, women had also the chance of reflecting about themselves and the roles which they had been playing in society and which they were determined to play afterwards. Although some of them, in Britain, Italy and presumably in the rest of Europe and in the United States, wanted to revert to their established places of “angels in the house”, a large majority preferred to have a job outside. War had provided them, especially the younger generation, with self-esteem and self-assurance that now they were eager to demonstrate and employ for their own sake and for the sake of society.
As a last point, I should mention the increasing awareness of intellectual power felt by women: the Second World War, carrying on a process which had started with the First, offered them the possibility—normally given more to male intellectuals than to female—to express their thoughts and personal opinions, especially about war itself, through written words: the menace to collective security, the sense of precariousness which deeply characterised wartime, has induced women also to consider seriously the meaning of their own existence. For it is true that in the face of something as destructive as war—something able to destroy even the act of “thinking” itself—the problem remains the significance one must confer on things. In this regard, it is worth stressing that the “personal” war described
and commented on by a woman writer in the above lyric. The One, is accompanied by other
female poets’ views on war as a common destiny of violence and destruction for the whole of mankind. The claim of intellectual participation in history has been expressed by some female authors, who have become universal consciences and “voices” of human sorrow—tasks which, apart from a few exceptions, have been traditionally confined to the male sphere. Emblematic of this intellectual growth are some examples of literary productions in which women' expressed their opinions and sentiments on war as a common tragedy rather than as a
collection of individual dramas. In poems like Auschwitz^ No Need fo r Nuremberg^
^ Elizabeth Wyse, in Reilly, p. 129. ^ Erica Marx, in Reilly, p. 86.
Hiroshima,^ British women writers manifested the development of female concern about major issues linked with war; on the Italian side, an analogous attitude found its
representative in Elsa Morante’s song, Canzone finale della Stella gialla delta pure La
carlottina, where the famous writer condemned the Nazi persecution of the Jews.^
My conclusion is to ascribe to women’s merit the strength and the bravery they have shown during the Second World War as well as their making of that “performance” the beginning of their new route inside society and its codes. Nevertheless, in my opinion women are still aware of their “life-givers” role which, generally speaking, renders them messengers and supporters of peace in the face of war and violence.
Mary Beadnell, in Reilly, p. 15.