User:LogansPop22/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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But this ongoing historical erasure was countered, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, by the emergence of new professional roles for women at war. The New Woman was first incarnated on the battlefield as the female war nurse.8 This new development was marked in England by the Crimean {{pg|382|383}} War (1853–56) and in the United States by the American Civil War (1861–1865). In part, this new female identity developed in response to the actions of men who were themselves creating a new male identity, that of the war correspondent. William Howard Russell of the London Times is most often cited as the first war correspondent, though other challengers inevitably exist. It was the reporting of Russell and several others, for example Edwin Lawrence Godkin and especially Thomas Chenery, that roused the English public to outrage over the despicable conditions of the British army in the Crimea, especially regarding medical care.9 Florence Nightingale responded to the request for nursing aid (female nurses from France were already on scene), and her “aristocratic background” and “social and political connections” enabled her to overcome the prejudice against sending female nurses to the field (Garrison 12). But the nurses nonetheless suffered under public charges of immodesty and worse—that is, sexual promiscuity and prostitution—because they breached the boundary between home front and war front. They left the private for the public sphere, even though they did so while practicing the traditionally female actions of nurturing and caretaking, often fulfilling specifically domestic functions such as cooking and cleaning. In this regard, Hemingway’s Pilar is ironically like them.

Nightingale and her party of thirty-eight women constituted “an historic deputation which established a precedent for women determined to serve as nurses in military hospitals, and became the model for respectable female Sanitarians [members of the US Sanitary Commission, a volunteer organization established during the American Civil War] as they entered a male environment previously forbidden to them”(Garrison 13). In fact, the precedent was class-inflected, concerning middle- and upper-class women, since female camp-followers had long functioned as nurses in earlier wars, though their actions went unremarked (Mayer 219-23).

Like the female war nurses of the Crimea, those led by Dorothea Dix in the American Civil War largely remained behind the lines, though more often near the battle front. Katherine Prescott Wormely wrote of her experiences, “I see the worst, short of the actual battle-field, that there is to see” (131). Clara Barton responded yet more radically, providing independent nursing and relief services on the battle front itself. The middle- or upper- class status of these “ladies” rendered their wartime actions surprising on the one hand (why weren’t they satisfied rolling bandages in ladies’ aid societies?) yet also protected them to some degree from sexual gossip. As a {{pg|383|384}} mark of over-compensation, they were apostrophized as saints and angels, Nightingale known as “The Angel of the Crimea” and “The Lady with the Lamp,” and Barton as “The Angel of the Battlefield.” They were also apostrophized more domestically as mothers and sisters, which was especially appropriate for the many Roman Catholic nuns who served as nurses in the American Civil War.10 Their vows of chastity and obedience rendered them particularly appealing to male authorities, notably doctors; female doctors were forbidden from serving—a situation that also obtained in World War I, though many female doctors found their way around American Expeditionary Force regulations by attaching themselves to volunteer organizations.11

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 But this ongoing historical erasure was countered, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, by the emergence of new professional roles for women at war. The New Woman was first incarnated on the battlefield as the female war nurse.8 This new development was marked in England by the Crimean {{pg|382|383}} War (1853–56) and in the United States by the American Civil War (1861–1865). In part, this new female identity developed in response to the actions of men who were themselves creating a new male identity, that of the war correspondent. William Howard Russell of the London Times is most often cited as the first war correspondent, though other challengers inevitably exist. It was the reporting of Russell and several others, for example Edwin Lawrence Godkin and especially Thomas Chenery, that roused the English public to outrage over the despicable conditions of the British army in the Crimea, especially regarding medical care.9 Florence Nightingale responded to the request for nursing aid (female nurses from France were already on scene), and her “aristocratic background” and “social and political connections” enabled her to overcome the prejudice against sending female nurses to the field (Garrison 12). But the nurses nonetheless suffered under public charges of immodesty and worse—that is, sexual promiscuity and prostitution—because they breached the boundary between home front and war front. They left the private for the public sphere, even though they did so while practicing the traditionally female actions of nurturing and caretaking, often fulfilling specifically domestic functions such as cooking and cleaning. In this regard, Hemingway’s Pilar is ironically like them.
+Nightingale and her party of thirty-eight women constituted “an historic deputation which established a precedent for women determined to serve as nurses in military hospitals, and became the model for respectable female Sanitarians [members of the US Sanitary Commission, a volunteer organization established during the American Civil War] as they entered a male environment previously forbidden to them”(Garrison 13). In fact, the precedent was class-inflected, concerning middle- and upper-class women, since female camp-followers had long functioned as nurses in earlier wars, though their actions went unremarked (Mayer 219-23).
+Like the female war nurses of the Crimea, those led by Dorothea Dix in the American Civil War largely remained behind the lines, though more often near the battle front. Katherine Prescott Wormely wrote of her experiences, “I see the worst, short of the actual battle-field, that there is to see” (131). Clara Barton responded yet more radically, providing independent nursing and relief services on the battle front itself. The middle- or upper- class status of these “ladies” rendered their wartime actions surprising on the one hand (why weren’t they satisfied rolling bandages in ladies’ aid societies?) yet also protected them to some degree from sexual gossip. As a {{pg|383|384}} mark of over-compensation, they were apostrophized as saints and angels, Nightingale known as “The Angel of the Crimea” and “The Lady with the Lamp,” and Barton as “The Angel of the Battlefield.” They were also apostrophized more domestically as mothers and sisters, which was especially appropriate for the many Roman Catholic nuns who served as nurses in the American Civil War.10 Their vows of chastity and obedience rendered them particularly appealing to male authorities, notably doctors; female doctors were forbidden from serving—a situation that also obtained in World War I, though many female doctors found their way around American Expeditionary Force regulations by attaching themselves to volunteer organizations.11