User:LogansPop22/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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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

Nightingale, Dix, and Barton are the direct ancestors of later female war nurses, among whom are the VADs (that is, the Voluntary Aid Detachment, a British service auxiliary) like Hemingway’s Lady Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises and Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms, and also like American Red Cross nurse Agnes von Kurowsky. To combat the potentially salacious reputation of female war nurses, they labored under strict rules of appearance and behavior. Dix required her nurses to be middle-aged and “plain to the point of ugliness” (Garrison 18). American Red Cross nurses serving in World War I were “forbidden to carry on serious romances, even to be alone with a gentleman caller” (Villard and Nagel 239).

Hemingway reflects these rules in ''A Farewell to Arms'' when Catherine de- scribes the restrictions on the nurses’ behavior at the hospital in Gorizia, only a mile from the front: “The Italians didn’t want women so near the front. So we’re all on very special behavior. We don’t go out”(25). Though the rules are more relaxed at the American Red Cross Hospital in Milan, Frederic notes that “they would not let us go out together when I was off crutches because it was unseemly for a nurse to be seen unchaperoned with a patient who did not look as though he needed attendance” (117-18). Increased personal freedom resulted inevitably, however, in increased sexual freedom, as represented in the actions of Catherine Barkley and Brett Ashley; indeed, Clara Barton’s intimate relationship with the married Colonel John Elwell, quartermaster for the Department of the South, is illustrative in this regard.12 Of course, the same point about increased sexual freedom might be made about male soldiers. But only the female nurses labored under moral opprobrium, whether external or introjected, as Hemingway represents. It is no accident that the name of the sexually promiscuous Brett rhymes with that {{pg|384|385}}

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 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
+Nightingale, Dix, and Barton are the direct ancestors of later female war nurses, among whom are the VADs (that is, the Voluntary Aid Detachment, a British service auxiliary) like Hemingway’s Lady Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises and Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms, and also like American Red Cross nurse Agnes von Kurowsky. To combat the potentially salacious reputation of female war nurses, they labored under strict rules of appearance and behavior. Dix required her nurses to be middle-aged and “plain to the point of ugliness” (Garrison 18). American Red Cross nurses serving in World War I were “forbidden to carry on serious romances, even to be alone with a gentleman caller” (Villard and Nagel 239).
+Hemingway reflects these rules in ''A Farewell to Arms'' when Catherine de- scribes the restrictions on the nurses’ behavior at the hospital in Gorizia, only a mile from the front: “The Italians didn’t want women so near the front. So we’re all on very special behavior. We don’t go out”(25). Though the rules are more relaxed at the American Red Cross Hospital in Milan, Frederic notes that “they would not let us go out together when I was off crutches because it was unseemly for a nurse to be seen unchaperoned with a patient who did not look as though he needed attendance” (117-18). Increased personal freedom resulted inevitably, however, in increased sexual freedom, as represented in the actions of Catherine Barkley and Brett Ashley; indeed, Clara Barton’s intimate relationship with the married Colonel John Elwell, quartermaster for the Department of the South, is illustrative in this regard.12 Of course, the same point about increased sexual freedom might be made about male soldiers. But only the female nurses labored under moral opprobrium, whether external or introjected, as Hemingway represents. It is no accident that the name of the sexually promiscuous Brett rhymes with that {{pg|384|385}}