The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Hemingway and Women at the Front: Blowing Bridges in The Fifth Column, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Other Works: Difference between revisions
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While the male correspondents are satisfied to rewrite military communiques, Annabelle and Jane show remarkable ingenuity in finding ways to get to the front so as to report the action firsthand. However, their efforts are denigrated, Joe Rogers repeatedly complaining, to the widespread agreement of the other men, that they “run this lousy war on sex-appeal.”{{sfn|Gellhorn and Cowles|1995|p=45, 49}} As Sandra Spanier notes in her Afterword to the play: | While the male correspondents are satisfied to rewrite military communiques, Annabelle and Jane show remarkable ingenuity in finding ways to get to the front so as to report the action firsthand. However, their efforts are denigrated, Joe Rogers repeatedly complaining, to the widespread agreement of the other men, that they “run this lousy war on sex-appeal.”{{sfn|Gellhorn and Cowles|1995|p=45, 49}} As Sandra Spanier notes in her Afterword to the play: | ||
<blockquote> The fact is, of course, that being female is a definite occupational handicap for a war correspondent, and both Jane and Annabelle know it. But because their womanhood is something that they have never been allowed to forget, they have great fun flaunting it. With a perfect understanding of the currency of power, they turn a handicap to their own advantage in repeated acts of subversion that the authors exploit to comic effect. | <blockquote> The fact is, of course, that being female is a definite occupational handicap for a war correspondent, and both Jane and Annabelle know it. But because their womanhood is something that they have never been allowed to forget, they have great fun flaunting it. With a perfect understanding of the currency of power, they turn a handicap to their own advantage in repeated acts of subversion that the authors exploit to comic effect.{{sfn|Spanier|1995|p=82-83}} </blockquote> | ||
In considering the likely outbreak of World War II, Gellhorn had noted of her own plan to once again take up the profession of war correspondence, “It is going to be a serious drawback to be a woman, it always has been but probably worse now than ever” (''Letters'' 90). | In considering the likely outbreak of World War II, Gellhorn had noted of her own plan to once again take up the profession of war correspondence, “It is going to be a serious drawback to be a woman, it always has been but probably worse now than ever” (''Letters'' 90). | ||