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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Martha Gellhorn came to recognize the dilemma that inevitably resulted when modern men were attracted to modern women for qualities that they {{pg|397|398}} would abjure in a wife, playing it for comedy in the 1945 play she and Virginia Cowles wrote, ''Love Goes to Press'' (originally titled ''Men Must Weep'' and then, with wonderful ambiguity, ''Take My Love Away''). The two female protagonists, Annabelle Jones (based on Gellhorn) and Jane Mason (based on Cowles), are successful war correspondents who report from the front lines of World War II, when “any decent woman would stay at home” according to Philip, the British Public Relations Officer and Jane’s love interest.{{sfn|Gellhorn and Cowles|1995|p=10}} Joe Rogers, war correspondent and Annabelle’s ex-husband, “says war’s no place for a woman” according to his new fiancée, actress Daphne Rutherford.{{sfn|Gellhorn and Cowles|1995|p=14}} She is entertaining the troops rather nearer to the front line than she had expected, and he promises to “bundle [her] up and send [her] straight off to America where it’s safe.”{{sfn|Gellhorn and Cowles|1995|p=14}} | Martha Gellhorn came to recognize the dilemma that inevitably resulted when modern men were attracted to modern women for qualities that they {{pg|397|398}} would abjure in a wife, playing it for comedy in the 1945 play she and Virginia Cowles wrote, ''Love Goes to Press'' (originally titled ''Men Must Weep'' and then, with wonderful ambiguity, ''Take My Love Away''). The two female protagonists, Annabelle Jones (based on Gellhorn) and Jane Mason (based on Cowles), are successful war correspondents who report from the front lines of World War II, when “any decent woman would stay at home” according to Philip, the British Public Relations Officer and Jane’s love interest.{{sfn|Gellhorn and Cowles|1995|p=10}} Joe Rogers, war correspondent and Annabelle’s ex-husband, “says war’s no place for a woman” according to his new fiancée, actress Daphne Rutherford.{{sfn|Gellhorn and Cowles|1995|p=14}} She is entertaining the troops rather nearer to the front line than she had expected, and he promises to “bundle [her] up and send [her] straight off to America where it’s safe.”{{sfn|Gellhorn and Cowles|1995|p=14}} | ||
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- | 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. (82–83)</blockquote> | <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. (82–83)</blockquote> | ||