Writing War: Fiction, Gender & Memory
Encyclopedia
Writing War: Fiction, Gender, & Memory is a 1991 text on women authors
, war stories
, and literary criticism
by American
professor Lynne Hanley
.
, examines women's war stories. She argues that fiction organizes, shapes, and ultimately creates perception, stating in her introduction that, "our fictions have power, they shape our memories of the past and they create memories of pasts we have never had, of experiences not even remotely like anything that has ever happened to us. And these narratives of exotic experiences may have the most power over us of all, because we can't challenge their authenticity with the evidence of our own senses." She thus begins her text with a critique of Paul Fussell
's The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) as too narrow in its vision of war (focusing primarily on the experiences of male combatants). In contrast, through the juxtaposition of narrative and criticism (in particular, analysis of Virginia Woolf
's Three Guineas
and works by Joan Didion
and Doris Lessing
), Hanley offers portraits of women which she argues will "displace the soldier as the mouthpiece of war [...] the stories assume that women, children, noncombatants, and the enemy have an experience of war as much worth telling and remembering as is the story of any soldier."
notes that "Hanley's advisors warned her that mixed genres will not work. But this book does work. It is a beautifully written, thoughtful, combination of essays and stories about the effects of war on women and children [...] the essays and the stories are a pleasure to read. Combined they offer a wonderful antidote to the bellicosity and rejoicing in battle that often color the reminiscences found in war literature."
Women's writing in English
Women's writing as a discrete area of literary studies is based on the notion that the experience of women, historically, has been shaped by their gender, and so women writers by definition are a group worthy of separate study...
, war stories
War novel
A war novel is a novel in which the primary action takes place in a field of armed combat, or in a domestic setting where the characters are preoccupied with the preparations for, or recovery from, war...
, and literary criticism
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
professor Lynne Hanley
Lynne Hanley
Lynne Hanley is an American feminist author and literary critic. She is currently Professor of Writing and Literature at Hampshire College.-Background:...
.
Overview
Hanley's text, which intertwines fiction, memoir, and literary criticismLiterary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
, examines women's war stories. She argues that fiction organizes, shapes, and ultimately creates perception, stating in her introduction that, "our fictions have power, they shape our memories of the past and they create memories of pasts we have never had, of experiences not even remotely like anything that has ever happened to us. And these narratives of exotic experiences may have the most power over us of all, because we can't challenge their authenticity with the evidence of our own senses." She thus begins her text with a critique of Paul Fussell
Paul Fussell
Paul Fussell is an American cultural and literary historian, author and university professor. His writings cover a variety of genres, from scholarly works on eighteenth-century English literature to commentary on America’s class system...
's The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) as too narrow in its vision of war (focusing primarily on the experiences of male combatants). In contrast, through the juxtaposition of narrative and criticism (in particular, analysis of Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
's Three Guineas
Three Guineas
Three Guineas is a book-length essay by Virginia Woolf, published in June 1938.-Background:Although Three Guineas is a work of non-fiction, it was initially conceived as a "novel-essay" which would tie up the loose ends left in her earlier work, A Room of One's Own...
and works by Joan Didion
Joan Didion
Joan Didion is an American author best known for her novels and her literary journalism. Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation...
and Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
), Hanley offers portraits of women which she argues will "displace the soldier as the mouthpiece of war [...] the stories assume that women, children, noncombatants, and the enemy have an experience of war as much worth telling and remembering as is the story of any soldier."
Reviews
B. Adler in Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries argues that "Hanley's short stories, her war literature, cover the impact and aftermath of war. The stories movingly express fear, dislocation, monstrousness. Both essays and stories are accessible, a clear explication of an important feminist critical stance. Highly recommended." Arlene Kaplan Daniels in SignsSigns (journal)
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society is a feminist academic journal established in 1975. It is published quarterly by the University of Chicago Press. Signs publishes articles on women's studies.- See also :* Cultural studies...
notes that "Hanley's advisors warned her that mixed genres will not work. But this book does work. It is a beautifully written, thoughtful, combination of essays and stories about the effects of war on women and children [...] the essays and the stories are a pleasure to read. Combined they offer a wonderful antidote to the bellicosity and rejoicing in battle that often color the reminiscences found in war literature."
External links
- Writing War: Fiction, Gender and Memory. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991.