Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Not So Quiet... by Helen Zenna Smith

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Not So Quiet...by Helen Zenna Smith writes about middle and upper-class
British women's experiences of "doing their bit during World War I, 1915.
In the midst of monstrous bombings, guns echoing in the distance, and piles of wounded men, the middle and upper-class British women are "doing their bit" for their country among the French frontlines during World War I. In Not So Quiet... by Helen Zenna Smith, it is 1915 and 21-year-old Smithy is one of those women enduring the horror of being a nurse in the frontlines. Not So Quiet... is one of the most absolutely captivating and gruesome book I have ever encountered!

This novel explores the troubling conflict between the home and front, especially a women's identity transitioning between their Victorian Angel role at home to the savior and nurturing nurse in the front.

To further understand this book through a certain lens, I was introduced to an essay called "Constructions of "Home," "Front," and Women's Military Employment in First-World-War-Britain: A Spatial Interpretation"
by Krisztina Robert where she discusses the "front" and "home."

There is a traditionalist and modernist representation of both sites. As Robert puts it, the traditionalist representation of "home" is the female utopia where it is the domestic setting for women who must remain here to keep the fire burning and think of the soldiers. The "front" is depicted as a place of destruction, nightmare, and exclusively for men. On the other hand, the modernist saw the "home" as a second front where women have to step out of their domestic setting and play active roles in the conflict. The "front" in modernist terms describes the war zone as heterogeneous in gender terms, which shows that women are integral parts of the "front" and not out of place.

Zenna Smith not only does tremendously well on illustrating the traumatizing experience of being in war but also on showing the collision of both representation of the sites. Perhaps both representations are not as distinct as they're made out to be. Through Smithy's transition when entering the "front" and "home," and with each a different mindset, both definitions become a blur. 

Going into the front, women are to be nurses, however, they too are affected and traumatized by the war equally to men. They are to return home, take pride of their in "doing their bit," and then continue the role of a Victorian Angel despite the traumatic events they have experienced. This is the case as to why Smithy's perception of her virtues are different when she enters each site because each site has different standards she feels she must abide to.

In a book I read called, Fighting Forces, Writing Women: Identity and Ideology in the First World War by Ouditt Sharon, she says that women are conflicted between whether or not they're finally stripping their role of being just a woman and finally being masculine by going out into the front where it's supposedly exclusively for men, or if their feminine role is being utilized in the front to nurture these wounded men only, as they similarly would at home.

I've never quite had an affectionate interest for history or war literature. They just bore me, to be honest. However, Zenna Smith's book is quite the gem. Although, the mothers in this novel make me just want to pull my hair out! They made me so angry! You will definitely understand if you read it. Even though they're total a-holes, I think they were a really great part of the story, especially to make it heart wrenching for the readers! Anyway...following there is an afterword by Jane Marcus to further understand this novel, which is very insightful!

I implore all you lovers and smellers of books to check Zenna Smith's Not So Quiet... out! With her amazing storytelling, narration, and plethora of descriptive diction it is indeed not so quiet. I mean...that imaginary exhibition from the battlefield Smithy initiates in the story is just perfection, it is such an award-winning scene!

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