Valiant Archer wrote:I am currently reading The Women Who Wrote the War by Nancy Caldwell Sorel, about women war correspondents during WWII. My reading time has been rather sparse this past week, and the pace is a bit slow anyhow, but I'm about a quarter-way through now. It's interesting, but also disheartening: practically every (perhaps every!) new correspondent has been introduced with a bit of biography that includes this unhappy marriage or that love affair. :/
Actually given the subject and the timeframe, I'd rather expect that sort of thing. If I were a history teacher, which, thankfully, I'm not, I'd be reading that book from the perspective of what they did, which opinions they were expressing in their war-correspondence, and what wars they were reporting on. I'd be asking, for instance, whether these women war-correspondents were entirely from America, a neutral nation until Pearl Harbour, from other neutral nations, or were they from next-door Canada, UK, New Zealand or Australia? Were there any from Axis powers? From refugees or from occupied countries? Does being a war correspondent include doing radio shows into enemy territory, like Tokyo Rose did for Japan? What other careers might war correspondents have had? And what happened to all these war correspondents after WW2 ended?
Or were there very few from such other countries, because there were already men doing that sort of job, because the women available to undertake such war service would be needed in other capacities, including nursing in military hospitals? Or else were at too much risk of being killed? Did the unhappiness and broken marriages in that book reflect the reasons why they were war correspondents? Such as women becoming widows, or being unable to look after missing or war-injured lovers? Or was their work as war-correspondents the main reason which which dictated the collapse of their marriages? I'd be interested to know how such women were treated during their careers as well.
You see, I don't remember directly any women war-correspondents from Australia in either war, though I'm sure some of the literary sorts we had at the time would have been quite outspoken, one way or another. Our war-correspondents who went to World War I included some very famous names such as C.E.M Bean who wrote a history of Australia's efforts in that war, and Keith Murdoch, reporting on the Gallipoli campaign who was instrumental in getting that campaign closed down at the end of 1915. Sir Keith Murdoch, of course, was the father of one Rupert Murdoch, a very powerful media mogul.
Rose-Tree Dryad wrote:It's a shame about the broken marriages in The Women Who Wrote the War, Valia! Sounds like an interesting book, though.
Actually it does. But that was the way of things socially, during WW2. Either you got married and lived happily ever after, or you were a career girl, where marriage was out of the question, and heaven help the married woman whose marriage failed, especially if she became that femme fatale, the Divorced Woman.
In countries already combatants, women did all sorts of things from patriotic knitting and sewing bees, to taking over civilian men's jobs, going into nursing, working in munitions factories, even becoming SOE operatives - anything where women's help was acceptable and appreciated, including running farms or growing vegetable gardens. Often they were left with little option when men were fighting at the front and when those men who remained were incapacitated in some way. Or themselves were too old for service or were needed in occupations like mining, rescue work, and other emergency services. Even Queen Elizabeth served this way before WW2 ended, learning to drive a truck and carry out maintenance on it as well.
If the majority of the war-correspondents had broken marriages etc, it may be because that majority were USA citizens and until Pearl Harbour had already been pushed to develop a career in news services anyway. As a foil to reading that book, it might be a good idea to revisit that hairy old Jimmy Stewart Christmas special,
Its a wonderful life, in which the hero revisits his life if he had not existed. Would his wife become
a librarian, for example? Without qualifications, unlike a proper bluestocking? (Oops, like me, I'm afraid
) Well that sort of attitude was possible before World War 2 finished, and starry eyed peace lovers wanted to go back to that point of view in the 1950's. Alas some injuries that have been done can't be healed entirely. You can't really put the genie back into the bottle.
Valia, is there any mention of Wallis Simpson? Now there is a woman who in many ways wrote WW2 history, merely by existing, and being the subject of so much writing about the lead-up to WW2. If any of these American war-correspondents wrote about her, what did they say? And how was their perspective altered by their own unhappy experiences?
I'll let you all know what I think. 
! I'd seen a few comments about Steris before I started the series, which made me pretty sure I'd love her. Then she was only in 
