‘We Must Feed the Men’

2020 ◽  
pp. 145-160
Author(s):  
Gill Plain
Keyword(s):  
Women's Fiction ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
Masculine Identity ◽  
War Narratives ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Post War ◽  
Purposeful Activity

Gill Plain interrogates the trend towards domestic heteronormativity post World War Two in the light of the complex and profound disorientation of women’s post-war lives. She identifies a pervasive sense of personal, social and cultural loss, following the ‘smothering’ of wartime expectations, that often extended beyond the heterosexual matrix. Where ‘male’ plots reprogrammed masculine identity through purposeful activity beyond the home, the absence of plot in women’s fiction signals a lack of interest in the post-war rebuilding of the normative feminine psyche. The ‘resistant plotting’ of Pamela Hansford Johnson’s post-war trilogy, and its emphasis on the urgency of maternity, exhibits a turn toward the gothic. Male damage is offset by female guilt and the onset of a second childhood in her male characters, leading to a narrative of remasculinization. The largely absent figure of the child in post war narratives suggests a generation in mourning for its abruptly foreclosed childhood.

scholarly journals The Enduring Influence of Female Special Operations Executive Agent Biopics on Cultural Memory and Representations in France and Great Britain

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. WLS144-WLS168
Author(s):  
Sylvie Pomiès-Maréchal
Keyword(s):  
Central Place ◽  
Specific Aspect ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Special Operations ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
Fictional Representations

Seventy-five years have elapsed since the end of World War Two. Yet, the memory of the conflict still occupies a central place in British and French collective consciousness. Fiction and film representations of the war act as powerful ‘vectors of memory’, to borrow an expression from French historian Henry Rousso, and as such, they have deeply contributed to shaping popular and cultural memories of the war. This article investigates a specific aspect of World War Two representations, namely the cinematic representations of the female agents from the SOE F section, focusing on the ‘generic’ or archetypal figure of the female SOE agent as generated by the post-war cultural industry. After a brief contextualisation focusing on Churchill’s clandestine organisation, the article will analyse the contribution of Odette (Herbert Wilcox, 1950) and Carve Her Name with Pride (Lewis Gilbert, 1958) to the construction of a World War Two ‘mythology’. It will then address more recent films, concentrating on Charlotte Gray (Gillian Armstrong, 2001) and Female Agents (Jean-Paul Salomé, 2008). How did the fictional construction of the female spy come to influence the social and cultural perception of the SOE agent? Are the tropes developed in such post-war films as Odette or Carve Her Name with Pride still current or have they evolved with time? The analysis of these fictional representations will reveal the permanence or evolution of certain representational patterns and also allow us to approach different perspectives on the cultural representation of World War Two on both sides of the Channel.

scholarly journals American 'committed' drama in Slovene theatres

1994 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 57-65
Author(s):  
Igor Maver
Keyword(s):  
Social Criticism ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
To Come ◽  
Post War

The purpose of this study is essentially to demonstrate that the delayed stagings of American 'committed' plays, written in the thirties and produced in Slovene theatres immediately after World War Two in the late forties and fifties, were often miscontextualized and partly misinterpreted by the literary critics of the period. This was only in the early post-war years largely due to the need to serve the then ruling ideology and to comply with the criteria of Marxist aesthetisc, especially that of a radical social criticism. However, the later stagings particularly of Arthur Miller's and also Tennessee Williams's plays, did not see the same phenomenon, for it was they that assured the popularity of the American post-war drama on Slovene stages and, even more importantly, helped Slovene theatre to come off age in the sixties.

Male Vampires

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-124
Author(s):  
Michael Guarneri
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Post War

The chapter zooms in on the cultural instrumentality of the vampire metaphor in Italy by studying Italian-made vampire movies as struggles for gender definition and domination that reflect the zeitgeist of post-war Italy, when a perceived decline in masculine authority due to the vicissitudes of World War Two, the hardships of reconstruction and the post-1958 neocapitalist consumerism went hand in hand with women’s ever-increasing challenges to traditional gender roles. The chapter ventures into the so-far uncharted territory of the Italian male vampires that populate horror parodies, straightforward horrors and horror-tinged adventures. It investigates how, within a masculinity-in-crisis framework, Italian makeshift Draculas act as champions of traditional virility, irresistible Latin lovers and tyrannical patres familias seeking to reassure Italian men of their gender leadership.

Swedish Narratives of the Second World War: A European Perspective

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHAN ÖSTLING
Keyword(s):  
General Pattern ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
European Perspective ◽  
World War ◽  
War Narratives ◽  
Swedish Society ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World ◽  
General Criticism

AbstractThis paper outlines the dominant post-war narratives of the Second World War in Europe. Drawing from the expanding fields of memory and history, a general pattern in the European interpretations of the war years emerges: whereas the experiences and recollections of the war were narrated within a patriotic framework until the 1980s, a significant shift towards a universalistic interpretation has occurred in the last two decades. Although Sweden's wartime experiences differed profoundly from most other similar countries, it is argued that the transformation of Swedish narratives of the Second World War reflected general European tendencies after 1945. Special attention is paid to the emergence in the 1990s of a universalistic understanding of the war, and how this change interplayed with a more general criticism of the foundations of post-war Swedish society.

Female Vampires

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-106
Author(s):  
Michael Guarneri
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
Sexual Predators ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Heterosexual Relationship ◽  
Post War

The chapter zooms in on the cultural instrumentality of the vampire metaphor in Italy by studying Italian-made vampire movies as struggles for gender definition and domination that reflect the zeitgeist of post-war Italy, when a perceived decline in masculine authority due to the vicissitudes of World War Two, the hardships of reconstruction and the post-1958 neocapitalist consumerism went hand in hand with women’s ever-increasing challenges to traditional gender roles. The chapter argues that the female vampires of Italian horror are not simplistically villainous, power-hungry sexual predators that misogynistic-reactionary narratives put to death as a punishment for attempting to subvert the patriarchal status quo. They also are empathy-inducing characters caught between rebellion and hyper-identification with traditional values: victims returning from the grave to seek revenge against their male oppressors, and tragic lovers dreaming of a monogamous heterosexual relationship that looks strangely similar to marriage.

scholarly journals Eksperymenty nad tożsamością płciową mężczyzn w twórczości Marka Hłaski

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Mosak
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Female Gender ◽  
Male Gender ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Patriarchal Culture ◽  
Natural Way

The present article aims to analyse the depictions of male protagonists in the oeuvre of Marek Hłasko. The post-World War Two crisis of hegemonic masculinity resulted in transformations of male and female gender identities in the 1950s. What seems to reflect the said reconfiguration of masculinity model are the changes occurring between the main protagonists of the particular pieces of Hłasko’s prose. In the 1954 short story entitled Baza Sokołowska, the men’s identities are, in the natural way, embedded in biology. In order to join the male community of drivers and gain their respect, it is enough to go through an initiation ritual. In the prose written by Hłasko after 1955, however, more and more often appear the male characters who humiliate the young and thwart them on their way to join masculine community, yet simultaneously some characters are presented who contest forms of patriarchal culture and refuse to participate in it. Hłasko’s Israeli novels, in turn, feature a series of male protagonists for whom gender (or even sexual) identity is merely a social construct. The narrator/protagonist of Drugie zabicie psa (Killing the Second Dog) would even consciously “perform” his masculinity to obtain an affluent female tourist’s trust and, as a result, to cozen her out of her money, which he needs to pay back his debts.The analysis of Marek Hłasko’s selected prose writings focused on the representation of various masculinity models leads the author of the article to a conclusion that male gender identity is consistently shifting towards constructivist concepts.

scholarly journals The books of problems in arithmetic by Mikas Petrauskas

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Algirdas Ažubalis
Keyword(s):  
Real Life ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Aspect ◽  
The Real ◽  
The World ◽  
Arithmetic Teaching ◽  
Post War ◽  
Children Of War

Teacher Mikas Petrauskas (1908?) was the last author having published his books of problems in arithmetic for I-III forms of primary school in Independent Lithuania before the World War Two. As books of problems by other authors of the said period, the books of problems by M. Petrauskas distinguished themselves for expressed integration of arithmetic teaching with the real life of the pupils. The books of problems were used in Lithuania during the World War Two and at schools for children of war refugees in the post-war period at West Germany. M. Petrauskas was the only author that dared to publish reviewed books of problems in post-war Soviet Lithuania. However, the said review was not natural and integration with the real life was engaged considerably in the political aspect. The attempts were ineffective: within 5 years, books of problems by M. Petrauskas were displaced from Lithuanian schools by the ones approved in Moscow and translated from Russian.

scholarly journals Paradise Postponed: A Re-examination of the Green Book Proposals of 1945

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvin Finkel
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
Reform Program ◽  
Green Book ◽  
Liberal Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
State Programs

Abstract During World War Two, all federal political parties sought to accommodate the growing demand for "welfare state" programs. Mackenzie King's Liberals successfully checked the growth of the CCF by promising a comprehensive program of cradle-to-grave security. After the 1945 election the Liberal government prepared such a program and brought it to a dominion-provincial conference whose purpose was to determine the taxation and administrative arrangements necessary for its implementation. The "conference", which became a series of mini-conferences stretched over nine months, ended without agreement. The federal government blamed recalcitrant premiers in Ontario and Quebec for the conference's failure and abandoned much of the reform program. This article argues that the federal government, in fact, wanted the conference to fail because it did not want to undertake the expenses implied in the reform proposals. After proving inflexible in dealing with provincial criticisms, it cynically and successfully manipulated events to make it appear that the provinces had killed hopes for reform. Post-war prosperity and a declining interest in reform, particularly on the part of the corporate and medical elites, contributed to the federal government's unwillingness to pursue reform vigorously.

scholarly journals American 'committed' drama in Slovene theatres

1994 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 57-65
Author(s):  
Igor Maver
Keyword(s):  
Social Criticism ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
To Come ◽  
Post War

The purpose of this study is essentially to demonstrate that the delayed stagings of American 'committed' plays, written in the thirties and produced in Slovene theatres immediately after World War Two in the late forties and fifties, were often miscontextualized and partly misinterpreted by the literary critics of the period. This was only in the early post-war years largely due to the need to serve the then ruling ideology and to comply with the criteria of Marxist aesthetisc, especially that of a radical social criticism. However, the later stagings particularly of Arthur Miller's and also Tennessee Williams's plays, did not see the same phenomenon, for it was they that assured the popularity of the American post-war drama on Slovene stages and, even more importantly, helped Slovene theatre to come off age in the sixties.

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