Not So Quiet as representative of gender in WWII The...

Evadne Price wrote the book Not So Quiet in 1930 under the pseudonym Helen Zenna Smith. Price was an established author and playwright by the time she wrote Not So Quiet, best known for her serialized romance novels. She also wrote childrens books and articles for womens magazine. But Not So Quiet was a very different kind of piece, partly because of its far more serious nature, partly because it was somewhat autobiographical. She was initially approached by a British publisher to write a satire on All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, but Price argued that she would rather write an account of a womans experience with war instead. Price then contacted a British ambulance driver who had kept war diaries as a†¦show more content†¦For most women, however, the experience of war was masked and covered behind nationalism and propaganda. Although much of the book takes place on the front, hints of what is happening back home are frequently given, mostly through le tters received by Smithie from her mother and through the character of B.F. Mrs. Evans-Mawning, throughout the novel, serves as a figure of the worst kind of feminine nationalism, boasting about Roy but not having the edge on Smithies mother because she has only her one son to sacrifice as opposed to Smithies larger family. Smithie also notes that she is sick of reading positive news about wonder war girls in the news, comparing her experience to having a baby because once you get started your trapped in it. (Smith, pg. 134). Women on the home front were being coddled into believing everything was going well because this was still a time in which men saw women as more sensitive then they were intelligent and therefore needed to be protected (Thebaud, pg. 95). This sort of sugar-coating gave women false impressions about the war, which was particularly disappointing to those who enlisted. In one letter from Smithies younger sister, Trix, she writes Why the dickens they dress you up i n a pretty cap and make you think youre going to smooth the patients fevered brow beats me hollow. (Smith, pg. 84). Another letter in the book that is very reflective of home front feelings is the one Smithie receives from B.F, who