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A review by radishb
Women's Barracks by Tereska Torres
3.0
This book gave me a whole range of different feelings. I picked this book up with a number of expectations, most of which were shot down. I believed this to be a self-indulgent book about lesbian antics in the Free France forces, that had very little sensibility and was mostly a pulp novel that would be easy to finish.
For my first expectation, we read the narrator's name just ONCE in the entirety of the book: this is indicative of how this is NOT the narrator's story, but how she gives voice to the women she is writing about instead.
For the 'lesbian antics' element, I was again misled by prejudices. There are very few characters in this novel who are lesbian, and more who are experimental/bisexual. The 'sad' lesbians in this book are given a very pale, melancholic light, and are mostly looked upon with pity (in reading an interview with the author, she explained that one agreement for publishing the book was that the editor added in these numerous pitying sentences and observations, because otherwise, the book would have been too 'immoral' for Americans at the time to handle).
I was also very surprised by the elements of care and thought that went into this book. There was a lot of pensive, careful ideas that were touched upon in this book - they could have been touched on a lot more, but that was not the point of this book. This book was meant to make everybody see that women are beings of their own and that they can question the morality of war without needing men to tell them how to do it.
Whilst this is the case, the varying levels of success are hard to gauge. Every single character in this novel is led and influenced by at least one man (and in some circumstances, to fatal results), which roughly challenges the idea of female autonomy that this book was striving for. Indeed, the first words of the introduction to this books are 'My husband tells me I ought to write my memoirs...'. Who was she writing this for? Seeing as this novel is based on the diaries that she wrote during the war before she was married or attached to any man, one can argue that they were purely for her. Another argument would say otherwise.
I suppose the crux of the matter is, this book is the 1940s 'Well of Loneliness'. It considered the same issues of women in wartime and beyond, and even faced the same prejudices and difficulties that Radclyffe Hall faced: lawsuits and bans, and cries of 'immorality, filth, and perversion.'
One can only admire the steps that were taken in that leap of time: it wasn't very much, but baby steps can make miles.
If anything, this book is an interesting read for the historical context. It was an insight into French female forces in London that I wasn't aware of. Whilst it isn't entirely encouraging feminist literature, it comes a long way from what there was on offer and should be read to help form a timeline of the lesbian literature we can find out there.
For my first expectation, we read the narrator's name just ONCE in the entirety of the book: this is indicative of how this is NOT the narrator's story, but how she gives voice to the women she is writing about instead.
For the 'lesbian antics' element, I was again misled by prejudices. There are very few characters in this novel who are lesbian, and more who are experimental/bisexual. The 'sad' lesbians in this book are given a very pale, melancholic light, and are mostly looked upon with pity (in reading an interview with the author, she explained that one agreement for publishing the book was that the editor added in these numerous pitying sentences and observations, because otherwise, the book would have been too 'immoral' for Americans at the time to handle).
I was also very surprised by the elements of care and thought that went into this book. There was a lot of pensive, careful ideas that were touched upon in this book - they could have been touched on a lot more, but that was not the point of this book. This book was meant to make everybody see that women are beings of their own and that they can question the morality of war without needing men to tell them how to do it.
Whilst this is the case, the varying levels of success are hard to gauge. Every single character in this novel is led and influenced by at least one man (and in some circumstances, to fatal results), which roughly challenges the idea of female autonomy that this book was striving for. Indeed, the first words of the introduction to this books are 'My husband tells me I ought to write my memoirs...'. Who was she writing this for? Seeing as this novel is based on the diaries that she wrote during the war before she was married or attached to any man, one can argue that they were purely for her. Another argument would say otherwise.
I suppose the crux of the matter is, this book is the 1940s 'Well of Loneliness'. It considered the same issues of women in wartime and beyond, and even faced the same prejudices and difficulties that Radclyffe Hall faced: lawsuits and bans, and cries of 'immorality, filth, and perversion.'
One can only admire the steps that were taken in that leap of time: it wasn't very much, but baby steps can make miles.
If anything, this book is an interesting read for the historical context. It was an insight into French female forces in London that I wasn't aware of. Whilst it isn't entirely encouraging feminist literature, it comes a long way from what there was on offer and should be read to help form a timeline of the lesbian literature we can find out there.