The Female Hero in British Literature and War Alfred the Great, Winston Churchill, and David Beckham are British men who were given the title of “hero” for their feats ranging from conquering nations to being the first Briton to win league titles in four countries. But what makes these men heroes? According to Christopher Reeve, an actor portraying the character of Superman in movies, “A hero is someone who, in spite of weakness, doubt, or not always knowing the answers, goes ahead and overcomes anyway” (“Quotes”).
This quote by Christopher Reeve encompasses the life of many British women, but how come when the term “hero” comes to an individual’s minds, males are more often listed than women? Could it be that the accomplishments of women aren’t as publicized as those of men or that the accomplishments are found inferior? In truth, women have had a tremendous impact on both British Literature and Britain during times of war. It is found in some instances that women first opposed war but when war came, they were willing to make great sacrifices to serve their country in any way that they could.
More importantly though, they wanted to see war action up close and personal. Some sacrificed their time by becoming a nurse at the combat zone. In one case, a female tried to convince herself that she was becoming a nurse because she was passionate about helping others and had compassion for her people, but she later admitted that all she really wanted was to experience war. She yearned for the intensity, to experience life-and-death situations, and to see whether her character and bravery could stand the conditions of war (Schneider 2). This contradicts most people’s belief that most people do not want to go to war, omen included.
In the anthology of written works on war, gender, and literary representation, it was found that both sexes had an attraction to war (Cooper 16). Cooper’s findings were supported back in 1870 by a philosopher and reformer who argued for equal rights for British women. This anonymous author claimed that women present a physical endurance, mental power, and powerful moral ability to make good judgements and quick decisions that makes them equal if not superior to men (A Reply to John Stuart Mill on the Subjection of women, 10). How could this be so? To understand this, we must first understand why we have war.
Contrary to popular belief, war is not the condition of men but the condition of humanity. This starts with the relations between sexes. Disillusioned, women view themselves as veterans of unnecessary and fruitless wars. Having this standpoint, women insist on informing men about the dangers and the trouble that war brings. But when informing the female population, they claim that romance is the trope for war in its deepest roots. Having this point of view, women warn both genders that if everyone does not question and change the larger ideological structures of gender conflict and war, people will continue to wage war on one another.
These warnings about war are attributed greatly to the letters of women in World War II (Schneider, 8). Just in this aspect, women have proven to be heroes. Referring back to what Christopher Reeve defined a hero to be, during times of war, women’s ability to influence is tested. In their time of not always knowing the whole answer, they continue on anyway to make change. What creates this stir between genders during times of war? It is claimed that “sex is the weapon of life, the shooting sperm sent like an army of guerrillas to penetrate the egg’s defenses-the only victory that really matters.
With this being said, sex, and how the sperm must go through several enemy territories to declare victory, is war. Interchangeably, according to William Broyles in his novel Why Men Love War, war is actually sex. The power generated through war and the bonding of individuals “heightens… sexuality” and as a result makes “war… a turn on. ” People love war because people love weapons and the power and opportunity to destroy nations, infrastructure, and/or ideas. War therefore is the union between sex and destruction-between love and death.
Broyles believes that to fully understand the seduction of the opposite gender, it is crucial to hear the war stories of women. If their voices are heard, the gender-encoding stereotypes in war and the war stories can be denaturalized stories can be denaturalized. We must understand the women’s viewpoint of the war to grasp the importance of ideological power for people, cultures, and humanity overall (Schneider 6).
When we reach this understanding and gain insight on “the other side” of war, the parameters of war literature can be altered and we can “reconceptualize aspects of… ar’s political history” (Scott 25). This idea of understanding ideas as a whole by taking into consideration the women’s viewpoints is also important when trying to understand British Literature. There is an exposure of Britain’s fascism that is attributed to Three Guineas, where Virginia Woolf asked what right the English had to step on ideals of freedom and justice. The patriarchal state continued to dictate to people on the way to live and what the people should and shouldn’t do (Schneider, 6).
This was just one point that was mentioned in an abundance of British Literature written by women. A female’s actual journey to becoming a hero is more complex than how the events play out. To be more specific, female protagonists in literature have many of the same experiences as their male counterparts, but only a small number of women emphasize one specific event. To add to this complexity, female heroes vary just as much as male heroes. In George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, Joan of Arc is a fearless warrior and slayed dragons.
Pamela in Samuel Richardon’s work “Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded” and Sister Carrie in Theodore Dreiser’s novel enter the world with nothing but through perseverance and focused mentality, they were able to turn their lives of poverty into lives of riches. In these works by Richardson and Dreiser, we find women to undertake the same heroic journey as that of men. Sometimes, female protagonists, such as Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, start without parents and are searching for a new family that is loving enough to take care of them the way that they deserve to be cared for and a new place in the world.
Parallels can be drawn from this story to the stories of male protagonists such as Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield in “The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery” (Pearson and Pope viii). But what is the source of female hero’s problems and the quality of her heroic action? Classical works on the voyage of a hero lead readers to see the patterns of heroism that have been reduced to a monomyth. This is simply the standard path of departure, initiation, and return that heroes go through (Pearson and Pope, 3).
To be more thorough, the stages of a hero’s journey are birth, call to adventure (by an event outside of the hero’s control), receiving help by a protective figure (coming in multiple forms), crossing the threshold, undergoing a series of tests, and then he or she is assisted by a protective figure that becomes a loyal companion. Soon, the hero has entered the climax or in some cases, the final battle which leads readers to the resolution of the adventure. Then comes flight which is when the hero prepares him or herself for life without a monster.
The hero obtains critical knowledge through his or her adventure and through this wisdom, usually is able to help others. At last, the hero returns home. Most readers find this sequence of events predictable. Stories like The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell, present a story with the monomyth (“Stages of the Hero’s Journey”). Other fictional heroes don’t necessarily undergo each step to become a hero.
Furthermore, the assumption that the male figure is the hero and the female only plays the role of a typical women confuses the elements of the attern of literature (Pearson and Pope, 4). It is not so much that heroism in females is condemned, but more so that heroism in women is ignored. This is usually attributed by the fact that most people reading literature find males that are killing bears and Germans, rescuing women from other men, and scoring a touchdown to be more fascinating than the heroic story of a woman who has bravery and strength to be a hero playing the role of a wife, mother, or bread-winner (Pearson and Pope, 6).
This is easily understandable because humans are trained to get more excited about the bravery and great feats that individuals go through than the regular day to day life of people. The main difference in heroic patterns between males and females is that, through cultural assumption, strong women go away from social norms and should be punished. In Daniel Defoe’s “Moll Flanders”, Flanders is depicted as the female hero. Moll is strong, wise, and brave enough to survive in the world.
But to play the role of a passive, dependent, innocent girl that society demands her to be, she must hide her true qualities to win affection from the readers. As a result, authors portray these females as secret heroes (Pearson and Pope, 10). A female character often expresses her independent views with a woman friend so readers are able to see the side of her heroism that other characters in the novel are unable to. In Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman, Ainsley, the female hero, pretends to be childlike and dependent on men.
But to her roommate, she reveals that her ultimate goal in life is to have a child and raise it herself. This goal was not looked favorably upon by most people at that time so she had to convey it only to someone she trusted. As a secret hero, she uses this desire as a motive. She tries to find a man who is cooperative, will understand what she wants, and not make a big fuss about marrying her. Taking initiative, she is able to get what she wants with great efficiency.
Moll Flander, on the other hand, doesn’t share her feelings with any other character in the story but the reader (Pearson and Pope, 11). What is found throughout the history of British literature and World War II, is that women have shaped the world we live in due to their efforts. Because of their bravery and heroic actions, females have impacted both times of war and literature in the British world. The beliefs that women are inferior to men when it comes to being the hero in novels and times of war is understandable, but there is no substantial evidence to suggest this.
Women are seen and presented as inferior due to how we readers envision characters and the tradition that women are merely housewives and have no authority in the family. And, in times of war, women are in fact not inferior to men. War is a result of dispute between the genders due to disjointed love. If both sexes open their mind to each other’s point of view, people are able to better understand one another and therefore, can prevent disputes. Nonetheless, women are indeed heroes through their actions and major influence.