University of Calgary
In 1983, during my first trip Down Under, I was astonished, perhaps especially because I am Canadian, by the many ways Australians pay homage to their nation's participation in war, particularly to their fighting men, the Anzacs. I was intrigued by the displays at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra with their "whitewashed" view of war, and amazed by the Anzac Day parades, particularly by what Richard White terms their "schizophrenic quality," with "solemn rituals and services in the morning, and boozy celebrations, brawls and ostentatious games of two-up afterwards". At the same time, I was troubled by the woman-less-ness of these tributes and festivities, and began to wonder what role women had played in war, how they felt about their omission from such overwhelming male adulation. I sought answers to my questions by reading what women fiction writers had to say, beginning with the First World War. I soon found, however, that I had to become my own Digger, for few Australian critics had paid any attention to the twenty-five or so women's Great War novels I unearthed. To my disappointment, I discovered that, just as women were "missing" from the Anzac Day celebrations, so, too, were they "missing" from their own Great War discourse. In their texts, women writers march away to war with their soldiers, mimic men's stories, and in extreme cases, efface women almost entirely from the war narrative. I concluded that Australian women did not write their own novels, but had them written for them by the dominant ideology, represented primarily by war correspondent and historian C. E. W. Bean, which permitted only one view of war: the Anzacs' glorious participation in combat. Women writers, dutiful myrmidons, surrendered to the occupying language. They re-produced master narratives, shored up the soldiers' fighting prowess, and celebrated events on the battlefield they were absent(ed) from. In backing the attack, they were simultaneously promoting the characteristics of the noble bushman--his rugged manliness, ready initiative in a hostile environment, anti-authoritarianism, mateship, egalitarianism, and irreverence--traits which had gained prominence in the male-dominated literature of the 1890s, the period so crucial in Australia to the formation of national identity. With increasing urbanization prior to the war, the myth of the noble bushman had begun to wane but, like a boomerang, it zoomed from bush to battlefield, and subsequently became entrenched as the Anzac legend. Writing against the bush myth had always been difficult for women writers, but writing against this revised myth was even more intimidating, for this brave new Digger figure handed Australians not merely a unique personality but, thanks to his courage and valour on the battlefront, nationhood, albeit one that excluded women.
More recently, when I began to read Australian women writers' fictions of the Second World War, I felt more hopeful, for the texts are set on the homefront, usually in cities, and feature women as central characters. But on closer inspection, I discovered that Second World War writers continue to reinforce dominant ideologies, to situate women outside of the myth, in spite of the fact that in this war, another powerful male force--the Yank--makes his appearance. Given the sheer numbers of U. S. service personnel who spent time in Australia between 1941 and 1945--one million at a time when Australia's population was seven million--it seemed likely the Yanks would provide an impetus to the disintegration of the long-standing hero myth, that they would challenge the overwhelming masculine monopoly of Australian culture. According to several recent historical and sociological studies--including the one with the best title--Over-Sexed, Over Paid, and Over Here--"the presence of the American[s] [did] sharpen[] Australians' sense of their own identity". Rosemary Campbell argues specifically that "the presence of the Americans contributed to a questioning of sexual roles and expectations, race relations and a delineation of the Australian way of life which had been spelled out in the various depictions of an Australian national identity," and adds that the war "marked a period where Australians selected those values from the past which they could carry forward to the future and . . . let go those no longer appropriate". What I wish to demonstrate in this paper, however, is that although women's wartime fictions--in particular Henrietta Drake-Brockman's The Fatal Days (1947) and Florence James' and Dymphna Cusack's Come in Spinner (1951) --also take up issues of national identity, they fail to discard or revise national values, particularly those which pertain to the impoverished relationships between women and men. Instead, their texts reinscribe the values of the masculine bush ethos, bolster yet again the fighting prowess of the almighty Anzac, and once more, assign women a subordinate place in Australian society. Because Drake-Brockman's and the Cusack/James' novels take place during different periods--The Fatal Days covers February 28th to March 6th, 1942; Come in Spinner eight days in October, 1944--they offer a fascinating overview of the impact the Americans have on the Australian people. The Fatal Days opens at a time when Australians are feeling expressly vulnerable. The newspapers furnish lists of Australian casualties in the Meditteranean; Singapore has fallen, the Japanese have bombed Darwin, and captured Rabaul. In the meantime, in a show of British loyalty, Australians have shipped both their arms and their armies to the other side of the equator, thereby rendering themselves defenceless in the face of enemy attack. Thus, owing to a shortage of accommodation in Melbourne, when the citizens of Ballarat are asked to billet fixty-six-hundred GIs, they accept eagerly, their dominant emotions relief and gratitude. And since the newspapers' initial descriptions of the soldiers contained a great deal of Hollywood rhetoric and imagery, Australians are prepared to greet the newcomers as their celluloid saviours. As Campbell remarks, "the coming of the Americans was made to resemble something of the drama of a Hollywood western in which the Australian pioneers under imminent threat of death at the hands of savage Japanese were relieved at the last moment by the arrival of the US cavalry".
In the flesh, none of the 5600 Yanks disappoints. They're handsome, clean-shaven, sport superbly tailored uniforms, and wear expensive watches and rings which make them appear to be dripping in gold. Owing to a glitch, only the officers have received paychecks, but the men of ordinary rank cheerfully pawn their precious belongings in order to show their hosts a good time. These American glamour boys stroll about the town with an easy confidence, their courteous and polite manners charming everyone they meet. Compared to the local heroes, depicted in this text as glum workaholics, the GIs are fun-loving and uninhibited in their pursuit of pleasure; Ballarat comes to life when the GIs fill the dance-halls and teach enthusiastic young women how to "jitterbug". But these doughboys are not merely getting in one last fling before battle; they also prove to be sensitive and caring young men who respond sympathetically to their host-family's problems.
Once Drake-Brockman secures her Yanks firmly on Australian soil, she uses their presence to mount a prolonged attack on the real enemies of Australia--not the invading Japanese, but her countrymen/women who suffer from the "cultural cringe." She takes careful aim at Australians who regard their food, drink, books, and art as inferior and consistently purchase imported products; at those who struggle to impose the character of the northern hemisphere on Australia by planting imported trees; at those who fear their public buildings and housing standards are inferior to the Americans'. Those whom she clearly wishes to kill in her narrative display no interest whatsoever in the history of their own country. In The Fatal Days, the real "saviours" of Australia are not the Yanks, but homegrown nationalists.
Drake-Brockman employs a number of strategies to convince both Australians and Americans that the Australian way of life is incomparable, its history unparalleled. She ensures, for example, that the Americans utter few discouraging words: only one complains about his accommodation; several find the lingo curious; a few comment that the country seems "parched looking." Mostly, a resounding chorus of approval fills the air. While it is historically accurate that the Australian people had been conditioned during the early stages of the war to switch their allegiances from Mother England to Uncle Sam, to regard the Yanks not as foreigners but as people who spoke, thought, and fought as they did, Drake-Brockman's central character, the elderly Mrs. Vike, focuses on the differences between the two cultures, uniformly casting the Yanks in a poor light. She argues that the allies are not as stalwart as Australians, for when the former went in search of freedom, they found a beautiful, friendly country awaiting them, whereas when the First Fleet came to Australia, they encountered a harsh country that required unrelenting human will, "not mere ideals," to conquer. And although religion has not played a major role in the founding of Australia, as it did in America, Australians have gone Americans one better by developing a social conscience which manifests itself through the establishment of peerless social services and matchless educational standards. In another obvious attack on the Americans, this time alluding to their bloody Civil War, Mrs. Vike speaks of the Australians' deep reluctance to use military force against civilians; by extension, she criticizes American employers for assaulting men who want to form unions, and then characterizes America as a violent society where knifings and car thieveries are commonplace. Although ex-Prime Minister Paul Keating wouldn't agree, Mrs. Vike insists that the Yanks have missed out by not being part of the Commonwealth, which she considers ultimately a great scheme for World Commonwealth.
Mrs. Vike concedes, however, that the Yankees have one outstanding trait--their "quick and intelligent appreciation of the Australian viewpoint", an intense desire to learn as much as they can about Australian politics, customs and history. Unwittingly, however, Drake-Brockman undermines her point that Australians are ignorant about their history, for her Ballarat teems with civilians who stand on guard at every streetcorner, waiting for an unsuspecting Yank to pass by, at which point they let fly lengthy treatises on the preeminence of the Australian political structure, the ascendancy of its prime ministers, the Diggers' glorious victories at Anzac Cove and the battles at Sovereign Hill, the place from which the Digger spirit, so central to the formation of Australian national identity, she claims, originated. Overall, the The Fatal Days reads more like a series of essays championing the events and players at the Eureka Stockade than it does a work of fiction.
What frustrates me, however, is that Drake-Brockman's fictional women crow about identity-forming events that absent(ed) women, glory in a political structure which excluded them, and worship the dominant values of mateship and egalitarianism which never made room for women. I'm angry that women are still "missing" from the subject of war, for Drake-Brockman's text tells us little about how the women of Ballarat responded to the Yank visitation; she robs them of a voice by placing them on the periphery, their best role providing comforts for American soldiers, or giving potted histories of male achievements. In foregrounding male adventure, disseminating values she did not help formulate, Drake-Brockman reinforces traditional perceptions that women's experiences are unworthy material for a national literature, and simultaneously bolsters the power of the patriarchal culture which denounced women as "other." In telling male stories, she does not gain virile power; rather, she doubles her oppression, for she continues to equate maleness with universality. She falls prey to what Mark Schorer terms women's ultimate anonymity, to be "storyless". In succumbing to what Sharon O'Brien terms "combat envy," Drake-Brockman facilitates her own domination as a woman writer.
At first glance, Come In Spinner seems a marked improvement, although Cusack/James, like Drake-Brockman, also take pot shots at the cultural cringers by deriding those who feel Australia must keep importing Brits to "keep up the stock," those who derive their artistic standards from New York or London, or those who consider there's nothing worth defending in the Northern Territory. And like Drake-Brockman, they provide their characters with little scope for social change because they don't depict women actively engaged in the war effort. I'm surprised that Cusack/James' characters serve in traditional female occupations as masseuses and hairdressers at a beauty salon in a posh Sydney hotel; that the writers include only only one minor character who works for the Australian Women's Army Service, particularly since, during the war years, over 840,000 women were employed in the occupied forces, either in armed services, the munitions industry, or other defence works.
But unlike The Fatal Days, Come in Spinner does raise a number of issues relevant to women, not all of which pertain exclusively to a wartime culture. Cusack/James query, for example, why women expend precious time and hard-earned money making themselves attractive, when men consider themselves irresistible even if they're "round as barrels, wall-eyed, and flat-footed. The writers are equally critical of the kinds of double standards which prevail in the wartime climate, arguing that it's unfair that men don't have to take the consequences for their actions. In Come in Spinner, for example, an unmarried pregnant servicewoman endures shame, risks dishonourable discharge, and, unable to procure a legal abortion, loses her life, whereas the serviceman receives nary a reprimand. The writers also declare that if venereal disease is an occupational hazard for men, pregnancy should be for women. Cusack/James further interrogate why young women presumed to be promiscuous are arrested and locked up in reformatories, whereas licentious soldiers go unpunished. They contend that the Manpower Regulations, brought into effect in 1942 to conscript women into essential employment, were in part responsible for women's immorality, because those they assigned to reserve occupations in mills or factories were so poorly paid they were forced to become prostitutes. Other young women are victims of the white slave trade; coerced into brothels, argues one character, these women are "as much victims of war as if they'd been hit in an air raid". The writers also point to the inequities in the conscription process: women who had wealthy fathers or husbands were not required to "enlist" in the labour force, but carried out only trifling volunteer duties. And the writers highlight women's fears that they will have to give up their jobs at war's end, and hence suffer loss of income and pensions.
Come in Spinner also chronicles the kinds of tensions between the two nations which began heating up within weeks of the Americans' arrival, so that by October, 1944, the Yanks have worn out their welcome: the refrain in the air is no longer the euphoric "The Yankees are coming," but the bitter, "Yankee, Go Home." Instead of acting as if they are proud hosts to an inferior race, Australian men are made to feel as if they are "bloody foreigners" or second-class citizens in their own country. In a culture which conflates an ability to drink with masculinity, Australian men are enraged when they can't get drinks upon demand since the barmaids give preference to Yanks; annoyed that they can't hire taxis because the lavish-tipping Yanks claim them all; bitter when, accustomed to accolades for their fighting prowess, they have to listen to the Yanks boasting about "mopping up the Pacific" singlehandedly.
Not surprisingly, Australian men are frustrated by their inability to retaliate against these "friendly" enemies: aside from instigating a few brawls where they revert to the old custom of kicking in heads, all they can really do is stand around and shoot blanks. They go on the offensive by blaming every problem on the Americans. Can't get an elevator? Blame the Yanks. Find the beaches polluted? Blame the Yanks. After all, aren't they the ones who killed Phar Lap? Or they utilize put-downs as weapons. A Yank who can't hold his liquor is a "flaming siss[y]", or a "coward" who fled from battle at Pearl Harbour; or, conveniently overlooking his own wartime reputation as a larrikin, the Australian labels the Yank a hooligan. The Australians' best wartime defence, however, is a kind of Ned Kellyism; drawing upon a heroic tradition, the Aussies swindle from the rich--the Yanks--charging twice the price for drinks; ten times the going rate for flats; and fleece them at brothels; and then pass on the spoils to the disadvantaged--themselves.
The most tension on the homefront arises, however, when Australian men discover that all is not fair in love and war. Accustomed as they are to "calling the shots" in male-female relationships, they feel as if they've been ambushed when they suddenly realize Australian women prefer to date Yanks. They should have been forewarned, though, for as war historian Gavin Long points out, Australian men reputedly treated women only a little worse than their dogs; or, as feminist critics like Anne Summers and Miriam Dixson inform us, Australian men had never believed the courting of women was an art worth cultivating, never valued maintaining relationships with women. Australian men routinely sought relaxation through sport or outdoor pursuits with their mates, not with women. Moreover, the Aussies were, as both texts underscore, reluctant to make commitments, standing by the motto, "`love `em and leave `em'". Not surprisingly, given their subaltern rank in Australian society, many women in these texts begin to feel as if they've stumbled into a fairytale, for the Yanks treat women as if they're the fairest in the land. Unlike taciturn Australian blokes who can master any situation but can't manage small talk with women, these American matinee idols are affable, relaxed in the company of their leading ladies. They listen attentively to what women say, and compliment them on their appearances. Unafraid of being labelled sissies, GIs personally deliver flowers to their dates and help with the housework; they're also not above making romantic overtures in public.
Moreover, as the best-paid troops among the allied forces, earning nearly twice the Anzacs' pay, American servicemen could afford to splurge on women, and did. While Australian men spend their pay packets on horses and beer, the Americans empty their bulging wallets on women, furnishing them with orchids, nylons, chocolates, and cigarettes, and take them dining and dancing at posh hotels. Australian men, at a loss to know how to defeat these "friendly enemies," seize upon a myriad of complaints which assume a sour-grapes tone. They charge that "Yanks get away with murder" when a fornicating Australian gets hauled away by the police, but the Yank goes scot free. Conveniently forgetting that the Tommies used to say that Diggers attracted women by flinging money at them, the Australians accuse American soldiers of having too much money, of "want[ing] only one thing", and of using liquor to get it. The Aussies make frequent references to Americans liking women "young and tender," to Yanks "wheel[ing] babies in prams into bars". And at the same time as Australian men express their disdain for "Yankee leftovers," they undercut their own arguments by boasting about their sexual prowess overseas during World War One.
One thing the Australian man never does amidst these heated battles is admit defeat by acknowledging his shortcomings as a lover or confessing to his neglect of women. Instead, he reverts to familiar arguments, decreeing there are only two types of women--the decent and the decadent. Those who chase Yanks are "easy pickups," morally suspect, or harlots only after a Yank's money. And in the end, the Australian male emerges victorious on the homefront. The decent woman says, "No thanks to the Yank," because by 1944, in spite of his romantic ways and lavish spending, he's lost his Hollywood mystique and has metamorphosed into a deceitful, untrustworthy villain who steals money from women, is frequently divorced or a bigamist, sexually rapacious, and a frequenter of brothels. In both texts, only two women form lasting relationships with Yanks; in Come in Spinner, a minor character is married to a Yank, but we never meet him because he's "missing in action." In The Fatal Days, Mrs. Vike's granddaughter takes up with a Yank, but only because he appreciates the Australian way of life more than any "bloke" she knows; and by coincidence, his middle name is "Vike," so she's marrying a "kissing cousin," not a foreigner.
But what's troubling here is that these women writers themselves reaffirm dual stereotypes, for their female characters who pursue GIs are callous, insensitive to the needs of others, promiscuous, and money hungry. (Ironically, even a "gold digger" gets no approbation in The Fatal Days.) Those who remain loyal to Australian men are sensible and altruistic. By permitting few of their characters to marry Yanks, Drake-Brockman and Cysack/James disregard that between 10 to 20,000 Australian women emigrated to the US as war brides. Their exodus must have delivered a sharp blow to the Australian male's nonchalant aproach to courtship, his obdurate disregard for women, but the writers fail to interrogate on any serious level the courtship methods which uniformly privileged men, or argue that if men had treated women better, they would not have lost their loyalty. Drake-Brockman simply sees little need for fundamental change. Writing in an article which followed the publication of The Fatal Days, she speaks about men's improved behaviour, but her comments are risible: "our young men are better groomed, less self-conscious, and no longer think it sissy to give or carry flowers, or unmanly to drink milk".
It's also disappointing that neither of these texts feature women on the warpath, demanding an equitable place in a male-dominated society. The writers of Come in Spinner do introduce a young woman doctor who advocates that "the only real salvation for women is work", but since she herself refuses to marry and have children, her show of independence merely reaffirms the patriarchal assumption that any woman who wants a professional career must forfeit her right to a family. Nor does the doctor advocate that women utilize financial independence as an emancipatory tool. Her idea of a fulfilled woman is a busy mother who struggles to survive in a hostile rural environment alongside her virile bushman-husband. Other "decent" women in these texts marry, not just Australians, but Australian bushman. Those who long for careers or wish to take advantages of the opportunites urban life affords the writers deem selfish and inconsiderate. Cusack/James' nostalgic insistence that women find fulfillment in the bush seems not only utterly insensitive to their needs, but entirely inappropriate to a mid-1940s urban Australian culture.
It's possible to argue that, since Cusack/James completed Come in Spinner in 1946, they were responding in part to the realities of the time, for the old ideas about what was appropriate for women were being forcefully reasserted. Women were, as Anne Summers writes, being "demobbed. Whether they wanted to or not, they were expected to return . . . to the pre-war division of labour and status and power". Nonetheless, I regret that writers like Drake-Brockman and Cusack/James chose, like their First-World War counterparts, to be dutiful myrmidons, to take their orders from the masculine myth-makers. I wish that, instead of relegating women to the bush, they'd created insubordinates who issued feisty challenges to the male monopoly of power in Australia, who used their words as artillery to overcome their marginalization, who did more than shoot blanks at the patriarchal structures that imprisoned them during the Second World War.
Oh well. There's always Vietnam.