Women and the Holocaust: A cyberspace of Their Own

(I meant to post this during Women's History Month. Clearly, I'm a bit late. Anyway. )

I love the Woman and the Holocaust: A Cyberspace of Their Own site. This is what woman's history is: academic scholarship, personal testimonies, poetry, literature and art. It is the multiplicity of representation that allow us to find the history of women which is elided, ignored and erased from mainstream history. The experience of women Holocaust survivors has demonstrated this over and over again; notably in the work of Lawrence Langer who claimed that women's experiences weren't substantially different to men. This fails to consider the very real biological differences between men and women which did result in their experiences being gendered. After all, although a few men were also victims, sexualised violence was predominantly an experience of women and children; as was caring for children, elderly and disabled family members. 

The dedication of Women and the Holocaust: A Cyberspace of Their Own reads:

Who were murdered while pregnant.  Holding little hands of children or carrying infants in their arms on the way to be gassed.  In hiding.  To the mothers who gave their children to be hidden, many never to find them again.  To the righteous gentile mothers and the nuns in convents, who were hiding and protecting the children in their care.

Or as fighters in the resistance:  in ghettos, forests, partisan units.

And to the lives of those few who survived and bravely carried on.

This site is an amazing resource and one which I highly recommend. 

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Helen Castor's She-Wolves:The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth

I couldn't put this book down. Helen Castor has a real gift for prose; a rare gift among historians. The hours I've wasted reading badly written historical texts in my life are extensive so this was a joy to read. I also knew next to nothing about the 5 queens that Castor profiled: Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine,  Isabella of France, Margaret of Anjou and Mary Tudor. She-Wolves: The Queens who Ruled England Before Elizabeth is a fascinating and quick read. There are some problems with the text; notably the complete lack of footnotes and sources. I understand this was written as a piece of "popular fiction" but the inclusion of the bibliography at the back was not enough. I want to read more about these four women but it's hard to tell which would be the best texts for me to read next. 

Castor's respect and admiration for these five women, however flawed they were is evident, but this is still a military history of battles and men. Yes, this testifies to the paucity of primary source material on the lives of these women but the book is still focused mainly on military history, dynastic squabbles and male temper tantrums. There is very little about the women themselves and much of what Castor writes focuses on their military and political battles. In many ways, this is a very traditional "history" text, albeit one written about women.  Castor simply doesn't make enough of the social and cultural milieu in which the women lived. She focuses on the military history to the exclusion of the households and courts of the women themselves. They are all defined in relation to the men they married or birthed.

Castor also leaves numerous questions unexamined. She claims from the start that these 5 women were prevented from becoming true queens because of their inability to lead armies. Her first evidence of this is Matilda's inability to lead an army to fight Stephen who ousted her from her thrown. Yet, less than 20 pages later, Castor claims that Stephen's wife lead an army against Matilda's troops. Why could King Stephen's wife, a queen consort, lead an army whilst the ousted Queen Matilda could not? These women also lived across 4 centuries and Castor makes very little of the changing political and social structures which dramatically changed the women's ability to claim the thrown. After all, Matilda was English -born [but the granddaughter of William the Conquerer] whilst Isabella, Eleanor and Margaret were all foreign-born. Mary become queen by dint of being properly English [and a Tudor]. That makes a significant difference.

I did enjoy this book as Castor's gift for writing compensates for any problems within the text. It isn't the best text for learning more about these 5 Queens of England though. What She-Wolves does demonstrate, more than anything I've read in a long time, is cultural femicide: the complete erasure of women from culture. The fact that there is simply not enough evidence of the lives of these 5 women to write a history without basing it on their relationships with men is cultural femicide.

As ever, I would love recommendations for histories of these women!

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Jewly Hight's Right By Her Roots: Americana Women and Their Songs

The problem with this book is that it is just one book. It should be nine separate books: the eight singer-songwriters that Hight adores so much:

• Lucinda Williams
• Julie Miller
• Victoria Williams
• Michelle Shocked
• Mary Gauthier
• Ruthie Foster
• Elizabeth Cook
• Abigail Washburn

And, Jewly Hight herself; because Hight might claim to be writing the stories of these eight women singers-songwriters and their examination of "their geographical, cultural, familial, and religious roots in their music" but Hight's actually written herself into the text. I want to know more about the 8 female artists and Hight.  A longer book would have allowed the inclusion of more of the lyrics by these talented women but also more of Hight herself. Right by Her Roots is a love affair with these talented women singer-songwriters and it's love-affair that just isn't long enough.

It's all fascinating but at 200 pages, there simply isn't enough space to really examine these issues and fully explore the back catalogues of the music of these women. I want to know more about all 8 women but equally I want to know about Hight. I want to know about how Hight traces her roots and I want more of Hight's personal responses to these women. 

I definitely recommend this book but with fingers crossed that Hight writes more in-depth books about these women (and herself).

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Barbara Black Koltuv's The Book of Lilith

I'm in two minds about Barbara Black Koltuv's The Book of Lilith. I found the history of the myths surrounding Lilith, and her previous incarnations in other cultural traditions, utterly fascinating. This is a history of women and myth that I knew nothing about. Koltuv's choice to quote large sections of original text were of immense value. On the other hand, I was less fond of Koltuv's use of psychoanalysis because I felt it involved an essentialist construction of women as being either Eve or Lilith. This is obviously an odd criticism considering Koltuv is a well-respected psychoanalyst but the constant reference to the power of modern women's sexuality detracted from the origin myths of Lilith. 

Prior to reading this, I knew nothing of Lilith and I will have to reread this book as there is just so much information packed into such a short text that I feel I have missed out on pieces of Lilith's story.  I knew Lilith was the first woman in one version of the Christian tradition but I did not know about Lilith's construction within Jewish texts. I certainly did not know that Lilith is purported to be one of the two "mothers" of the infant in the Biblical story the Judgement of Solomon. I want to know more but I found myself distracted by Koltuv's inclusion of her current patients. Koltuv's use of psychoanalysis to read the stories of Lilith throughout history was really powerful and riveting but the references to her modern practise were simply not. 

Lilith's rewriting as mother and whore, as the moon but also a deity fascinates me. So, if anyone has any excellent recommendations to read on the story of Lilith [and written by women!], please let me know.

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My Favourite Texts on Women's History

(Image from here)

These are some of my favourite texts on Women's History. The vast majority are about women's experiences in the Holocaust but I'm always looking for new recommendations!

Elizabeth R. Baer & Myrna Goldenberg, eds.. Experience and Expression: Women, the Nazis, and the Holocaust, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003)

Judith Tydor Baumel, Double Jeopardy: Gender and the Holocaust, (London: Vallentin Mitchell, 1998)

Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia

Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War Two, (Penguin Books, 1997)

Esther Fuchs, Women and the Holocaust: Narrative and Representation, (University Press of America, 1999)

Marlene E. Heinemann, Gender and Destiny Women Writers and the Holocaust, (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986)

Esther Hertzog, Life, Death and Sacrifice: Women and Family in the Holocaust, (Gefen Books, 2006)

Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)

Felicja Karay, Death Comes in Yellow, Skarzysko-Kamienna Slave Labor Camp, translated from the Hebrew by Sara Kitai, (The Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996)

Ronit Lentin (ed), Gender and Catastrophe, (London: Zed Books, 1997)

R. Ruth Linden, Making Stories, Making Selves: Feminist Reflections on the Holocaust, (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993)

Dalia Ofer & Lenore J. Weitzman: eds. Women in the Holocaust, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998

Anna Reading, The Social Inheritance of the Holocaust: Gender, Culture and Memory, (Palgrave, 2002)

Leslie J Reagain, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine and Law in the United States. (University of California Press, 1997)

Carol Rittner & John K. Roth, Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust, (Minnesota:Paragon House, 1993)

Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Vintage, 1999)

Rochelle Saidel, The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004)

Rochelle Saidel & Sonja M Hedgepeth, Sexual Violence against Jewish Women During the Holocaust, (Brandeis Press, 2010)

Penny Summerfield, Reconstructing women’s wartime lives: Discourse and subjectivity in oral histories of the Second World War, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998)

Nechama Tec, Resilience and Courage: Women, Men and the Holocaust, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003)

Zoe Waxman, Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)

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#ReadingOnlyBooksWrittenByWomen : Women's History Month

I'm a history nerd; not that this piece of information is surprising to anyone who reads this blog but I am. And, proud. Obviously, also a huge fan of Women's History Month!

These are books I have lined up for Women's History Month; all are written by authors who are new to me. I doubt I will have time to read them all but I'm aiming to spend the month not reading fiction!

Andrea Smith's Conquest: Sexual Violence and the American Indian Genocide

Antonia Fraser's The Warrior Queens

Barbara Black Koltuv's The Book of Lilith

Jewly Hight's Right by Her Roots: American Women and their Songs

Rosalind Miles' The Woman's History of the World

Bettany Hughes' Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore

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