Authenticity and Gender: Public Responses to Great War Memoirs by Nurses and Frontline Soldiers in Britain, France and Germany
Authenticity and Gender: Public Responses to Great War Memoirs by Nurses and Frontline Soldiers in Britain, France and Germany
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真实性与性别：英国、法国和德国护士和前线士兵对伟大战争回忆录的公众反应
作者：
J. Palmer
摘要 士兵和护士的一战回忆录都强调目击者在建立叙述的权威性方面的作用。这种权威在公众对这些文本的回应中得到了认可，这些文本跨越了国家和性别的界限。然而，性别之间的反应是不对称的：士兵们经常被指责在他们的叙述中坚持个人经历至上，理由是这使战争显得毫无意义，破坏了所做出的牺牲。相反，护士并不是此类攻击的对象，但有一个值得注意的例外，这可以通过相关回忆录的非典型性来解释。这种不对称性源于回忆录中性别特定形式的真实性归属：士兵叙述的真实性源于他们自己的经历，护士叙述的真实性源于他们为士兵所做的事情。
ABSTRACT Great War memoirs by both soldiers and nurses emphasise the role of eye-witness in establishing the authority of the account. This authority is acknowledged in the public response to these texts, which crosses both national and gender boundaries. However, the response is asymmetric between genders: soldiers were often blamed for insisting on the primacy of personal experience in their accounts, on the grounds that this made the war seem senseless, undermining the sacrifices made. Nurses, to the contrary, were not the subject of such attacks, with one noteworthy exception which is explained by the untypical nature of the memoir in question. The asymmetry derives from the attribution of gender-specific forms of authenticity in the memoirs: the authenticity of soldiers’ accounts derived from their own experiences, the authenticity of nurses’ accounts derived from what they did for the soldiers.