"Not So Quiet" as representative of gender in WWII The novel "Not so Quiet" as representative of gendered experience during WWII

Evadne Price wrote the book "Not So Quiet" in 1930 under the pseudonym Helen Zenna Smith. Price was an established author and playwright by the time she wrote "Not So Quiet," best known for her serialized romance novels. She also wrote children's books and articles for women's magazine. But "Not So Quiet" was a very different kind of piece, partly because of its far more serious nature, partly because it was somewhat autobiographical. She was initially approached by a British publisher to write a satire on "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque, but Price argued that she would rather write an account of a woman's experience with war instead. Price then contacted a British ambulance driver who had kept war diaries as a basis for her story, then elaborating the story to revolve around a fictional version of herself named Smithie. Taking this very personal, intimate story of a woman, as well as her already inherent skill of writing for women, Price created a novel whose voice is distinctly female. The reader feels Smithie's confusion, anger and isolation in her struggle to build a new identity in the wake of a total loss of innocence. In this, more then anything, Price has created a war story that is not only about women, but one that speaks to women and resonates with them, a true rarity. It is through Price's novel that a distinct view of the war through the eyes of a very female, upper-class experience help give the reader a very clear idea of many of the issues faced by women of the war years as they try to maintain what society has always told them is feminine behavior in an increasingly bloody reality.

The nature of the book "Not So Quiet" is reflective of "All Quiet on the Western Front" in that both are pacifist responses to war, but in the case of "Not So Quiet," the pacifist voice is female. The ideas about war expressed by Smithie are often reminiscent of other pacifist women's responses to war and draw attention to the women's peace

Bibliography: erminghouse, Patricia A., and Magda Meuller, eds. German Feminist Writings. Vol. 95. New York: The German Library, 2001. Simmel, Ernst. "War Neurosis and "Psychic Trauma"" The Legacy of the War. Smith, Helen Z. Not So Quiet... New York: The Feminist P, 1930. Sohn, Anne-Marie. "Between the Wars in France and England." A History of Women in the West, Volume V Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century (History of Women in the West). By Georges Duby. Vol. 5. New York: Belknap P, 1994. 92-119.