Turning a Pretty Girl into a Killer’: Women, Violence and Clandestine Operations during the Second World War

Abstract

Nancy Wake, a clandestine agent who during the Second World War worked with the French Resistance, asserted, ‘I hate wars and violence but if they come then I don’t see why we women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas’ (Grice, 1994). Wake rejected conventional understandings of feminine patriotism, believing that women’s wartime roles should not be restricted to keeping the home fires burning. Active participation, she felt, was crucial, even if it entailed fighting. Yet the taboo on women killing remains a potent one. Popular understandings about women’s peace-loving, compassionate, caring ‘nature’, strengthened by their biological ability to bear children which is seen to be at odds with terminating life, are destabilised by the woman who commits violent acts. Violence is inextricably bound up with masculinity and is perceived as a key differentiator between men and women. Men are thought to have a natural predisposition towards violence, with male hormones causing aggression, and such thinking bolsters the way boys are brought up to be competitive and bellicose. Even weapons are gendered: guns, notes Deborah Homsher, an American author and novelist, are usually associated with masculinity, and more specifically with penises: ‘they point, they ejaculate, they penetrate, they can be shocking when exposed and they usually can be found adorning men’ (Homsher, 2001, p. 31). Women, on the other hand, are more commonly cast as the victim of violent behaviour, not the aggressor.