Gendered Execution: Dying Like a Woman

Abstract

Examining and interpreting a wide range of sources, from both Allied and German perspectives, this chapter considers contested accounts of Cavell’s execution. What really did happen? There are many different and often interwoven accounts of her death. All accounts were gendered and entwined in the construction of wartime propaganda, with the common thread in the differing Allied narratives that it was essentially wrong to shoot a woman and that women necessarily die in a different way from men. On the other hand, considering Cavell guilty of a capital offence, the Germans argued for women’s equality before the law to justify Cavell’s execution. The various accounts given are examined for what they reveal about women’s place in war, chivalry and martyrdom, and how these discourses changed through the twentieth century. The issue of ‘equality’ versus ‘difference’ is a continual feminist challenge. In the late 1980s Joan Scott drew attention to the pitfalls of essential categories that view women in binary ways.’ Importantly, in the case of Cavell, both sides made their arguments of whether her death was justified without questioning the patriarchal system of warfare at the root of the situation.

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