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VIRTUE UNDER FIRE: HOW WORLD WAR II CHANGED OUR SOCIAL AND SEXUAL. ATTITUDES
By John Costello (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985. pp.309. $17.95.)
In the concluding pages of Virtue Under Fire, Mr. Costello asserts that the experiences of women during World War II were so extraordinary, that they were ultimately responsible for the occurrence of a "sexual revolution" two decades later. Mr. Costello is confused.
The revolution he refers to as "sexual" was the movement by women in the United States and Britain aimed at achieving social equality. In some respects this movement did concern matters that may fairly be described as "sexual," but to leave it at that is to view what actually occurred far too narrowly. And that is what this author does.
Mr. Costello has not written about the struggle to achieve equality, nor about the disparities in society between men and women. Instead, Mr. Costello has confused modern sexual practices and an attitude of permissiveness with gender equality/inequality, assuming that sexual "broadmindedness" is equivalent to social awareness of the limitations imposed upon men and women by virtue of birth as either male or female.
Virtue Under Fire is a series of vignettes gathered together under chapters carrying such provocative titles as "Making Love and War," "Comrades in Arms," "Sentimental Bullets," "Yielding to the Conquerors," and "The Seeds of Sexual Revolution." Each of the sixteen chapters contains quotes, paragraphs, and passages which are loosely linked together by Mr. Costello's narrative in which he attempts to provide a context leading to some, usually elusive, point. The vignettes are interesting. The connecting narratives and analyses left me uncertain as to what he was trying to accomplish.
Mr. Costello seems to have confused the metaphoric use of sexual conduct, practices, and ideas with themes relevant to, among other things, political and social gender equality, power, domination, subordination, and individual and societal attempts to cope in a rational manner with the emotional whirlpool of a world in which "normal" was suspended, for everyone.
I was alternately fascinated and horrified by the material in the book. I was fascinated with many of the personal vignettes because they tell amazingly frank tales which seem to come from the hearts and souls of the people who lived through...