Disloyal Mothers and Scurrilous Citizens: Women and Subversion During World War I (review)

Disloyal Mothers and Scurrilous Citizens: Women and Subversion During World War I. By Kathleen Kennedy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999; pp. xi-170. $27.95.

The scene plays out clearly in our collective memories of war: scared yet stoically patriotic American boys head for far-off battlefields; tearful wives and mothers, assigned to the domestic front, pitch in at the factory, sell war bonds, volunteer at the Red Cross, and lift the country's morale by bravely sacrificing their sons. The gendered nature of the division of wartime labor is acknowledged by countless scholars as well as politicians who, as recently as the Gulf War, debate policies regarding women's role in combat. In Disloyal Mothers and Scurrilous Citizens: Women and Subversion During World War I, historian Kathleen Kennedy argues that governmental practices during World War I did more than merely reflect the culture's gendered expectations. Through a series of riveting accounts of women charged with treasonous acts, Kennedy lays out her case that wartime laws enacted and administered by the state gave "statutory power to particular definitions of manhood and womanhood" and, therefore, were "instrumental in forging the definitions of women's citizenship that emerged from early twentieth-century state-building" (xvii).

Kennedy unravels the complex relationship among "patriotism, Americanism, and ideas about true womanhood" (54) through the stories of 13 radical activist women who spoke out against U. S. policies rather than accept one of the traditional wartime roles reserved for women. Included are nationally known figures such as Emma Goldman and Rose Pastor Stokes as well as lesser known activists like Socialist leader Kate Sadler, labor activist Louise Olivereau, and German immigrant school teacher, Gertrude Pignol. All of these women were charged with violating the Espionage and Sedition Act of 1918, which forbade "'any language intended to incite resistance to the United States' . . . [thus] . . .virtually outlaw[ing] free speech" (xiii). Kennedy does not deny that these women publically criticized America's involvement in the war, but she argues the real reason they were targeted for prosecution was that they "challenged the dictates of patriotic motherhood . . . [by] . . . corrupt[ing] the reproductive process by rejecting male authority, usurping men's roles and responsibilities . . . and plant[ing] the seeds of disloyalty" in the country's draft age sons (109).

Crucial to Kennedy's argument is the concept of patriotic motherhood that defined women's primary civic obligation as the "production of loyal sons capable of defending the nation against its internal and external enemies" (109). This ideal mandated that any woman, whether or not she in fact was a mother of sons, had a responsibility to nurture an environment supportive to the recruitment of soldiers. Any deviation from this responsibility was proof of disloyalty to the country and perversion of womanhood, the reproductive process, and gender roles. The women identified by Kennedy were considered dangerous because they "threatened to turn both the gender and the political order on their heads" (108). She argues that these cases constituted a public debate over the "acceptable rhetorical and legal boundaries of women's citizenship" (108).

One of the obvious strengths of this book is that Kennedy examines anti-war activism from a new perspective--a gendered perspective. Her insightful analysis of the prosecutions' cases against these women reveals that gender expectations, rather than political ideology, were at the heart of the government's charges. She skillfully builds her argument that the accused were portrayed as personally and socially maladjusted "non-women," whose unwillingness to sacrifice America's sons to the war distorted the definition of motherhood, thus making them guilty of acts of subversion (110). Kennedy convincingly explains how the defendants' activities were framed as instances of unnatural "reproduction," because they propagated Bolshevism, anarchism, and pacifism rather than patriotism. Kennedy's identification and analysis of the government's use of the language of nationalism, motherhood, and biological determinism as...