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Women Against the Good War: Conscientious Objection and Gender on the American Home Front, 1941-1947 by Rachel Waltner Goossen.
When future historians of Mennonites study the historiography of the 20th century what will they conclude? Of course, this type of conjecture is impossible to answer but no doubt Rachel Waltner Goossen's book on women's experiences in Civilian Public Service will stand out as a fresh and distinctive approach to the telling of Mennonite history. Goossen's emphasis on the female story and on social history methodologies is still new in Mennonite historical circles. She, along with a few other historians, is just beginning to scratch the surface of Anabaptist and Mennonite women's history.
Goossen aptly employs social history methodologies. Her use of interviews, questionnaires, letters, diaries, photographs, and other archival resources produces a complex and tightly woven narrative about Mennonite, Quaker, Brethren women and others who, because of religious beliefs and humanitarian convictions, objected to World War II.
We learn about Edna Ramseyer, a college professor when World War II started. She encouraged young women at Goshen College to train themselves for work at CPS camps. Many such women, known as C.O. Girls or COGs, completed the training and went on to work and live in CPS camps.
We also learn about wives and sweethearts of C.O. men. Many of these women followed their husbands when they were transferred from camp to camp. Their stories are about providing for and raising small children on their own while their husbands were contained in the camp setting. Many women, even those with small children, had to find waged work because government compensation for CPS men was greatly reduced from the amount allotted to men in the armed services. Taking care of children and maintaining households on negligible incomes were common memories in Goossen's account.But Goossen's story is not just about how women contributed to CPS camps, supported their husbands, sweethearts, and brothers, and "made do" on limited incomes. Her "cultures of nonconformity" analysis is interwoven with a gendered critique of both American culture and church structures. Nonconformist C.O. women challenged both church and societal prescriptions about proper feminine behavior.
C.O. women were nonconformists in the larger American culture because they advocated a pacifist stance instead of wholeheartedly supporting the war. They were also nonconformists in church circles. Many C.O. women wanted to substantially contribute to the work of the church and to CPS camps and yet church administrators were more interested in employing women to boost the morale of men in the camps. Their work was not taken seriously by the church. In terms of training women for work in the camps there was an emphasis on nursing and nutrition, areas considered suitable for women. At a time when women were stepping in to fill men's vacated places on farms and in factories, and as a result truly redefining women's work, it seems that church leaders were mainly interested in tapping women's work but only if they remained safely within a female sphere. World War II did not produce a Mennonite equivalent of Rosie the Riveter, at least not among C.O. women.
As with many good histories some questions remain unanswered. Goossen claims that the CPS experience was transformative for women. We hear from interview material how crucial the experience was, but it is unclear how being a CPS woman made a long-term difference. Did the CPS experience produce female leaders in our church? One wonders, for example, if CPS women were more likely to pursue work outside the home after the war. How many of the women that Goossen questioned had professional careers? Or were CPS women, like the population as a whole, eager to raise families and become homemakers after the war? This is not a criticism of the decision to stay at home with small children. It is simply a question about how far the culture of nonconformity was carried. It seems that the CPS women's nonconformity did not include a sustained challenge to gender role expectations. In a similar vein, Goossen says that the CPS experience caused women to form lifelong commitments to numerous peace and social justice movements but few examples of such commitments were offered.
One also wonders about the day to day lives of the women with small children who had to work outside the home. How did they manage far away from home communities, without the help of extended families, and on small incomes? One CPS mother noted how she set up housekeeping in a "New Hampshire CCC barracks with snow sifting across our bed during the winter" (p.60). The culpability of church administrators who expected female support for CPS men but did not lend aid to CPS wives and children is mentioned but remains largely unexplored.
Goossen also mentions how female support networks flourished around many of the camps. Did a women's culture evolve in these situations? It seems so because often help was found in the oddest of places. Especially intriguing was the story about the women who helped each another even when one's husband was a CPSer and the other's was in the armed services (p. 47). These practical women set aside ideology in order to help one another. The hints of more of these stories were tantalizing and perhaps Goossen has the material and resources to pursue this "women's culture" topic in more detail. This research agenda and similar topics will surely be addressed at greater length as Goossen and others continue to devote themselves to the discovery and analysis of women in history.
Kimberly D. Schmidt, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History, Washington Study-Service Year, Eastern Mennonite University
Mennonite Historical Bulletin, January 2000