In Borden’s Fragment titled Moonlight, she lists three companions on page 40, “Pain, Life and Death.” She then spends the next six pages describing what Pain does and how Pain infects her daily life and those around her. “Pain is the stronger. She is the greater. She is insatiable, greedy, vilely amorous, lustful, obscene.” She gives Pain feminine pronouns, calling it she/her/hers. What does making “pain” feminine add or take away from the story? In all of the literature we have read so far, what else is described with feminine pronouns and how does that connect to Borden’s idea of a feminine Pain?
Borden writes for the people who did not serve in the Great War, then and now. This includes us as a class. If this was the only book we had to study, the only book that came out of The Great War, would your feelings about the war change? Would your understanding of the war change? What understandings have we gained through our other texts that are missing from The Forbidden Zone? What ideas are present here that we have not seen anywhere else?
Similar to “The Beach,” Borden on multiple occasions has “zoomed out” of the story she is telling. Physically she seems to be so far away that people turn into “flies on the beach (p37),” and “ant people (p13).” These fragments she is sharing with us are all supposed to be moments she has witnessed herself, but clearly she is not a giant or watching from an airplane. Why does she repeatedly stay far away from the narrative she is sharing?
15 thoughts on “Brooke’s Reading Questions for March 10th The Forbidden Zone”
3. Her shifting perspective in the stories is a fascinating aspect of the work’s style. Your question reminds me of her words in the introduction “I would say that I have blurred the bare horror of facts and softened the reality in spite of myself, not because I wished to do so, but because I was incapable of a nearer approach to the truth.” With this context, she may be staying far away from the narrative because being closer to it is too painful. The gory details of what she witnessed being close are so traumatic she cannot relive them, or at least doe not trust her audience to receive them well enough. However, it could also be her way of trying to explain her perspective. As we discussed in class, she traveled in the forbidden zone so she saw everything that happened but was not directly in it and her travels through the forbidden zone gave her the broad perspective of someone watching from above. When one sees ants scrambling around, there is nothing they can really do it help because ants live in constant danger. Even if you are not the one to accidentally step on them, that does not mean the next person who walks by will not. I wonder if that kind of powerlessness is how Borden felt as she realized she could only ever patch the soldiers to send them back out to die. She could see what they were trying to do and how they operated, but was not truly one of them or powerful enough to save them for good.
1-This is a great insight into Borden’s motivation. It is my belief that Borden feminized pain, life, and death because the war was fought by men. Women could not participate in the fighting and, for the most part, were not among the suffering. Women (nurses) were the healers who patched up the men and sent them right back to the front to die. I think Borden had a great deal of guilt about this and feminized pain, life, and death because the war robbed men of so much. The sexual undercurrents in this fragment seem to me to be Borden’s way of saying the horrors (injuries, illnesses, role reversals) of the battlefield somehow robbed the men of their masculine sexuality. I have done a lot or research into this question and many scholars agree that the men who returned from the Great War injured and shell-shocked were acutely aware of a “loss of masculine agency” and greatly resented the women who became their caregivers.*
*Crouthamel, Jason, and Peter Leese, eds. Psychological Trauma and The Legacies of The First World War. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2016. Pg. 4
2-Another fantastic insight Brooke! I think one of the reasons this work is not overly popular is its candor. Borden is super frank and open about the pain and suffering. More so than Remarque or Hemingway and because of Borden’s affinity for poetry, her language is extremely powerful. I have read dozens of Great War books because it is my area of interest and if Borden’s was all I could use, it would provide me with the knowledge of gender reversals and trauma from a Modernist perspective which is a limited picture. However, I think Borden’s work is VERY IMPORTANT because of its insights into the psychological impact on gender relations. Look at The Beach:
“He loved her. He hated her. He did not want her to be kind to him. He could never touch her again and he was tied to her. He was rotting and he was tied to her perfection. (36)”
3-It is just my opinion but I feel Borden removes herself from the narrative to illustrate to the reader that they are witnessing a “godlike” or “metaphysical” analysis of the horrors she has endured. This semi-poetic device seems to add gravitas to the narrative.
3. Her shifting perspective in the stories is a fascinating aspect of the work’s style. Your question reminds me of her words in the introduction “I would say that I have blurred the bare horror of facts and softened the reality in spite of myself, not because I wished to do so, but because I was incapable of a nearer approach to the truth.” With this context, she may be staying far away from the narrative because being closer to it is too painful. The gory details of what she witnessed being close are so traumatic she cannot relive them, or at least doe not trust her audience to receive them well enough. However, it could also be her way of trying to explain her perspective. As we discussed in class, she traveled in the forbidden zone so she saw everything that happened but was not directly in it and her travels through the forbidden zone gave her the broad perspective of someone watching from above. When one sees ants scrambling around, there is nothing they can really do it help because ants live in constant danger. Even if you are not the one to accidentally step on them, that does not mean the next person who walks by will not. I wonder if that kind of powerlessness is how Borden felt as she realized she could only ever patch the soldiers to send them back out to die. She could see what they were trying to do and how they operated, but was not truly one of them or powerful enough to save them for good.
1-This is a great insight into Borden’s motivation. It is my belief that Borden feminized pain, life, and death because the war was fought by men. Women could not participate in the fighting and, for the most part, were not among the suffering. Women (nurses) were the healers who patched up the men and sent them right back to the front to die. I think Borden had a great deal of guilt about this and feminized pain, life, and death because the war robbed men of so much. The sexual undercurrents in this fragment seem to me to be Borden’s way of saying the horrors (injuries, illnesses, role reversals) of the battlefield somehow robbed the men of their masculine sexuality. I have done a lot or research into this question and many scholars agree that the men who returned from the Great War injured and shell-shocked were acutely aware of a “loss of masculine agency” and greatly resented the women who became their caregivers.*
*Crouthamel, Jason, and Peter Leese, eds. Psychological Trauma and The Legacies of The First World War. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2016. Pg. 4
2-Another fantastic insight Brooke! I think one of the reasons this work is not overly popular is its candor. Borden is super frank and open about the pain and suffering. More so than Remarque or Hemingway and because of Borden’s affinity for poetry, her language is extremely powerful. I have read dozens of Great War books because it is my area of interest and if Borden’s was all I could use, it would provide me with the knowledge of gender reversals and trauma from a Modernist perspective which is a limited picture. However, I think Borden’s work is VERY IMPORTANT because of its insights into the psychological impact on gender relations. Look at The Beach:
“He loved her. He hated her. He did not want her to be kind to him. He could never touch her again and he was tied to her. He was rotting and he was tied to her perfection. (36)”
3-It is just my opinion but I feel Borden removes herself from the narrative to illustrate to the reader that they are witnessing a “godlike” or “metaphysical” analysis of the horrors she has endured. This semi-poetic device seems to add gravitas to the narrative.