|
|
|
FRIENDS, ALIENS, AND ENEMIES: FICTIVE COMMUNITIES AND THE LUSITANIA RIOTS OF 1915
| By Nicoletta F. Gullace |
University of New Hampshire |
| In August, 1918, theatrical censor G.S. Street recommended for licence The Female Hun—a play due to open at the Lyceum Theater on October 2nd. "This is an ordinary melodrama, superior to the average...," commented Street. "The 'female Hun,' passing as an Englishwoman, has married General Grant, of important position and low mental capacity..." After conspiring with the Generals's naturalized German butler, stealing plans for a "wonderful aeroplane," and organizing the kidnaping of the play's heroine onto a German U-boat, "the female Hun is detected by the General in the act of spying... and after a struggle is shot by him." "So all ends satisfactorily, except for the General's feelings," observed Street. "Probably there is enough excitement in the production for its success. There is nothing offensive in it..."1 |
1
|
|
While Street found "nothing offensive" in the play, his matter-of-fact asides about its "ordinariness" deserve some attention for what they reveal about nationalism, nationality, and the relationship of the family to the state in wartime Britain. The play opens with three characters chatting over tea about British nationality law. Betty, an ingenue, asks Sir Archbald, a retired gentleman, about the 1914 British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act: "Did you see that about a German marrying an Englishwoman; that makes her a German?" "That is so" replied Sir Archibald, "and if a German woman marries an Englishman, that makes her English..." "I cannot understand that," gasps Betty. "No need for you to try. That is the law of the land," replies Sir Archibald.2 This "law of the land" will have terrifying implications in the course of the play. Thanks to the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act, which stated that "the wife of a British subject shall be deemed to be a British subject, and the wife of an alien shall be deemed to be an alien," the female Hun is able to prey on an unsuspecting British General and, through marriage, become herself a British subject by law.3 That her legal status and her marriage in no way change her allegiance to the Kaiser is revealed through her actions. Using her place within the home, the female Hun listens to plans for an important British attack. When her shocked husband finds her she is armed and unrepentant: "I will not stop to use the information for my country." "Your country," he replies with surprise. Just as Mrs. Grant is about to shoot her husband, he snatches the revolver and fires. "Till death do us part," he mutters.4 |
2
|
|
In this play, and others like it, blood is clearly thicker than water. While Mrs. Grant is legally British, her heart is still German. Her husband redeems himself only by ruthlessly shooting her as a spy—national loyalty trumping marital loyalty as the affective center of a world where personal bonds were repeatedly subordinated to more abstract notions of ethnic solidarity. This paper argues that in Britain during the Great War notions of fictive kinship, based on an imagined community of blood ties and racial stock, began to undercut the living bonds of neighbourliness, familial affection, and—though far less successfully—marriage itself. In this process, a liberal notion of inclusion, based on law and individual rights, came under pressure from more popular and emotive concepts of belonging. The reassertion of what Kathleen Wilson has called the "island race,"5 after a long but fraught liberal hiatus, is evident in the Lusitania riots of 1915, a pivotal moment in the re-creation of popular concepts of national belonging and in the erosion of the power of the alien to define himself through character, community, or law. |
. . . |
There are about 9782 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
