Veil of Silence
by Bethanie Simms

The statue above (paper mache, wood, cloth, metal, paper), built by Bethanie Simms and photographed by Rachel Lackowitz, was presented at Claremont Graduate University during the Fall 2024 semester. The quotes below were included on the statue's attached tags.
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“Countless female fighters have been pushed out of space and cultural histories that didn’t know how to acknowledge their contribution without fearing that men were “losing” something by sharing those spaces with them.”
Seconds Out: Women and Fighting by Allison Dean
“Tell them that all the ideals and beliefs you ever had have crashed about your gun deafened ears—that you don’t believe in God or them or the infallibility of England or anything but bloody war and wounds and foul smells and smutty stories and smoke and bombs an lice and filth and noise, noise, noise—that you live in a world of cold sick fear, a dirty world of darkness and despair—that you want to crawl ignominiously home away from these painful writhing thing that once were men.”
Not So Quiet: The Stepdaughters of War by Helen Zenna Smith
“Nevertheless, the facts are that women fought, and fought well; that they often fought in what we would now consider extreme rule sets and conditions that the wider public knew about.”
Seconds Out: Women and Fighting by Allison Dean
“Shall I ever know a lover whose eyes reflect my image without the shadow of war rising between us? A lover in whose arms I shall forget the maimed men who pass before me in endless parade in the darkness before the dawn when I think and think and think because the procession will not let me sleep? What is to happen to women like me when this war ends… if it ever ends.”
The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich
“I see in the years to come old me in their easy chairs fiercely reviling us for lacking the sweetness and softness of our mothers and their mothers before them; chiding us for language that is not the language of gentlewomen; accusing us of barnyard morals when we use to love as a drug for forgetfulness because we have acquired the habit of taking what we can from life while we are alive to take it.”
The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich
“Men hide behind history, behind facts; war fascinates them as action and conflict of ideas, of interests, whereas women are caught up with feelings. And another thing: men are prepared from childhood for the fact that they may have to shoot. Women are not taught that.”
The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich
“What were the reasons that mad a young girl from a good aristocratic family leave her ancestral home, renounce her sex, take on labors and duties that even frighten men, and turn up on the battlefield—and what a battlefield! Napoleon’s. What prompted her? Secret grief of the heart? Inflamed imagination? An inborn irrepressible inclination? Love?”
Not So Quiet: The Stepdaughters of War by Helen Zenna Smith
About the Author
Bethanie Simms is an English Ph.D. student at Claremont Graduate University.