The 'Child of The Barbarian': Rape, Race and Nationalism in France During the First World War

TitleThe 'Child of The Barbarian': Rape, Race and Nationalism in France During the First World War
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication1993
AuthorsHarris, Ruth
JournalPast & Present
Issue141
Pagination170-206
Date Published11/1993
Abstract

In September 1914, a fourteen-year-old girl went you to buy bread in her native town of Château-Thierry. On her way to the shop, she was abducted by a German soldier who took her to a room and raped her. Her experience was shared by hundreds of other women int he early weeks of the First World War. The simple way in which she told her tale was quickly appropriated by battle-scarred soldiers, well-meaning officials, front-line journalists and propagandists. In this article, Ruth Harris accounts for the way the actual victimization of women was transformed into a representation of a violated, but innocent, female nation resisting the assaults of a brutal male assailant. Harris also thereby illuminates a linked debate which focused on the so-called enfants du barbare, the hordes of "mongrel" children anticipated as the products of German rape. Just as the rapes themselves became the subject of earnest debate, so government officials and distinguished commentators argued about how to respond to this perceived second invasion by expressing sometimes phantasmagoric fears about the threat these infants posed.

URLhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/651033
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