Modernism, Male Friendship, and the First World War by Sarah Cole (review)

Abstract

no2 Reviews Modernism, Male Friendship, and theFirst World War. By Sarah Cole. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. 2003. vii+ 297 pp. ?40; $60. ISBN 0-521-81923-7. On the dust jacket of Sarah Cole's book Jay Winter puffsthe publication as 'a major event in the literary history of modernism'. While not entirely agreeing with Winter's hyperbole, I found this an impressive work, which treats a relatively neglected area of investigation with intelligence and insight. Cole's subject is the literaryrepresentation of male friendship before, during, and afterthe First World War, and her contention is that the fracturing of male intimacy and its failure in both public and private realms are characteristic of modernity and modernism. That the book is divided into four heftychapters each neatly subdivided into two or three sections betrays the origin of the work as a thesis. Nevertheless, this very schematic structure enables Cole to cover a great deal of ground and to contextualize the major authors dealt with in stimulating ways. Forster, Conrad, some of the major war poets, and D. H. Lawrence provide the focal points forthe four chapters. Forster's work is set against the Hellenism of Carpenter, Pater, and Symons and the ideas of Classicism as purveyed via the public schools and universities. Conrad's work is read in relation to other imperial fictions and in particular to Henry Morton Stanley's How I found Livingstone. The war poets Owen and Sassoon are related to the dis? courses of comradeship spawned by the broader culture, and connections are drawn between these writers and the post-war portrayal of masculinity and male intimacy in the works of Vera Brittain, Virginia Woolf, and T. S. Eliot. This provides a bridge to the final chapter, where a very useful discussion of the cultural impact of war on masculine communities provides the prelude to a discussion of D. H. Lawrence. In each of these chapters what is demonstrated is the failure of masculine intimacy at both the personal and the institutional level. And here, I think, is one of the most important aspects ofthe book. Cole is astute in warning against the common assump? tion when conceptualizing friendship that it is 'a private voluntary relation governed by personal sentiment and easy communion' (p. 4). Rather, 'friendship has its own conventions and institutional affinities(schools, universities, social clubs, as well as more rigidly arranged organizations fromthe Boy Scouts to the military platoon), and it is shot through with social meaning' (p. 4). It is in unravelling the tensions between institutional bonds and personal affectionthat Cole is at her most stimulating. This is particularly true of her account of war literature, where she sees the tension between the official discourses of loyalty to the regiment, platoon, or unit in opposition to the bonds of personal friendship. The latter in a military context lead to possible bereavement and the psychological traumas associated with such bereavement. The military always tryto counter this with the idea of loyalty to the larger group; the dead are taken up into the glorious history of the regiment. But of course this manoeuvre is not always successful in healing either psychic or bodily wounds. In a short review such as this, itis difficultto summarize the richness ofthis study in all its detail. Suffice itto say that anyone with an interest in any ofthe terms ofthe title will find plenty here to reward their close attention. If I have reservations, they stern perhaps from my own theoretical perspectives rather than from any flaw in Cole's argument. For instance, I often found myself wondering about the differentmean? ings implicit in the word 'friendship', and Cole's unwillingness to differentiatewith any clarity between heterosexual ('homosocial') male relations (i.e. close relationships between heterosexual males) and homosexual relationships. Secondly, I thought it odd that in a book about the failures of masculine friendship in the twentieth century there was not more space afforded to the effectsof capitalism on the socialization of men. I would have thought that the idea of competition between men is arguably the MLR, 100.4, 2005 1103 most powerful force in the destruction of masculinity, and that warfare is...