A year after the publication of Swastika Night, Virginia Woolf, in Three Guineas (1938) also connected the tyranny of the fascist state with the tyranny of patriarchal society. Recent studies of fascism have further corroborated the connection. Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi, for example, in an article on female sexuality in fascist ideology argues that one cannot talk about fascism without at the same time talking about patriarchy. Her analysis locates the originality of fascism ‘not in any capacity to generate a new ideology, but in its conjunctural transformation and recombination of what already exists’.7
A further aspect of Swastika Night of interest to contemporary readers is its resemblance to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. There is no direct evidence that Orwell was acquainted with Swastika Night, published twelve years before his novel; only the internal similarities suggest that Orwell, an inveterate borrower, borrowed also from Burdekin. As it happens, Victor Gollancz, publisher of Swastika Night, was also Orwell’s first publisher, and Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier was itself a Left Book Club selection, in 1937, just as Swastika Night was in 1940.
Both Nineteenth Eighty-Four and Swastika Night depict totalitarian regimes in which individual thought has been all but eliminated and towards this end all information about the past, and even memory itself, have been destroyed—much more thoroughly in Burdekin’s novel than in Orwell’s. In both books the world is divided into distinct empires in perpetual and static competition. There is a similar hierarchy in each novel, and the most despised groups (proles; women) are regarded as brute animals. The hierarchical extremes alone are to some extent free of domination. The knights and the Christians are not subject to constant search in Swastika Night— the knights because of their important position, the Christians because they are Untouchable. Similarly, in Nineteen Eighty-Four , Inner Party members can turn off their telescreens, and the proles are not obliged to have them installed, for the proles simply do not matter. And, in keeping with the very concept of hierarchy, in both societies the upper echelons have material privileges denied to others.
Furthermore, in each novel there is a rebellious protagonist who is approached by a man in a position of power (O’Brien, the Inner Party member; von Hess, the knight). This powerful man becomes the mediator through whom the protagonist’s tendency to rebel is initially channelled, and in each case he gives the protagonist a secret book and hence knowledge. In both novels, also, a photograph provides a key piece of evidence about the past. Winston Smith and Alfred each attempt to teach a lover/friend (Julia; Hermann) about the past by reading from the secret book, but meet with resistance or indifference. In both cases a curious detail occurs: Julia and Hermann sleep while the book is read aloud, a mark of their lack of both interest and intellectual development.
As in Swastika Night, in Nineteen Eighty-Four the secret opposition is called a Brotherhood. Despite the apolitical inclinations of Hermann and Julia, each is drawn into the protagonist’s rebellion and ultimately destroyed by it. In both novels, too, there are official enemies to be hated: Goldstein in Nineteen Eighty-Four; the four arch-friends, enemies of Hitler, in Swastika Night; and the eternal mythical leaders, Big Brother and Hitler, to be adored. Finally, as if in enactment of the theories of Wilhelm Reich, in both novels a distortion of sexuality occurs: in Nineteen Eighty-Four by the prohibition of sex for pleasure; in Swastika Night by the degradation and Reduction of women which has made love and sexual attraction a prerogative of men. And in both novels sex is encouraged for the sake of procreation, but only with certain people.
Orwell gave names to phenomena that also appear in Swastika Night; indeed, the main contribution of Nineteen Eighty-Four to modern culture probably resides in these names: ‘Newspeak’ is Orwell’s term for the reduction of language that is designed to inhibit thought. In Swastika Night, too, concepts and words have been lost. ‘Marriage’ and ‘socialism’ are such items, and the idea of women as proud and valuable human beings. ‘Doublethink’ is Orwell’s term for the ability to hold contradictory thoughts in one’s mind simultaneously without experiencing the contradiction, and by extension it refers to the ability to censor one’s own thoughts and memories—as the women do in Swastika Night when they negate the evidence of their own senses in favour of the official ideology they have absorbed.
But Orwell cannot and does not provide a name for the key factor that explains the Party’s preoccupation with domination, power, and violence: these are elements in the gender ideology that Burdekin labels the ‘cult of masculinity’. By her ability to name this phenomenon and analyse its workings in the world, Burdekin gives her depiction of a totalitarian regime a critical dimension totally lacking in Orwell’s novel. Swastika Night and Nineteen Eighty-Four are both primarily about men and their behaviour. Burdekin addresses this explicitly in her expose of the cult of masculinity. But Orwell, taking the male as the model for the human species, seems to believe that he is depicting innate characteristics of human beings. Thus the despair one senses at the end of Orwell’s novel and the hope that still exists at the end of Burdekin’s are linked to the degree of awareness that each writer has of gender roles and power politics as social constructs.8 Orwell resolutely refuses, throughout his works, to question a gender ideology that he fully supports. Therefore, he can only, helplessly, attribute the pursuit of power to ‘human nature’ itself. Burdekin, by contrast, is able to see the preoccupation with power in the context of a gender polarisation that can degenerate into the world of Swastika Night, with its hypertrophied masculinity on the one hand and its Reduction of women on the other. Tracing the relationship between these two extremes, as well as their continuity with the gender stereotypes of traditional ‘civilised’ society, Burdekin makes a resounding critique of the dangers of male supremacy.
Notes
1 See Andy Croft’s important article ‘Worlds Without End Foisted Upon the Future—Some Antecedents of Nineteen Eighty-Four’ in Christopher Norris (ed.), Inside the Myth: Orwell, Views from the Left, London 1984, pp. 183-216. Croft considers Swastika Night ‘undoubtedly the most sophisticated and original of all the many anti-fascist dystopias of the late 1930s and 1940s’.
2 Deborah Kutenplon, ‘The Connections: Militarism, Sex Roles and Christianity in The Rebel Passion and Swastika Night’, unpublished paper (1984).
3 Susan Groag Bell and Karen M. Offen, Women, the Family, and Freedom: The Debate in Documents, Vol. II, 1880-1950, Stanford 1983, p. 383.
4 Ibid ., pp. 377-8.
5 Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Society, New York 1975, pp. 41ff.
6 Cited in Clifford Kirkpatrick, Germany: It’s Women and Family Life, Indianapolis 1938, p. 116.
7 Jane Caplan, ‘Introduction to Female Sexuality in Fascist Ideology’, Feminist Review, No. 1, p. 62.
8 For a more detailed discussion of Swastika Night and Nineteen Eighty-Four, see my ‘Orwell’s Despair, Burdekin’s Hope: Gender and Power in Dystopia’, Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 85-95, in which some of the comments in this introduction originally appear; and also my Orwell Mystique: A Study of Male Ideology, Amherst 1984, pp. 253-63.
For further information on Katharine Burdekin, see Daphne Patai’s afterword to The End of This Day’s Business (Feminist Press, 1989) and her foreword and afterword to Proud Man (Feminist Press, 1993).
Other works by Katharine Burdekin
Anna Colquhoun
The Reasonable Hope
The Burning Ring
Quiet Ways
The Children’s Country (Kay Burdekin)
The Rebel Passion (Kay Burdekin)
The Devil, Poor Devil (Murray Constantine)
Proud Man (Murray Constantine)
Swastika Night (Murray Constantine)
Venus in Scorpio (Murray Constantine and Margaret
Goldsmith)
The End of This Day’s Business
CHAPTER ONE
THE Knight turned towards the Holy Hitler chapel which in the orientation of this church la
y in the western arm of the Swastika, and with the customary loud impressive chords on the organ and a long roll on the sacred drums, the Creed began. Hermann was sitting in the Goebbels chapel in the northern arm, whence he could conveniently watch the handsome boy with the long fair silky hair, who had been singing the solos. He had to turn towards the west when the Knight turned. He could no longer see the boy except with a sidelong glance, and though gazing at lovely youths in church was not even conventionally condemned, any position during the singing of the Creed except that of attention-eyes-front was sacrilegious. Hermann sang with the rest in a mighty and toneful roaring of male voices, but the words of the Creed made no impression on his ear or his brain. They were too familiar. He was not irreligious ; the great yearly ceremony of the Quickening of the Blood, from which all but German Hitlerians were excluded, roused him to frenzy. But this, being only an ordinary monthly worship, was too homely and dull to excite any particular enthusiasm, especially if a man was annoyed about something else. Not once had he been able to catch the eye of the new solo singer, who with the face of a young Hero-Angel, so innocent, so smooth-skinned and rosy, combined a voice of unearthly purity and tone.
I believe, sang all the men and boys and the Knight in unison,
in God the Thunderer, who made this physical earth on which men march in their mortal bodies, and in His Heaven where all heroes are, and in His Son our Holy Adolf Hitler, the Only Man. Who was, not begotten, not born of a woman, but Exploded ! (A terrific crash from the organ and the drums, and all right hands raised in the Salute acknowledged that tremendous miracle.)
From the Head of His Father, He the Perfect, the untainted Man-Child, whom we, mortals and defiled in our birth and in our conception, must ever worship and praise. Heil Hitler.
Who in our need, in Germany’s need, in the world’s need ; for our sake, for Germany’s sake, for the world’s sake ; came down from the Mountain, the Holy Mountain, the German Mountain, the nameless one, to march before us as Man who is God, to lead us, to deliver us, in darkness then, in sin and chaos and impurity, ringed round by devils, by Lenin, by Stalin, by Roehm, by Karl Barth, the four arch-fiends, whose necks He set under His Holy Heel, grinding them into the dust. (With a savagery so familiar that it could hardly be called savagery all the male voices growled out the old words.)
Who, when our Salvation was accomplished, went into the Forest, the Holy Forest, the German Forest, the nameless one ; and was there reunited to His Father, God the Thunderer, so that we men, the mortals, the defiled at birth, could see His Face no more. (The music was minor, the voices piano and harmonised, with a sweet and telling effect after the long unison.)
And I believe that when all things are accomplished and the last heathen man is enlisted in His Holy Army, that Adolf Hitler our God will come again in martial glory to the sound of guns and aeroplanes, to the sound of the trumpets and drums.
And I believe in the Twin Arch-Heroes, Goering and Goebbels, who were found worthy even to be His Familiar Friends.
And I believe in pride, in courage, in violence, in brutality, in bloodshed, in ruthlessness, and all other soldierly and heroic virtues. Heil Hitler.
The Knight turned round again. Hermann turned round and sat down gratefully to resume his contemplation of the golden-haired chorister. He was a big boy to have still an unbroken voice. He must be above fourteen. But not a glint of golden down had yet appeared on his apple-cheeks. He had a wonderful voice. Good enough for a Munich church, yes, good enough for a church in the Holy City, where the Sacred Hangar was, and in it the Sacred Aeroplane towards which all the Swastika churches in Hitlerdom were oriented, so that the Hitler arm was in the direct line with the Aeroplane in Munich, even though thousands of miles lay between the Little Model in the Hitler chapel and the Thing Itself.
Hermann thought, “What’s the boy doing here, then? On a holiday, perhaps. He is not a Knight’s son. Only a Nazi. I can make acquaintance with him without risk of a snub. Except that he is certain to be popular and rather spoilt.”
The old Knight, after a few preliminary coughs (he was inclined to bronchitis), was now reading in his pleasant knightly German the fundamental immutable laws of Hitler Society. Hermann hardly listened. He knew them by heart, and had done since he was nine.
As a woman is above a worm,
So is a man above a woman.
As a woman is above a worm,
So is a worm above a Christian.
Here came the old boring warning about race defilement. “As if any man would ever want to,” thought Hermann, listening with half an ear.
So, my comrades, the lowest thing,
The meanest, filthiest thing
That crawls on the face of the earth
Is a Christian woman.
To touch her is the uttermost defilement
For a German man.
To speak to her only is a shame.
They are all outcast, the man, the woman and the child.
My sons, forget it not !
On pain of death or torture
Or being cut off from the blood. Heil Hitler.
In his pleasant old husky voice the Knight delivered this very solemn warning, and went on to the other laws.
As a man is above a woman,
So is a Nazi above any foreign Hitlerian.
As a Nazi is above a foreign Hitlerian,
So is a Knight above a Nazi.
As a Knight is above a Nazi,
So is Der Fuehrer (whom may Hitler bless)
Above all Knights,
Even above the Inner Ring of Ten.
And as Der Fuehrer is above all Knights,
So is God, our Lord Hitler, above Der Fuehrer.
But of God the Thunderer and our Lord Hitler
Neither is pre-eminent,
Neither commands,
Neither obeys.
They are equal in this holy mystery.
They are God.
Heil Hitler.
The Knight coughed, saluted the congregation, and lifting the sacred iron chain that no man not of knightly blood might move, he went up the Hitler arm and, turning sharp to the left, disappeared into the chapel. The worship was over.
The men and boys moved in an orderly drilled way out of the church. Hermann suddenly wished it was the custom to hurry and barge and jostle. That boy was going to get out long before he was. Then he’d have vanished, or be surrounded by other men. What hair! Down to his waist nearly. Hermann wanted to wind his hands in it and give a good tug, pulling the boy’s head backwards. Not to hurt him much, just to make him mind.
Somebody near the door barked out an order:
“Come on, men. The church is wanted for the Women’s Worship. Hurry. Don’t dawdle there.”
Hermann was very willing. He was not now in the least curious about the Women’s Worship, when once every three months they were herded like cattle into the church, tiny girl-children, pregnant women, old crones, every female thing that could walk and stand, except a few who were left behind in the Women’s Quarters to look after the infants in arms. The women were not allowed to go further into the church than the Goering and Goebbels arms ; they were not allowed to enter even these less holy hero chapels; they had to stay jammed up in half the body of the Swastika, and they were not allowed to sit down. Even now two Nazis were busy clearing away the chairs the men had used. Women’s rumps were even more defiling to holy places than their little feet, and they had to stand while the Knight exhorted them on humility, blind obedience and submission to men, reminding them of the Lord Hitler’s supreme condescension in allowing them still to bear men’s sons and have that amount of contact with the Holy Mystery of Maleness ; while he threatened them with the most appalling penalties should they have any commerce with the male Untouchables, the Christian men, and with milder punishment should they, by word or weeping, or in any other way oppose that custom, that law so essential to Hitler Society, the Removal of the Man-child.
Hermann, when a light-h
earted youth of thirteen, had once hidden in the church during a Women’s Worship, impelled partly by curiosity, and partly by a wicked un-Nazi feeling of resentment at exclusion, even from something very low and contemptible. He would have been severely punished had he been caught; publicly shamed and beaten to unconsciousness. He was not caught, but the sinful act brought its own punishment. He was terrified. The mere sight of so many women all in a static herd and close by him—not just walking along the road from the Quarters to the church—with their small shaven ugly heads and ugly soft bulgy bodies dressed in feminine tight trousers and jackets—and oh, the pregnant women and the hideousness of them, and the skinny old crones with necks like moulting hens, and the loathsome little girls with running noses, and how they all cried! They wailed like puppies, like kittens, with thin shrill cries and sobs. Nothing human. Of course women have no souls and therefore are not human, but, Hermann thought afterwards, when his boyish terror had given way to a senseless boyish fury, they might try to sound like humans.
The small girls cried because they were frightened. They didn’t like going to church. It was a quarterly agony which they forgot in the long weeks in between, and then it seized them again. They were terrified of the Knight, though that particular one was mild enough. He never bellowed and stormed at them as some Knights did in some churches. But he had such power over them—more than the Nazis to whom they must render such blind obedience. The Knight could order them to be beaten, to be killed. And then nearly always their mothers were crying at this quarterly worship, and that made the daughters worse. Perhaps one had just had her little boy taken away from her at the age of eighteen months, fetched by the Father in the usual ceremonious way (“Woman, where is my son?” “Here, Lord, here is your son, I, all unworthy, have borne—”), and where was he now? his baby limbs in the hard hands of men, skilled men, trained men, to wash him and feed him and tend him, and bring him up to manhood. Of course women were not fit to rear men-children, of course it was unseemly for a man to be able to point to a woman and say “There is my mother”—of course they must be taken away from us, and never see us and forget us wholly. It’s all as it should be, it is our Lord’s will, it is men’s will, it is our will. But though a woman might go through the whole ceremony of Removal dry-eyed and not make a moan, and even utter the formal responses in a steady voice, and though she might refrain from weeping afterwards, yet, when she got into the church at the next Women’s Worship, she would be certain to break down. All together, women fell into a sort of mass grief. One worked on another, and a woman who had not suffered from a Removal for several years would remember the old pain and start a loud mourning like a recently bereaved animal. The more the Knight told them not to, the harder would they weep. Even the bellowers and stormers among the Knights could not stop women crying at their worship. Nothing could stop them, short of killing them all.
Swastika Night Page 2