Wittenberg University Journals

Heath, Keri

English

From the Bottom Up: Influence on the Upper Class  by the Florentine Underground in the Renaissance

Sanders, Hannah

The Christianization of the Germanic Tribes

  Vol. XLIV, Spring 2015  • 59
When Philippe Ariès published his book Centuries of 
Childhood in 1960, he likely had no idea that his work would 
launch decades of discourse and conversation about the 
history of childhood. His assertion of childhood as a modern 
invention, as a life stage unrecognizable to historical peoples, 
was both supported and attacked by historians that followed 
him. In works such as Barbara Hanawalt’s Growing Up in 
Medieval London, Steven Ozment’s Flesh and Spirit, Rudolph 
Bell’s How to Do It, and Emily Coleman’s “Infanticide in the 
Early Middle Ages,” the concept of historical childhood as a 
recognized stage of growth is explored. Through the use of 
various sources, the majority of these analyses determined a 
conclusion vastly different from that of Ariès. The generally 
held view of historical childhood has shifted away from an 
unrecognized life stage towards the belief that childhood 
was a key step in the development of medieval children. 
Since Ariès developed his thesis, historians have come to 
understand historical childhood to be similar to modern 
childhood in the sense that this life stage was neither horrible 
nor ideal during the Middle Ages.
At the time that Ariès wrote Centuries of Childhood, 
a revival of macrohistory was taking place across the 
scholarly world, a trend represented in Ariès’s piece. His 
assertion that “there was no place for childhood in the 
medieval world”1 and that “the indifference was a direct and 
inevitable consequence of the demography of the period”2 
is a broad one. Ariès focuses on making wide assertions 
about childhood from the thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries to the twentieth century, avoiding detailed work 
about the nuances and details of children’s lives. By taking 
a macrohistorical view of the topic, Ariès looks only at 
general trends and beliefs held by all of society, rather 
than by individuals. From this approach, Ariès concluded 
that medieval people saw children as little adults who 
never experienced a childhood stage. Using a focus on 
material culture, Ariès’s argument is based primarily on the 
conclusions he draws from paintings, clothing styles of the 
The Evolution of Childhood’s History
Keri Heath
time, and works of fiction. While these sources provide for an 
interesting analysis, they are not sufficient to use as a base for 
a wide sweeping statement about childhood during the time 
period because these sources are at risk of subjectivity and 
can be misinterpreted based on personal opinions. While this 
issue alone is enough to punch a hole in Ariès’s argument, 
another problem arises due to the fact that the author did not 
use sources from the time period he was addressing.
However, though Ariès’s ideas about childhood do 
not draw from objective fact and thus have a somewhat 
unconvincing argument, his book does set the historical 
stage for a decades-long discussion about the true nature of 
historical childhood. A counterargument in this dialogue to 
Ariès’s belief is outlined in Barbara Hanawalt’s Growing Up in 
Medieval London. Hanawalt writes her book in direct response 
to Ariès, claiming that “the Middle Ages did recognize stages 
of life that correspond to childhood and adolescence.”3 
While she engages primarily in social history to show the 
heavily social aspect of growing up during the Middle Ages, 
Hanawalt also utilizes economic history and cross pollination 
to illustrate her point. By approaching the topic of childhood 
from several angles, Hanawalt reveals that her thesis can 
be upheld with respects to multiple disciplines, creating a 
more convincing argument. In addition, the entirety of her 
book is centered on the skepticism of postmodernism and 
is reflected in her adamant doubt throughout the work of 
Ariès and insistence that “socialization of children and young 
people into polite society occupied an important segment of 
medieval London culture.”4 The main reason that Hanawalt’s 
argument is so convincing rests in the fact that she uses a 
broad spectrum of sources, court records, coroner’s reports, 
government documents, and letter books, accurate to the 
time period, sources that she states Ariès ignores completely. 
Granted, she does leave out material about negative 
aspects of a child’s life, such as abuse of orphans, death of 
unsupervised children, and strict education for adulthood; 
Hanawalt’s agenda is decidedly to show medieval childhood 
  Vol. XLIV, Spring 2015  • 6160  •  The Wittenberg History Journal
in a positive light. However, she provides a solid opposition 
to Ariès’s thesis, as well as establishes the convention for 
future historical books about childhood: the organization of 
information in order of birth to adulthood.
Yet not all modern works about medieval childhood 
carried such a defined agenda as did that of Hanawalt. 
Rudolph Bell, in his book How to Do It, refrains entirely 
from presenting his own beliefs about childhood to readers 
and gives minimal commentary, instead providing readers 
with text from primary sources and allowing them to make 
their own conclusions. Bell uses only advice manuals for 
the sources in his book, a choice that has both benefits 
and drawbacks. While these sources represent the ideal that 
society strives towards, it also may leave out some of the 
harsh realities that are associated during the time with raising 
children. Instead, Bell simply focuses on the concerns that the 
manuals specifically bring up and makes observations about 
the texts, such as how odd it is that “authors who wrote in 
such detail about how to select a wet nurse … would be so 
silent about how parents should check on a child put out to 
a wet nurse.”5 This tendency marks Bell as one who works 
primarily from a historicist position, presenting the past 
on its own terms. At the same time, Bell sometimes admits 
that when looking “back five hundred years…, we may be 
struck instantly by similarities with modern concerns,”6 
revealing that he holds some presentist views about his 
work, comparing the past to the present. Yet Bell’s book is 
primarily objective and advances the discussion of childhood 
by allowing readers to observe the continuity of childhood 
through their own interpretation of sources about ideal 
parenting.
However, not all of the literature written about 
childhood since Ariès’s thesis was published upholds 
the recognition of a childhood; Emily Coleman’s article 
“Infanticide in the Early Middle Ages” paints an extremely 
different picture from that of Hanawalt and Bell about what 
childhood looked like. In analyzing population and tax 
documents for farms and manors during the time, Coleman 
comes to the conclusion that female infanticide resulted 
in the low numbers of women and girls. While Coleman 
admits that “the killing of children of some years … would 
surely be difficult to explain,”7 she insists that farms only 
supported a certain number of females and that “it would not 
be difficult … for a baby to be exposed, or simply smothered 
in the home.”8 She reaches many of these conclusions by 
drawing on statistical history and making analyses from the 
population numbers. In some sense, Coleman’s methods are 
comparable to those of Ariès because she uses psychohistory 
to draw conclusions about people’s history based on her 
evidence. Yet, what makes Coleman’s point more convincing 
than Ariès’s is her willingness to qualify her own statements 
with counterarguments through her admitted use of 
presentism and the recognition that there may be other 
factors accounting for the smaller number of females in the 
tax documents. Even with these concessions, the reader leaves 
the article with a sense that Coleman would agree with Ariès 
that children in the Middle Ages were not highly valued and 
that childhood was not a recognized part of development. 
Coleman’s article is important to the study of childhood 
because it reminds historians that medieval childhood was 
not wholly positive.
Steven Ozment, in his book Flesh and Spirit, somewhat 
agrees with this idea. Following Hanawalt’s convention of 
moving chronologically through a child’s life in a book, 
Ozment explores childhood on a much more personal 
level. Rather than the official documents used by other 
historians, Ozment uses personal journals, diary entries, 
and letters to show that “the family of the past was neither 
as wholesome as the romantics portray it, nor as cruel 
as the cynics suspect.”9 This anti-Whiggist approach to 
studying childhood is most similar to Hanawalt’s method 
in the sense that Ozment also uses various forms of cross-
pollination, including social, economic, anthropological, and 
intellectual history. However, Ozment’s work differs from 
that of Hanawalt in that Ozment takes a more intimate look 
at the lives of his subjects, giving the text a definite style 
of historicism. In Flesh and Spirit, readers can dive straight 
into the minds of people living in the time and learn from 
firsthand accounts that the failures of a father’s children “may 
have distressed their father just as deeply and their successes 
pleased him just as much.”10 Ozment’s tendency to accept 
history for how it is presented illustrates that children were 
both a joy and a job to parents and that historical childhood 
had its ups and downs. The fact that parents worried in this 
way about their children proves the existence of a childhood 
and Ozment’s book contributes further to the discussion by 
giving a firsthand, personal look at how the integration of 
childhood into society affected life in that time.
Since Ariès published his view about the nonexistence 
of a childhood in the Middle Ages, historians have used a 
variety of methods to analyze his statement. While those such 
as Hanawalt steadfastly oppose Ariès, others such as Coleman 
have come to accept parts of Ariès’s thesis. As these authors 
have shown us, many types of documents can be used to 
determine ideas about childhood of the past, including 
legal documents, tax records, material objects, and personal 
writings. While each of these authors approaches the subject 
with varying degrees of presentism and historicism, each 
analyze the source with some amount of cross-pollination 
and social history. By examining the differing views of 
childhood, it can be established that a recognized childhood 
did exist during the Middle Ages and that it was similar to 
modern ideas of the life stage in the sense that it was neither 
terrible nor perfect. 
Endnotes
1 Phillipe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood, trans. Robert Baldick 
(New York: Vintage Books, 1962), 33. 
2 Ibid., 39. 
3 Barbara Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London (New 
York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 5. 
4 Ibid., 69. 
5 Rudolph Bell, How to Do It: Guides for Good Living for 
Renaissance Italians (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 
1999), 131. 
6 Ibid., 176. 
7 Emily Coleman, “Infanticide in the Early Middle Ages,” in 
Women in Medieval Society, ed. Susan Mosher Stuard (Philadelphia: 
University of Philadelphia Press, 1976), 59.
8 Ibid., 59. 
9 Steven Ozment, Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern 
Germany (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), x. 
10 Ibid., 247. 
Bibliography
Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood. Translated by Robert 
Baldick. New York: Vintage Books, 1962.
Bell, Rudolph. How to Do It: Guides for Good Living for Renaissance 
Italians. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Coleman, Emily. “Infanticide in the Early Middle Ages.” In 
Women in Medieval Society, edited by Susan Mosher Stuard, 
47-70. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1976.
Hanawalt, Barbara. Growing Up in Medieval London. New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1993.
Ozment, Seven. Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern 
Germany. New York: Penguin Books, 1999.


The Evolution of Childhood’s History

Cengel, Lauren

Complementary Partners: The Marriages of Twelfth Century Anglo-Norman Queens

Gaughenbaugh, Alison

The Second Christ

Witt, Heather

The Idea of Southern Womanhood and its Influence on Scottsboro

Huber, Mark

Solomon\u27s Rock

Sarchet, Charlotte

38  •  The Wittenberg History Journal
 After the 1917 Revolution, the haggard, 
oppressed citizens of Russia finally dared to embrace 
optimism. Trusting Bolshevik revolutionaries, 
many anticipated an egalitarian future, perhaps out 
of their reach but open for their children. But as 
leaders of the Bolshevik Party traded their high 
ideals for popular support, that future grew distant. 
Children of the revolution would come of age 
not in a classless, humanitarian society, but in an 
intense hierarchy defined by fear and controlled by 
death. Society was split between “party members” 
and “non-party members,” with members of the 
Communist Party receiving advantages in every arena 
of life, from special access to goods to prioritized 
admittance to universities. Joseph Stalin, the head of 
the Soviet Union since 1929, organized a system for 
expelling—or “purging”— members from the party 
who expressed anti-party sentiment. Following the 
assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934, the stakes grew 
exponentially higher; with rumors circulating that 
Kirov’s killer was a fellow communist, distrust and 
paranoia grew rampant. 
Between 1934 and 1935, roughly half of the 
Party’s delegates were removed, and in 1936, the first 
Moscow Show Trial took place. Sixteen of the oldest 
and most trusted Bolshevik leaders were executed, 
having been found guilty of running a subversive sub-
organization. A witch-hunt began to weed out the 
treacherous party members who supported these 
betrayers. Rather than one’s membership being 
revoked, those charged with supporting this group—or 
otherwise disrespecting the Party—now faced death or 
life in the GULags: the Soviet Union’s infamous labor 
Soviet GULags as Described by Solzhenitsyn  
and Ginzburg
 
Charlotte Sarchet
camps. Throughout the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, the 
GULags were home to millions. Criminals, victims of 
the Great Purge, and prisoners of war all found 
themselves contained in these inhumane prisons. 
Although many Soviet citizens lived in terror of arrest, 
the public knew few concrete facts regarding the 
camps. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The GULAG 
Archipelago1 and Yevgenia Ginzburg, creator of Journey 
Into the Whirlwind,2 were two of the GULag’s captives who 
sought to spread knowledge through their first-hand 
experiences. Although neither author was infallible, their 
works provide priceless insight into life in the GULags. 
Respectively they each told their own story of a soldier and 
a Party intellectual, an enemy of communism and a staunch 
advocate, and a man and a woman. When read side-by-side, 
these two sources equally highlight the personal and shared 
experiences of GULag prisoners, as well as the way these 
experiences shaped their life-long beliefs. 
 Solzhenitsyn, a soldier during World War II, 
wrote about the GULags from the perspective of one 
who has lived through hardships before. Having 
experienced the German battle front, many of the 
horrors of imprisonment are softened by comparison. 
In the second chapter of The GULAG Archipelago, he 
lovingly details the “clean linen” and “cots with 
springs” in his prison cell, declaring that he “could not 
remember having slept like this during the whole 
war.”3 More tellingly, Solzhenitsyn celebrates the simple 
fact that “no shells were falling;” merely being out of 
the direct line of fire was a blessing, regardless of the 
circumstances.4 But Solzhenitsyn’s service not only 
affected his perspective on the GULag’s conditions, but 
on the political structure that placed him there. 
  Vol. XLVIII, Spring 2022  •  39
Although he entered captivity with devout reverence 
for Lenin—going as far as to decree it “sacrilege to... 
call anyone on earth “Ilyich” except that one man”—, 
he was quickly losing faith in the Soviet Union.5 While 
others (Ginzburg included) remained loyal despite the 
way the system had wronged them, Solzhenitsyn 
presents the idea: “A Motherland that betrays its 
soldiers—is that really a Motherland?”6 
 Unlike Solzhenitsyn, prior to her arrest 
Ginzburg had experienced little trauma. Married to “a 
leading member of the Tatar Province Committee”7 
and working as the “assistant head of the cultural 
department”8 at an editorial office, Ginzburg had a 
comfortable life on the inside of the party. Although 
she had some doubts about Stalin, she “carefully 
concealed it even from [her]self.”9 Solemnly swearing 
that she would “die for the Party... without the slightest 
hesitation,” Ginzburg was the picture of a perfect party 
member.10 Yet, she too would become a victim of the 
GULags. Arrested in 1937, she was one of the many 
Party members senselessly targeted during the Great 
Purge. A faithful party member to the end, despite 
having been forewarned of her arrest, Ginzburg refused 
to go into hiding. She explained, “How can a 
communist run away from the party?”11 Yet, once in the 
GULags, Ginzburg’s perspective shifted. Although she 
held onto the “Great Leninist Truths” throughout her 
18-year sentence, she began to see the party as fallible.12  
 In chapter 25, “Intro to Butyuki,” Ginzburg 
recalls a day when she and a group of other women 
were searched before entering a new prison. A young 
member of the Komsomol looked to her for guidance 
after correctly identifying her as a Party member. She 
asked Ginzburg if she should expose a German inmate 
who had “hidden some gold things in her hair”—her 
dilemma being that she “d[idn’t] like to give her away” 
unless she was “a real class enemy.”13 Ginzburg 
responded that she “should be guided by the instinct 
that is generally known as your conscience,” admitting 
that what the Party would want is not always the moral 
choice.14 Further, Ginzburg juxtaposes herself against 
the “orthodox Stalinist” she shared a cell with.15  This 
woman—whom Ginzburg depicts using unflattering 
words like “shrill,” “pale,” and “contorted,” glorifies the 
Party to such an extent that she grew outraged at the 
other inmates for laughing at their warder.16 While 
Ginzburg points out the problem with this point of 
view, her own stance on the Party remains a far cry 
from Solzhenitsyn’s, who “sees the purges as simply the 
most extreme manifestation of the amorality of the 
Marxist vision.”17 
 More meaningful than their contrasting 
occupations, more fundamental than their split in 
opinions, is one underlying fact: the authors are 
different sexes. Coloring all facets of their experience, 
Solzhenitsyn’s manhood and Ginzburg’s womanhood 
influence their respective outlooks, their treatment in 
the camps, and the groups of people that they interact 
with. While Solzhenitsyn describes his fellow prisoners 
in a variety of costumes from “soft black helmets,”18 to 
an “aviator’s cap,”19 to “an expensive tunic,”20 Ginzburg 
points out a group of inmates wearing “absurd, low-cut 
evening dresses and high-heeled shoes,” who she has to 
be assured are “not tarts,” but “Party members.”21 While 
men were dragged into the GULags in a range of 
clothing, none named had to face the discomfort and 
indignity of wearing heeled shoes and an impractical 
dress for months on end. Small details like this, 
compounded with the attitudes relayed (particularly in 
Solzhenitsyn’s writing), support the return of 
patriarchal attitudes under Stalin.22 Early in his account, 
Solzhenitsyn describes one of his cellmates as being 
“accustomed to” “grabb[ing] women, mess[ing] them 
up, and then throw[ing] them away” as someone would 
eat “boiled crayfish”— a practice he neither supports 
nor condemns.23 He also blatantly paints three soldiers 
guilty of sexual assault as mere victims of circumstance, 
explaining that these “honest, open-hearted soldiers” 
mistakenly pursued “the property” of the Chief of 
Counterintelligence in a bathhouse.24 Had they chosen 
another woman, they could have either “raped and 
then shot” her (if she had belonged to the enemy), or at 
the very least “chased [her] naked... and slapped on the 
behind” (had she been a Pole or a Russian).25 
Solzhenitsyn also insinuates the likelihood of rape 
within the GULags. He suggests that the Lubyanka 
chief may have hired an especially “repulsive” 
woman—a “blond spinster with a horsy build”—in the 
role of librarian as a safeguard against her assault.26 
Along a similar, yet opposite vein, Ginzburg writes 
about one of her overseers, a man named Kostik. She 
described that if he “wanted any fun” he would have to 
go elsewhere, as all the incarcerated women were either 
“criminal types who might have venereal disease,” 
“cracked” religious women, or “walking skeletons.”27 In 
the male prison it is the staff who must be protected 
from the inmates, while in the female prison it is the 
40  •  The Wittenberg History Journal
inmates who must be protected from the staff. Yet, 
despite their perceived womanly failings keeping them 
safe, even within the walls of prison societal standards 
reign; two of Ginzburg’s cellmates were often found 
“lying on their backs on the floor and pedaling in the 
air, anxious to preserve their figures.”28 
 With differing backgrounds, political views, and 
of course, sexes, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Yevgenia 
Ginzburg represent a breadth of experience in the 
Soviet GULags. While both began their sentences as 
believers in Lenin’s dream for the Soviet Union, their 
wrongful imprisonment and inhumane treatment 
exposed them each to the harsh reality of the Party and 
the government’s corruption under Stalin. But 
although the GULags sought to strip away their 
captives’ individuality —even their humanity— the 
internal world of the camps did not exist discretely 
from the rest of the world. One’s life before 
imprisonment and perspective upon entering had 
substantial bearing, and, further, the prevailing rules of 
society maintained their power, even in the most 
obscure corners of Siberia. Through Solzhenitsyn’s and 
Ginzburg’s accounts, these authors shed light on this 
suppressed chapter of history.
Endnotes 
1 Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The GULAG Archipelago, 
1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation 
(Westview Press, 1997). 
2 Yevgenia Semyononova Ginzburg, Journey Into the 
Whirlwind, transl Paul Stevenson and Max Hayward (San 
Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace, ND). 
3 Solzhenitsyn, The GULAG Archipelago, 188. 
4 Solzhenitsyn, The GULAG Archipelago, 188. 
5 Ibid., 193. 
6 Ibid., 220. 
7 Ginzburg, Journey Into the Whirlwind, 3. 
8 Ginzburg, Journey Into the Whirlwind, 8. 
9 Ibid., 3. 
10 Ibid. 
11 Ibid., 30. 
12 Ibid., 417. 
13 Ibid., 144. 
14 Ibid., 145. 
15 Ibid., 158. 
16 Ibid. 
17 Ronald Grigor Suny, The Soviet Experiment: Russia, 
the USSR, and the Successor States (New York, Oxford: 
Oxford University Press, 2011). 
18 Solzhenitsyn, The GULAG Archipelago, 21. 
19 Solzhenitsyn, The GULAG Archipelago, 185. 
20 Ibid., 196. 
21 Ginzburg, Journey Into the Whirlwind, 149. 
22 Suny, The Soviet Experiment, 273. 
23 Solzhenitsyn, The GULAG Archipelago, 21. 
24 Solzhenitsyn, The GULAG Archipelago, 21. 
25 Ibid. 
26 Ibid., 214. 
27 Ginzburg, Journey Into the Whirlwind, 403.
28 Ginzburg, Journey Into the Whirlwind, 156-57.


Soviet GULags as Described by Solzhenitsyn and Ginzburg

Editor

  Vol. XLVI, Spring 2017  •  1
Real life heroes come in all shapes, sizes, and from all 
places, but like a great many things heroism is often 
thrust upon the beholder.  People standing and acting 
on what they believe in, especially in political or 
socially turbulent times, often find themselves given 
the title of hero with minimal say. Edith Cavell is one 
of these heroes. Serving as a nurse in Belgium, Cavell 
stood at the forefront of the war-torn Europe in 1914, 
fulfilling her nursing duties; while simultaneously 
aiding Allied soldiers evade German forces. Her actions 
led to her arrest, conviction, execution, and heralded 
hero status in England and the other Allied nations.  
Her story is one of an ordinary, small town girl to a 
woman with marble memorials: the story of who a 
hero is.   
 Born 4 December 1865 in Swardeston, 
England, Cavell’s dedication and passion to nursing and 
her country was apparent in her lifelong commitment 
to the field.1 Fountains Fever Hospital in Lower 
Tooting hired her first in 1895, where she stayed for 
four years before moving the London to work at 
the London Hospital.2 It was there that she caught 
the attention of Belgian Dr. Antoine Depage who 
invited her to serve as the Directress at school for 
nurses in Brussels, so Cavell packed up and moved 
to Brussels is 1907.3 At the outbreak of World War 
I in 1914, Cavell continued nursing in Belgium for 
the Red Cross, and maintained her position even 
after the Germans gained control of Belgium.4 By 
1915, Cavell had joined an underground network that 
worked to smuggle captured Allied soldiers out of 
German controlled territory.5 Her efforts in smuggling 
reportedly saved over 200 soldiers. 6 As an English 
nurse in German occupied Belgium, Cavell’s actions 
against those Germans put her at considerable risk of 
retribution from her enemy.  Indeed, Cavell’s secret 
Edith Cavell: What Makes a Hero?
contribution to the Allied war effort did not continue 
for long, as German military police arrested her on 5 
August 1915. 7 During her trial on 6 October 1915, 
she pleaded guilty to charges of treason, and as a result 
was executed by a firing at dawn, 12 October 1915. 8 
Cavell’s story does not end with her death.  Almost 
overnight, Cavell’s execution sparked something 
in propagandists, women, nurses, soldiers, potential 
enlistees, and ordinary people around the globe.   
 Much of Cavell’s life was only widely known 
after her death. Most of the current understanding 
of Cavell as a woman, a nurse, and a hero come from 
articles propagating the righteousness of the war 
against those that would kill a pious, nurses. However, 
the night before her execution, Cavell met with 
Reverend H. Stirling Gahan, a British chaplain, with 
whom she shared her last conversation. Gahan wrote 
of Cavell’s last thoughts and confession, and concluded 
with these words: “He (a German military chaplain) 
told me: ‘She was brave and bright to the last.  She 
professed her Christian faith and that she was glad 
to die for her country. She died like a heroine.” 9 
Although a fellow Christian, this chaplain was still the 
enemy, but could still recognize the heroic actions of 
this woman, sacrificing all concern to her own safety 
and security for the lives of her country’s soldiers.  
 Accounts describe Cavell’s calm demeanor 
towards her own fate in the days between the trial 
and the execution, but it is impossible to know if she 
understood the impact her death would have and the 
legacy she would leave behind. Thousands of people, 
people who never knew Cavell, came together in 
mourning to memorialize her actions. They made 
her the hero.  Cavell’s actions were not dissimilar 
from many others in war, but hers were remembered; 
remembered as heroic.
2  •  The Wittenberg History Journal
Endnotes
1  Shane M Barney, “The Mythic Matters of Edith Cavell: 
Propaganda, Legend, Myth and Memory,” Historical 
Reflections / Réflexions Historiques 31, no. 2 (2005): (217-
33),  218.
2  Ibid. 218-19.
3  Ibid. 219V 
4  Ibid. 
5 Ibid.
6  Ginny A Roth and Elizabeth Fee, “A Soldier’s Hero: Edith 
Cavell (1865-1915).” American Journal Of Public Health 
100, no. 10 (October 2010): (1865-1866), 1.
7  Barney, “The Mystic Matters of Edith Cavell,” 219.
8 Ibid.
9 H. Stirling Gahan,. “Account on the Execution of Edith 
Cavell.” Oct. 1915. 1 
Bibliography
Barney, Shane M. “The Mythic Matters of Edith Cavell:   
       Propaganda, Legend, Myth and Memory.” Historical 
Reflections / Réflexions Historiques 31, no. 2 (2005): 217-
33.  http://www.jstor.org/stable/41299337.
Roth, Ginny A., and Elizabeth Fee. “A Soldier’s Hero: Edith  
      Cavell (1865-1915).” American Journal Of Public Health 
100, no. 10 (October 2010): 1865-1866. Academic Search 
Complete, EBSCOhost
Gahan, H. Stirling. “Account on the Execution of Edith    
      Cavell.” Oct. 1915. http://www.firstworldwar.com/
source/cavell_gahan.htm


Edith Cavell: What Makes a Hero?

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Inanna-Ishtar: Recognizing the Personality and  Purpose of a Goddess

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From the Bottom Up: Influence on the Upper Class by the Florentine Underground in the Renaissance