Final Essay - It Can’t Happen Here (1935)

Allison Brown HIST 2040: Comparative Fascism Dr. Blackler 16 December, 2022 Final Essay - It Can’t Happen Here (1935) Published in October 1935, Sinclair LewIits’Can’t Happen Here was a reflection of sentiments at the time both in the United States and abroad centered around economic concerns and seemingly dysfunctional political systems. Both in the U.S. and abroad, questions regarding a state’s ability to address the challenges of the times and the rise of fascism as a means of governance culminated in Lewis’ dystopian novel as well as others’ critical views of governments. This essay will first examine the historical context in which Lewis wrote this novel, then analyze how women are utilized in the novel in comparison to fascist states at the time, and lastly discuss how these trends and Lewis’ novel relates to modern-day questions of fascism or populism. To start, Lewis’ novel was a reflection of concerns at the time of individual citizens watching fascism develop as well as the broader turmoil economically and politically in the U.S. In addition to these societal concerns, Lewis himself was familiar with conversations happening at the time regarding fascism, his own wife for some time interviewed Adolf Hitler in Germany as a foreign correspondent. Lewis was also informed of the many debates occurring in newspapers, journals, and books. In September 1934, for example, The Modern Monthly included an article titled “Will Fascism Come to Ame1rica?” that included a number of leading individuals in discussions about fascism including Theodore Dreiser, Norman Thomas, Charles Beard, and Waldo Frank. Although Lewis is often credited with coining the phrase “it can’t happen here,” others in that series of columns developed the term first. Throughout these series of columns, different authors' work informed Lewis’ novel which would be developed as a culmination of growing discourse surrounding economic and political collapse in the U.S. 1 In short, the 1930s was one of the twentieth century’s impactful decades, it started with what to some seemed to be the collapse of capitalism at it's the beginning and closed with the beginning of WWII. National concerns and circumstances were inherently connected with international events in a more connected global order. The Wall Street Crash in September 1929 manifested its impact both in the U.S. and across the world, and President Hoover’s victory signaled at least the interruption of laissez-faire capitalism as the government became more involved in financial regulations as a means of control in a chaotic economy. With these broader contexts in mind, Lewis seeks to add to the discourse of scholars debating fascism by developing his critique of fascism through dystopian literature. With this historical context in mind, the way in which Lewis develops It Can’t Happen Here mirrors fascist societies in a way to communicate the dangers of propaganda and extremism. A lens through which this view is evident in the novel is through women and the role of women in the fascist dystopian U.S. Looking at previous fascist societies, at the center of the fascist states were double standards for women which blurred the lines between the return to tradition and embracing modernity in a cyclical manner which accomplished neither. Utilizing both traditional and modern policy tactics as those with inherent, contradictory outcomes to reframe “womanhood” in the fascist state. Put briefly, “On the one hand, fascists condemned all the social practices customarily connected with the emancipation of women—from the vote and female participation in the labor force to family planning. They also sought to extirpate the very attitudes and behaviors of individual self-interest that underlay women’s demands for 2 equality and autonomy.” At the center of fascist society was this double standard and the subsidiary, but arguably most important, the role which women played in the state as mother-figures critical to the wellbeing and longevity of the homeland. These same arguments and double standards regarding women are evident in Lewis through his dialogue regarding women’s role in the fascist U.S. There are various examples of these double standards in Lewis’ work. To start, early on a passage by Lewis reads, “... and that she faced the Jack-in-office like Joan of Arc with eyeglasses while she "gave 2 Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (1992), pg. 2 2 him a piece of her mind that he never forgot!" In those good days women really had a chance. They were encouraged to send their menfolks, or anybody else's menfolks, off to3 B wya rr.e” cognizing a better past in which women were able to “send their men off to war” women seemingly could have their own autonomy in a society without men in which they could act on their own accord. Or alternatively, Lewis could be arguing that women during those earlier periods simply sent “their menfolks, or anybody else’s menfolks, off to war” without regard in a way devoid of concern or the implications on their own lives. In this same passage as well Mrs. Gimmitch would discuss with soldiers and one replied with, "We own dear boys are certainly getting a lot of mothers these days. Personally, I'd rather have a few more mistresses.” This statement could be argued as a critique of the roles which women took on in fascist society as mothers and caretakers. In her work referenced H ea rlieFr,ascism Ruled Women: ow Italy, 1922-1945, De Grazia argues fascism sought to “nationalize” women and to give them roles of meaning in the fascist state. Often, these roles were tied to traditional and household roles, with a modern twist emphasizing the value of the family and having children in a eugenic state. Both in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, although different in some ways which were deployed, fascism made women to take on these motherhood and caretaker traits as more important than other roles such as working or individual education or anything which separated women from the state and provided autonomy. Lewis’ includes that line from the soldier to Mrs. Gimmitch as a critique of this fascist quality in a way that presents the point, but also emphasizes the impacts of this on men in a way that critiques this key tenant and the double standard of fascism. That a “menfolk” could comment on a woman’s lack of autonomy in a fascist state, not because of her own thoughts or concerns, but because of the impact it had on “menfolk” and specifically their desire for “more mistresses” and not mother figures or caretakers. Even more compounding on this notion of women’s own thoughts towards liberation and autonomy is the complication by which Lewis portrays women, specifically Mrs. Gimmitch as favoring fascism and women’s “return to the home” When discussing women’s suffrage she states, “Women, she 3 pointed out, had done nothing with the vote. If the United States had only listened to her back in 1919 she could have saved them all this trouble. No. Certainly not. No votes. In fact, Woman must resume her place in the Home and: ‘As that great author and scientist, Mr. Arthur Brisbane, has pointed out, what every woman ought to do is to have six childre4nM .’”rs. Gimmitch’s attitudes towards a women’s role in society are reflective of others in fascist societies and how a “woman’s role” is in the home and is crucial in returning to tradition for a successful society. This notion is not dissimilar to that in place in Nazi Germany, Central to the balance of tradition and modernity for the state’s benefit were Nazi Germany’s policies surrounding eugenics and the role of children in the advancement of a superior, white, Aryan race. Only women who were considered to be worthy Aryans and those deemed to be capable of fulfilling the role of bearing “fit” children were supported to have children in the Nazi state. Central to this argument of women’s advancement of society, besides eugenics, was a growing sentiment that German women had the capability to open a women’s space in public life as opposed to solely operating in the private sphere. As Hitler took power and Nazism further ingrained itself into public and private life, a public sphere for women to participate in was indeed created, but without the autonomy in which women sought. In her T whe ork, Competition for Women’s mebensraum, typically translated to “living room” in Lebensraum, 1928-1934, Koonz deploys the terL English and referring to the colonial reach of the German Empire, to redefine the role of women in German society and how their owLnebensraum in the public and private sphere indicates the balance between tradition and modernity. In short, as argued by KoL on z, “ raum provides a useful metaphor ebens for analyzing the variety of competing views on how women ought to enter the modern world. Whatever their views about men and politics, middle-class women generally believed they could establish their own harmonious ‘living room’, cleansed of diversity and dissent within national 5lifIe n.”their own respective spheres, German women were able to obtain autonomy and independence more broadly from the state at 4 this time. This idea oLf ebensraum is reflected in Lewis’ work of how women were to be dedicated to their own spheres in the home and in a way how this creates space for individual expression and arguably autonomy in a way that women were able to exert control over their own sphere of influence. Lastly, examining the role of women IitnCan’t Happen Here the way in which the twelve points of the fascist state are developed and deployed mirrors real fascist regimes. Point 12 of their fascist regime was “All women now employed shall, as rapidly as possible, except in such peculiarly feminine spheres of activity as nursing and beauty parlors, be assisted to return to their incomparably sacred duties as home-makers and as mothers of strong, honorable future Citizens of the Common6wTehialsth.” clearly reaffirms a woman’s role in the fascist state and indicated the division of gender roles as a way to promote a more effective state in a way, these roles are also closely tied to nationalism and the construct of national identity in Lewis’ fictional state. Lewis writes, “That was the sort of thinking that the Corpos were encouraging among decent home-body women by their program for revitalizing national American pride.” 7 Nationalism or patriotism combined with Lewis’ fictional fascism allowed women to again feel a part of a larger movement separate from themselves. Lewis’ work critiques women’s role in fascism by showing Mrs. Gimmitch’s own favoring of a fascist state in which a woman’s role is subsidiary and the continued way in which fascist regimes, fictional or real, utilized propaganda to reaffirm gender roles and enforce them in a way which disguised its intentions to better exert control over women in society to better achieve the goals of a nationalized fascist state. It Can’t Happen Here can be used just as similarly as it has been to reflect on the fascism of the past as much as it could be used as a lesson in the potential of fascism in the future. Speaking to the more complex questions posed by the prompt, it is more difficult to answer what historians can ascertain about the dangerous potentials of fascism and its potential to resurface in the future. That being said, Lewis’ 5 work offers to readers that this pseudo-fascist or populist U.S. would present itself in a similar way to the fascist states of the past. As this essay has argued, fascism present in Lewis’ work mirrors characteristics of fascism in the past while also presenting what fascism in the future could look like. Simply put, fascism is possible in the U.S. and if any material from this course thus far is in indication, it will come from a similar lens of government control, especially towards women in society, and seeking to establish a dichotomy between traditionalism while promoting modernism in reality. Perhaps in some ways, with this understanding and Lewis’ work it could be argued the U.S. in ways is shifting in ways that promote traditionalism and populist attitudes. 6