What is a legacy? How do we choose to remember? Who do we choose to remember?
These questions are at the forefront of my Gender and Espionage class, which introduced me to many of the female spies throughout history with stories never written or rewritten.
Elizabeth Van Lew was a spymaster for a network of Union spies in the heart of the Confederacy. Yet her story is reduced to the myth of “Crazy Bet,” a woman who embodied insanity so well during the war she never relinquished it. Edith Cavell was a British nurse and spy during World War I, who is more remembered for her death than for her life’s work. Mata Hari – a name that now signifies the classic “femme fatale” archetype – is a well-known historical spy, despite being bad at her job. Finally, Elizebeth Friedman was foundational to the art of cryptanalysis and codebreaking during the World Wars, yet history associates this work with her husband.
Therefore, these poems are “plaques” demonstrating the distinctions in how certain women are remembered, and an attempt to restore their memory. What does their legacy tell us about what it means to be “woman,” or “spy”?
Elizabeth Van Lew
Crazy Bet,
History remembers her through the lens
Of a myth. A ghost,
Not a real woman but a statue
Sculpted by the mythology of men.
Crazy, and this allowed her to
Cross barriers.
Careful children
Wandering near her mansion,
An empty shell for a withering woman.
Do we pity her? Should we remember her?
Elizabeth,
History should remember her as
Spymaster and postmaster.
A woman in charge of a network,
An informant with vital information for the Union.
A complex person, who owned slaves before the war,
Yet fought for their rights to education when the dust settled.
A lady – woman – but also
White and upper-class.
Everything in her arsenal she weaponizes
For the sake of her country.
For her, espionage is not a choice, but
A moral obligation, a responsibility.
Overshadowed and underestimated,
Restore her memory, and give up her ghost.
Edith Cavell
A young maiden lays slain on the cold,
unforgiving ground. Dressed by the press
Draped in cloth of white,
Blood blooming from her breast,
As red as the cross she bears – Christian Nurse.
“Only a woman!”
The British exclaim and blame
The Germans – her executioner
With every brush stroke of ink and image.
Only a woman, yet so much more.
Not just a nurse, but a matron,
Teacher to others.
Someone in her 40s, unmarried.
She saved soldiers, yes, but
She spied too.
Facing the firing squad of Enemy Country
Only to become a tool for her own, her Home.
No longer matron, simply
Maiden and martyr,
“She faced them gentle and bold,” with
Humanity, Devotion, Fortitude, Sacrifice.
Her virtues and identities commodified
In order for a war to be won.
Mata Hari
A traitor, a notorious spy, lays
immobile – bullets finally silence the snake
Rendering her incapable of shedding her skin
And becoming something new once again.
Margaretha Geertruida Zelle MacLeod long gone
Now Mata Hari gone too.
Only a woman? No.
A courtesan, a dancer, a spy
The French exclaim and blame
Her; the Germans too.
What makes her woman?
Embodiment of Eve.
Original woman sin.
Temptation and transgression, her true crimes.
Abandoning family for fame and fortune,
Displaying her body for the world to see,
To seize.
She too becomes a country’s weapon.
Body and name become symbols,
A warning: Beware seductive women
In order to win the war.
Elizebeth Friedman
Shocking news for the Americans
To learn that a small, suburban mother
Took down the mob.
How could she? How could this be?
The photo shows
Her husband’s “right hand”
And his beloved wife.
A caring mother to her children
And yet,
She cracked the code.
Like a lightning strike,
The shock quickly dissipates,
And her story slips away.
Her life’s work stolen,
Forgotten.
Remembered as wife, but not
Codebreaker.
Her husband, honored for the skills
She taught him.
Buried beside and underneath William,
Elizebeth remains – remains
That must be excavated
To show the whole picture.
The Friedman legacy incomplete
Without Elizebeth.
