War, Women, and Gender Roles Theme Analysis

Though captured British spy Julie is ostensibly giving her Nazi captors British military secrets, her written account of British airfields, aircraft, and secret squadrons is also the story of how women’s involvement in World War II. Julie’s account focuses on her best friend, Maddie, who becomes a pilot just before World War II begins. As time goes on, and as male pilots are injured or die in action, Maddie moves up the ranks and eventually becomes one of a handful of female pilots who work alongside men ferrying planes, pilots, and other people around England. Julie, too, transcends traditional gender roles to become a spy—and she weaponizes her stereotypically feminine beauty and charm to her advantage in her job. So while the novel suggests that war doesn’t entirely do away with gender roles (and, indeed, can require women to lean harder into traditional gender roles than they might have in other circumstances), it also shows that in times of great need, gender roles can start to matter much less. And, as Maddie and Julie’s trajectories show, this sort of societal shift can give women opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have had.

Maddie initially sees the outbreak of World War II as something that’s going to hinder her dream of being a pilot—a profession that, at the time, is mostly reserved for men. Maddie first gets her pilot’s license early in 1939, months before the UK grounds all civilian aircraft and the war begins. At this time, Maddie has already had to work extremely hard to learn to fly and get her license in the first place—she only learned a year before that it was possible for women to fly at all. So the outbreak of war seems, at first, to condemn her to life on the ground. And Maddie fears that while she has useful skills—a pilot’s license and the ability to build and repair engines—because those skills are usually associated with men, she’s never going to be able to use them to serve her country. However, Maddie’s female flight instructor and mentor, Dympna Wythenshawe, counsels Maddie that this isn’t actually the case. Dympna notes that at some point during the war, the Royal Air Force is going to run out of male pilots as men are injured or killed in action—then, they’ll have no choice but to let women fly. And though it takes about a year, Dympna is eventually proven right: Maddie works for a while on the ground in radar but is soon moved over to work with the Air Transport Auxiliary ferrying planes around England.

While the war doesn’t fully do away with sexism, it nevertheless gives women opportunities they might not have had otherwise and changes what’s acceptable or appropriate for a woman to do. This isn’t to say that both Maddie and Julie don’t experience sexism; Maddie in particular notes that because she’s a woman, male pilots underestimate her regularly. Then, if things do go wrong or if she makes a mistake, she and other female pilots are judged more harshly for those mistakes than male pilots are. But Maddie nevertheless finds a sense of belonging with the ATA and is often treated as “one of the boys.” It’s thrilling for her to be recognized as one of Jamie’s pilot friends because of her pilot’s boots, for instance, or to be called “mate” by a young pilot when she accompanies him on a training flight. So although the sexism never entirely goes away, Maddie is still valued for her contributions, regardless of her sex. Julie, meanwhile, gets an opportunity not often afforded to women during World War II: that of being a spy. Like Maddie, she experiences sexism, especially as she goes through training. She notes that while doing her parachuting course, her instructors always made the women jump first—possibly because of the belief that the women wouldn’t survive or were less valuable than their male counterparts. Despite this, though, Julie still makes a name for herself with her superiors and her enemies alike: von Linden, the Nazi who oversees Julie’s imprisonment in Ormaie, is thrilled when he discovers that one of Julie’s identities is Eva Seiler, a skilled interrogator. So despite the trouble Julie has getting to this point, she does eventually become a well-known, important figure in the Resistance.

However, Code Name Verity also shows that sometimes, in order to succeed in their jobs, it’s necessary for women to lean into traditional gender roles more than they might otherwise. Maddie observes this most often in Julie, who (as Eva Seiler and then as Katharina Habicht) relies on her femininity, charm, and sexuality to extract secrets from Nazi spies. Essentially, though Julie is a spy—a traditionally male job—her success in the job comes from the fact that she’s willing and able to use her femininity to her advantage. But on many occasions, women’s success in the war effort stems from the fact that people underestimate them and don’t see them as a threat, exactly because they’re women. For instance, Mitraillette and Amélie, two girls in the French Resistance, are seen as innocent and charming by the Nazis they’re in contact with. But really, Mitraillette is the second-in-command of the local Resistance circuit, and Amélie’s charm and innocence seem to contribute to the Nazis’ perception that the girls’ family isn’t involved in the Resistance at all. With this, Code Name Verity shows clearly that World War II did not do away with sexism or restrictive gender roles. But, depending on the job in question, it did create the opportunity for women to either weaponize their femininity and traditional gender roles to serve their country, or in some cases, to transcend those roles.