ABSTRACT
Photographs of men-at-arms in the Spanish Civil War relied upon and manipulated age-old warrior myths in order to convey a desired propagandist message. Courage, honour and self-sacrifice were constantly reiterated in images that sought new manifestations of these ancient themes. No such heroic archetypes existed, however, for the women who took up arms in Spain. Reserved for them were far more traditional roles: stoic sufferers or the victims of war, justification for or the prize of battle. 1 Positive representations of women-at-arms succeeded only where women could be shown to exhibit the qualities of the male warrior archetype, or where they provided a novel pleasure based on their appeal to a male, heterosexual eye.
