Adventures of Jane Wayne: Review

"In the Men's House" is filled with such revealing anecdotes, from the horrifying to the hilarious. Yet Captain [Carol Barkalow] has more on her mind than simply telling war stories. She explains that the phrase "in the men's house" is taken from Kate Millett's "Sexual Politics." Indeed, sexual politics is precisely what "In the Men's House" is about. The author describes how she stormed some of society's most entrenched male bastions -- and how the experience changed her. At first she believed that success was to be found in being as tough as the men, tougher if possible. As a platoon leader fresh out of West Point, she seemed pleased when her troops dubbed her "Jane Wayne." SHE was outraged that her physique inspired prurience rather than respect. "If I were a man," she fumes, "I felt certain the battalion would have been proud that the 57th Trans was getting such a fit commander." She is not a man, though, and gradually she discovers it isn't necessary to be one to succeed in the Army. Once she took on the responsibilities of command, she gained the confidence to be her own kind of soldier. She developed her nurturing impulses -- and those of her troops -- calling for volunteers to join her in helping out at a nearby apartment house for the elderly. She also decided to liven up the physical training routine by substituting aerobic dance for calisthenics one morning a week. Convinced that aerobics was a "sissy" exercise, the male soldiers "quickly changed their minds after the first five minutes of the first day," she reports somewhat smugly.