What would lead three upper middle class women to question the ideology of their peers and challenge the accepted world view to the extent that they cross the line between acceptance of the status quo and political activism? This paper looks at the life and work of three women - two British and one American who, in the 1930s, experienced a dramatic change in the way they interpreted the world, which led them to a conversion to a different political viewpoint that had an almost evangelical quality to the way it would affect their subsequent life. Margot Heinemann, Rebecca West and Martha Gellhorn: three impressive writers and activists whom we remember now for their fervent defence of political causes - the struggle of the working class for autonomy, the alternative philosophy and quality of life that existed in the divided Balkans, and La Causa, the doomed Republican fight for democracy, respectively. Apart from their intrinsically interesting individual conversions to the faith of a new cause which we can trace in each of these women, their experiences reflect a wider movement in the twentieth century. Heinemann and Gellhorn represent a tendency which has dominated the century - the struggle between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the oppressed; fascism and dictatorship versus socialism and democracy. West represents a new respect for a culture that is not a dominant, first world power; she is one of a few writers of her time who looked around the world and discovered values that were not merely material in another way of life. This is a global shift in the appreciation of another culture which has led in the direction of recent political movements based around "thinking globally and acting locally". Finally, all three writers implicitly echo what has been possibly the biggest social "crossing" of the twentieth century: the struggle for women to find their voice and exercise power: to cross over from second class citizen to equal member of society.
