See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/358894089

Female Writers of the Civil War: A Reflection of the Divided Nation

Thesis · December 2013

CITATIONS READS
0 361

1 author:

Brooke Dunbar-Treadwell
Messiah University
11 PUBLICATIONS 4 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Brooke Dunbar-Treadwell on 07 March 2022.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Female Writers of the Civil War: A Reflection of the

Divided Nation

by

Brooke Dunbar

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

degree of

Master of Arts in English

at

Northwestern State University of Louisiana

2013
 ii

FEMALE WRITERS OF THE CIVIL WAR: A REFLECTION OF THE DIVIDED

NATION

by
Brooke Susann Dunbar

A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate School of
Northwestern State University of Louisiana
In partial fulfillment of requirements for the
Master of Arts in English

Approved by:

____________________________________
Dr. Sarah McFarland

____________________________________
Dr. James Cruise

____________________________________
Dr. Shane Rasmussen

____________________________________
Steven G. Horton, Ph.D. date
Dean, College of Arts, Letters,
Graduate Studies and Research
 iii

ABSTRACT

Dunbar, Brooke S., B.A., Messiah College

Master of Arts, Northwestern State University, Fall Commencement 2013
Major: English
“Female Writers of the Civil War: A Reflection of the Divided Nation”
Thesis directed by Professor Dr. Sarah McFarland
Pages in Thesis, 118. Words in Abstract, 345

The candor, vulnerability, and connection to their readers makes the writing of

Civil War women’s authors an asset to a historical understanding of the events and

politics of the Civil War. The Civil War brought change to the United States,

specifically for women. Their roles had changed and with it, their place in the literary

arena. In turn, some of the most influential writers of the Civil War era were women.

In their emotional appeals, vulnerability, and vivid imagery, the women writers took

the factual descriptions of Civil War events, politics, and ideas and gave them life.

More importantly, it gave them a political platform where one was otherwise

unavailable to them. I make a case for the importance of women authors in this time

period, despite their distance from the battlefield.

I use a diverse collection of authors spanning several genres and generations

who offer important perspectives on the Civil War. Through abolitionist writers

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lydia Maria Child, and Harriet Jacobs, I discuss the use of

emotion, rather than facts to share their abolitionist views. Rather than political

rhetoric, these women use pathos to allow readers to relate to their characters and

stories and sympathize with women in slavery. In the diarists and memoir writers of

the Civil War era, I present the idea of self-rhetoric, or using writing to wrestle with

ideas, as prevalent in female diarists of this volatile time period. Mary Chesnut and
 iv

Sarah Morgan share their personal perspectives on the changing South and the role

that they played in it while nurses, Phoebe Yates Pember, Tillie Pierce Alleman, and

Louisa May Alcott, also use their memoirs to interact with the changing face of

womanhood and duty. I discuss Alcott’s Little Women, with the focus on the

redefinition of womanhood in a post-Civil War world. Finally, I interact with

Southern literature of the mid-1900’s, with Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind

and Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream, with both authors illustrating a need to

explain the South, despite being born decades after the end of the Civil War.
 v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Sarah McFarland,

whose patience and gentleness despite my never-ending string of questions has been
gracious and wonderfully helpful. I would also like to thank my committee members:
Dr. James Cruise and Dr. Shane Rasmussen for their time and energy in helping me
complete this project.

I offer my sincere thanks to my generous friends and family who have offered
their talents in editing and their ears in allowing me to ramble endlessly about my
thoughts until they became ideas.

To my baby boy, Keaghan, you are the light of my world and your hugs and
reminders that “Mommy, you are a princess” make even the most difficult day of
thesis writing easier.

To my Daddy, who made me believe from my earliest days that I am the most
special little girl in the world and that I can do anything at all, I offer my thanks for
believing in me and for instilling in me my earliest interest in the Civil War. To my
Mama, my best friend, thank you for sharing with me your love of learning. Thank
you for teaching me that “non-traditional student” is just another way of saying “it is

never too late to follow your heart.” Most importantly, thank you for always
believing in me, encouraging me, and inspiring me.

I am so incredibly blessed to have had such wonderful support as I took on this

project and I am thankful for all of you.
 vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page i

Signature Page ii

Abstract iii

Acknowledgements v

Table of Contents vi

Introduction 1

1. The problem 6

2. Introduction to the Literature 7

3. Themes 13

Harriet Beecher Stowe Takes on the South 18

Lydia Maria Child and Harriet Jacobs: An Emotional Appeal for Abolition 27

Diaries and Memoirs of the Civil War and the Self-Rhetoric of Womanhood 36

Louisa May Alcott’s Civil War Womanhood 62

Post-Civil War Literature: Looking Back vs. Looking Forward 82

Summary 102

Works Cited 108

 1

Introduction

The American Civil War was a pivotal time in redefining gender roles for

women in the United States. There were several reasons for this revolution. Most

notably, for the first time many American women were left to fend for themselves

while the men were off at war. It created a change, a revolutionary change; not only

did they find themselves learning self-reliance, but they also found that their opinions

were being given value. While their voices were once secondary to the men around

them, they could now be heard.

In Disarming the Nation: Women’s Writing and the American Civil War,

Elizabeth Young explains:

As in other wars, moreover, the absence of men mandated new levels

of female leadership at home and occasioned conflicts over
appropriate gender roles for women. During the Civil War, women
inaugurated a range of activities, from new political organizations to
full-fledged riots, which interrupted the usual male gendering of the
public sphere. (2)

With so many men at war, it was only logical that the women would need to stretch

their limits and reexamine the idea of “womanhood.” They were forced to reinvent

who they were, what they believed in, and what defined them. It is not simply the

newfound voice that makes these women or their genre powerful. It is their ability to

paint, in a way that so few others could, the climate and confusion that defined this

time period. With all of this change and uncertainty, it is no surprise that many

women took to the pen to sort out their thoughts.

 2

Simultaneously, women’s literary works of this time period migrated to the

forefront simply by necessity. The fact that they had something to say was only part

of the equation; now, editors were faced with the challenge of filling the spaces of

their newspapers and magazines with their male writers busy at war. While this fact

certainly heavily contributed to creating opportunities for them, the women who took

advantage of the opportunity were not ill equipped to handle it. Full of new ideas,

questions, and thoughts with which to wrestle and share, the open doors were simply

the vehicle. The combination of these two factors catapulted women to the forefront

of literature in a way that they had never been before now. Drew Gilpin Faust

discusses the popularization of women’s literature in the South during the Civil War:

Women thus became acknowledged creators and custodians of public

as well as domestic culture in the wartime South, exercising their
power over communal sentiment in a variety of ways. They filled the
pages of newspapers and periodicals with patriotic stories and verse
and, perhaps even more important, composed many of the songs that
served as the central medium of public wartime expression and
constituted some of the substantial publishing effort of the war. With
men preoccupied by military affairs, magazines such as Southern
Literary Messenger eagerly sought contributions from women writers
and struggled to evaluate the torrents of unsolicited poetry with which
patriotic ladies flooded their offices. (1209)

Given a literary world that was more open to them now than it had ever been in the

past, it became a vital time for women not only in American history but also literary

history. For the first time, the female voices were some of the loudest.

In the North, Harriet Beecher Stowe penned Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel that

would arouse the North, putting stories and emotion to the painful truths of slavery

while enflaming the South. It would eventually spawn an entire genre of literature

meant to combat the claims made in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe’s work, whether
 3

greeted with praise or disapproval, was monumental, and had such reach that

Abraham Lincoln himself was said to have credited it with starting the Civil War

(Young 5). Even years later, it was still leaving its mark; in 1936, Georgian Margaret

Mitchell would write its most popular rebuttal in the form of her acclaimed Gone

With the Wind.

Meanwhile, Southern women were shaken, their lives turned upside down

with most of the Civil War taking place in their own backyard and without the male

protection and direction on which they had come to rely. Using their pens, they

sorted through feelings of displacement to find solace. They fought with their own

ideas about slavery, religion, Southern tradition, and their role as women. Some used

journaling, like South Carolina Senator’s wife Mary Boykin Chesnut and teenager

Sarah Morgan of Baton Rouge who lost more than half of her family in a span of

three years. Others like Margaret Mitchell and Lillian Smith would use their writing

to make sense of a Southern history that would haunt their lives years after the Civil

War. The common thread for these women is that in their writing they were able to

sort through the raw emotions and questions left by the Civil War.

The contributions of women to Civil War literary history could come as a

surprise considering the fact that few of these authors ever set foot on a battlefield.

Although some would find themselves occupied in the war effort working as nurses

or through charitable organizations designed to provide necessities for the fighting

men, the majority of them were at home simply trying to survive. However, the

assumption that their distance from the battlefield makes their works less important to

understanding the Civil War is an unfounded one. On the contrary, Mary Chesnut’s
 4

famous diary has proven itself invaluable to historians with intimate information on

the Confederacy that has been found nowhere else. Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Gone

With the Wind, despite sharply contrasting ideologies, are both staples of American

literature offering emotionally rooted reflections about slavery and the attitudes of a

time period that history would seek to understand.

Their distance from the political arena in an official capacity did not stop them

from sharing their political opinions. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

may not have included persuasive rhetoric in its pages, but it offered an impassioned

political message nonetheless. Margaret Mitchell did not use open persuasive

arguments in her rebuttal of it either, but instead painted a South that was better left

alone and a slavery that was milder than the one portrayed by Stowe. If society

valued their opinions less and pushed them out of the political arena because they

were women, then they found other ways to make society listen. Most of society

believed that women were not worthy of a political platform, yet these writers created

one for themselves using the tools available to them and in a way that most of the

male leaders of the time period were not attempting. Their emotional appeals touched

their readers and took political discussions beyond facts and numbers to an

understanding of how these political decisions looked and felt to the people whom

they impacted.

It is much to their credit that these female authors were able to write such

iconic works about the Civil War in which they were unable to fight or assume

political leadership. What was it that women were able to offer that made their works
 5

so notable and important? Alice Fahs reflects in her discussion of Northern literature

of the Civil War:

"What do women know about war?" asked Fleta in the popular

Northern story paper the Flag of Our Union in January 1865. "What do
they not know," she answered: "What drop in all the bitter cup have
they not tasted? -what ball strikes home on the battle-field that strikes
not hearts at the hearthstone as well?" Women knew about war, she
argued, "who steadily crush back the blinding tears, and whisper
through white, brave lips, 'Go,"' or "who wait in vain for the letter that
never comes-- who search, with sinking hearts, and eyes dark with
anguish, the fearful battle lists." Chastising those who would ask such a
question, she concluded," let the desolate homes, the broken hearts, and
the low wail of agony that God hears on his throne, make answer!"
(Fahs 1461)

Simply put, the female writers of the Civil War era were able to share the Civil War

time period because they played an important role in it as well. Where many of their

male counterparts offered facts and details, the female writers offered the deepest

emotional reflections of an era so difficult to put into words from their own unique

vantage point. They painted a picture, not only of destroyed towns and newly dug

graves, but of themselves as they shared their feelings about the emotional turmoil

created and left by the War. The Civil War did not simply take place on the

battlefields and in the political arena; it touched every citizen, and these women

illustrate this with their own vulnerable reflections.

The irony is that these women were not all trained and practiced writers prior

to releasing these, their most famous works. On the whole, they had very little

experience with writing rhetoric and of the female writers that had previously been

published, most were not yet well known. Moreover, few had any type of political

training. The political arena of the Civil War era was a man’s world. However, these

women did not let that stand in their way. They relied less on rhetoric and more on
 6

emotional appeal to accomplish the same things that men did, but with the men being

given a political platform and these women having to earn it. For instance, in Lydia

Maria Child’s work An Appeal in Favor of the Class of Americans called Africans,

she uses emotionally charged descriptions of cruelty to slaves and anecdotes from

various sources to arouse a sense of justice in her readers. She also assisted former

slave Harriet Jacobs in publishing her own narrative, a candid and vulnerable look at

her painful years of enslavement and sexual mistreatment at the hands of her master.

In lieu of persuasion, they painted with words the emotional motivations for their

arguments and invited their readers to feel what they feel. In doing so, they made

their voices heard and their arguments strong.

The Problem

It is an emotional connection to their audience that is most prominent among

the women writers of the Civil War. They share deeply personal stories, full of

vulnerability and sincerity. While very few would venture to openly argue political

matters, these authors share instead heartfelt sentiments and emotion rather than the

facts and reason so commonly associated with classical rhetoric. I will argue that this

sentimental approach to writing is what makes women’s works of the Civil War era

invaluable and important in understanding this chaotic and unsettling time in history.

Moreover, I will argue that because of the wartime climate in the United States and

the changing roles of women during this time period, the Civil War era acted as a

renaissance for women writers in the United States.

 7

I will explain how the nonfiction writers of the Civil War era wrestled with

ideas, forming conclusions for themselves free from the influence of male jurisdiction

that was held in so many cases by cultural custom. While the political arenas were

still unavailable to them, they used what was at their disposal as they used the pen to

sort through ideas and plead their cases. For the fiction writers or the authors that

chose to mesh reality with fantasy, these same ideas play themselves out in the pages

of their stories. Their female characters are stronger, smarter, more resilient, and they

often take on roles that were once held by men, much like their real-life counterparts.

These authors also used their writing to wrestle with ideas and present them to

readers, not as rhetorical arguments but as emotional appeals.

Introduction to the Literature

I will discuss several key authors of Civil War era women’s writing,

stretching across several genres and decades that illustrate how women writers used

emotion to convey their viewpoints and political ideas.

As Harriet Beecher Stowe has been credited with starting the Civil War, she

seems to be an appropriate starting point. Through Stowe’s emotionally charged

narrative, indicting the South for its slave-driven economy, she appeals to women

specifically. I will argue that through her focus on womanhood and motherhood, she

attempts to garner sympathy from her readers and make her characters relatable.

Through Eliza, Stowe illustrates the distance between slavery and womanhood as
 8

Eliza fights to keep her child. Through the character of Topsy, Stowe illustrates the

stripping of womanhood from female slaves, including this one, who is devoid of

femininity and cannot name her own mother. I will argue that these depictions of the

denial of womanhood are written in order to make characters worthy of sympathy in

order to appeal to white readers.

Similarly, Lydia Maria Child’s abolitionist efforts, her own rhetoric and in her

partnership with former slave Harriet Jacobs, persuade readers using an emotional

appeal. Moreover, these themes of the denial of womanhood to female slaves are

echoed in these works as well, most prominently in Jacobs’ work. Jacobs offers no

question that she is writing specifically to virtuous Northern white women who might

join the abolitionist cause and help to save other women still trapped in slavery. She

does so at a high cost to herself. She published a work in which she risked being

criticized for its scandalous nature and sexual themes, as she recounts stories of

sexual mistreatment at the hands of her master and shames herself by sharing the

scandalous aspects of her enslavement, which would be considered disgraceful in that

time period. Her fight for her own sexuality and motherhood are shared with readers

as a comparison of her lack of rights to their own ability to control these aspects of

their lives, pointing out that slaves are denied these same Christian virtues. Similarly,

I will touch upon a few other writers of this slave narrative genre and compare and

contrast their work to Jacobs.

I also will present some of the diarists of the time, primarily Southern,

including Mary Chesnut, Sarah Morgan, and Phoebe Yates Pember. Each of these

women bring something valuable, Mary Chesnut as the wife of a former

 9

Congressman and a key figure in the Confederacy, Sarah Morgan a strong and

confident young woman living in Baton Rouge at the time of the battle, and Phoebe

Yates Pember who worked as Matron of Chimborazo Confederate Hospital in

Virginia. These women offer vivid personal reflections on the climate of the

Confederacy, detailing their regression into poverty, redefining the understanding of

themselves as women, and the loss of friends and loved ones. I will use Kimberly

Harrison’s idea of “self-rhetoric” (245), the use of writing to grapple with and sort

through intense emotions and ideas, in relation to these works as these women portray

an emotional vulnerability, insightful to understanding this time period. They each

bring something valuable to understanding the Southern perspective during the Civil

War. Chesnut, friendly with the Confederate leaders, shares information and

depictions of events and leadership. Morgan shares her internal conflict over such

important issues as womanhood and marriage, the infallibility of the Confederacy,

and slavery. Pember discusses the power struggle felt between herself and the male

members of the hospital staff, who were unwilling to accept the need for female help

and submit to her authority. Pember’s work highlights the change in the roles of

females in the South and explains why they were necessary. More importantly, it

emphasizes the struggle for the South to accept these significant changes.

I will also briefly discuss a few of the Northern memoir writers in little known

Tillie Pierce Alleman, thrown into the midst of Gettysburg’s famous battle, and

Louisa May Alcott, who worked as a nurse in Georgetown. Tillie Pierce Alleman’s

memoir At Gettysburg: What One Girl Saw and Heard of the Battle accomplishes in a

narration of three days what Sarah Morgan’s diary does in years of writing; it
 10

illustrates how war can steal one’s childhood. It is also one of the few memoirs

written by a Northern woman that focuses primarily on the Civil War rather than

nursing or another war effort, because so few Northern cities witnessed the level of

destruction compared to what took place in some of the cities where the Southern

diarists and writers lived. Gettysburg was certainly an exception, playing host to one

of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Alleman’s work, albeit short, conveys the

loss of her innocence experienced over the course of a few short days as she saw the

painful reality of war firsthand. It introduces an idealistic fifteen year-old girl on page

one who has grown up considerably by the time her narrative has come to an end,

only days later. She has become stronger and more resilient.

Louisa May Alcott’s works, even the fictional ones, are often filled with

personal allusions. Her memoir about her time working in a Georgetown military

hospital is written from the vantage point of another narrator, nurse Tribulation

Periwinkle, despite the fact that the anecdotes are based on letters that Alcott wrote to

her family when she held the same role in a similar Georgetown military hospital.

While it is detached from her ownership, the character still lives out the scenes

described by Alcott in a questionably fictional novel that matches her story almost

perfectly. As in Little Women, she wrestles with the ideas of gender and womanhood,

specifically as it relates to the Civil War. Again, painting with detailed and intimate

descriptions instead of political arguments and rhetoric, Hospital Sketches shares

Alcott’s heartache as she watches the realities of war play out in front of her.

The two works are linked in many ways, with the Civil War as a key player.

In Little Women it flutters in the background, changing the lives of the characters but
 11

with very few specific discussions about it. Father is away at war, but his letters

focus on his children and never war itself. Meg’s husband is injured at war, but the

declaration is made in passing and is not elaborated upon. Alcott does not openly

discuss the War, but rather makes it a palpable presence, defining roles, decisions,

and outcomes. Alcott’s romanticized tale about four sisters in the Civil War era is

charming, rather than shrewd, but it makes its point anyway. Mixed in between

stories about singed hair and beaus, the March sisters redefine themselves as women

and as “duty” calls them. Much like Tribulation Periwinkle, their role in the War

means new responsibilities, becoming stronger and smarter, and discovering how to

harness strength into womanhood. Through the March sisters, Alcott makes her point

about what she feels that womanhood should look like in a post-Civil War world.

Finally, I will compare and contrast two authors, Lillian Smith and Margaret

Mitchell, both children of the post-war South. This post-war genre is one that

belongs almost entirely to the Southerners. Its writers are those who grew up in the

aftermath of the Civil War and forged their identities during one of the most volatile

times in Southern history. While Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind is easily the most

recognizable work written by either of the authors, Lillian Smith’s Killers of the

Dream shares surprisingly similar themes given such contrasting works. The works

share a common thread despite their dissimilarities; they both discuss a primarily

Southern idea that author Fred Hobson refers to in Tell About the South as “the rage

to explain” (3), as they fight to justify and make sense of the actions of the South,

both past and present. Smith notes that a Southern childhood includes not only guilt

over sins committed long before one’s time, but also the urge to explain the South to
 12

those that may not understand (25). While Mitchell’s explanation led her to write a

novel of nostalgia, looking back on a pre-War South that she claims was stronger and

better before the Civil War, Lillian Smith did the opposite. In her 1943 work,

published amidst civil rights turmoil, she urges readers to look back on the mistakes

of the past and learn from them.

These works were written decades after the end of the Civil War; that it

features so prominently and presently by writers is a testament to the lasting power of

the War in the American South. These writers do not write historical works based on

someone else’s account, but rather pull from the world all around them as it was

during their Southern childhoods, full of the remnants of the Civil War. It is what

makes these works important to understanding how women were affected by the Civil

War in the South, even in the generations that followed. If the Civil War was an

earthquake, these were the aftershocks that continued for generations. It is also

unsurprising that these later works came primarily out of the South. In the North, a

return to normalcy came at a much more rapid rate than the American South where

inhabitants were poor, defeated, and starting over. The Federal presence during

Reconstruction and the wounds left by it prolonged this anguish. While the end of the

war for most Northern women meant that normalcy was on the horizon, for the South,

it would be years before life would even begin to settle back into an uninterrupted

rhythm once again. In fact, as evidenced by Mitchell and Smith, decades later

Southern women were still trying to piece it all together and make some sense of it

all.
 13

Themes

There are several key themes that appear throughout women’s literature of the

Civil War, the most notable being femininity and the changing role of women as a

result of the Civil War. Kimberly Harrison proposed the idea that Civil War literature

by women is characterized by a type of “self-rhetoric” (245), something that she says

“negates the need for an external audience” (245). According to her, their works are

acts of self-exploration, trying to make sense of new identities carved out by the Civil

War:

the Civil War challenged not only gender identities but also religious
views, class and racial privilege… The line between the battlefield
and home front blurred as the War entered the domestic space and as
women took on traditionally masculine responsibilities, from
managing businesses to manual labor. As well, the material goods and
wealth that signaled upper- and middle-class privilege were often lost.
Yet, while circumstances challenged women's self-perceptions,
southern society continued to uphold traditional values, including
gendered identities. Thus women found themselves in difficult
contexts as they performed duties and roles outside the domestic
realm, yet were still expected, by their culture and often by
themselves, to maintain traditional feminine identities. (247)

The War pushed women into new realms and blurred the lines that had previously

dictated societal and gender roles. Women used their writing to sift through these

changes and share their unique experiences of them with the world. Many of these

authors also share their experiences with society’s ability to accept these changing

roles.

Similarly, many of these authors discuss the loss of innocence that

accompanied this changing society. In some, it signified a newfound maturity

 14

brought on by the demands of war and new and more difficult roles for women. In

others, the loss of childhood in a world of misfortune and witnessing the most gut-

wrenching scenes pushed them into adulthood before they were truly ready. Where

15-year-old Tillie Pierce Alleman rises to the occasion despite witnessing the graphic

realities of war that gives her knowledge beyond her years, it is Mary Chesnut, in her

40’s at the time she wrote, who clings so desperately to the immaturity that Southern

womanhood had previously afforded her, throwing parties and complaining about

clothes and dinner menus until late in the War.

In slave narratives, the idea of femininity is often discussed as something

unobtainable to the slave lifestyle. Many aspects of womanhood during this time

period were often denied to slaves, including motherhood and control of their own

sexual choices. Many of the authors used this as an argument for the abolition of

slavery. In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, this theme was an important

part of the message brought by Stowe. She discusses femininity in relation to

motherhood, with slave Eliza on the run to keep her son from being taken from her

and the mother and daughter relationship between Cassy and Eliza only surfacing

after they are free. While she too discusses motherhood in her memoir, one of the

most looming themes discussed by Harriet Jacobs is feminine virtue and the inability

of slave women to practice it or have any control over their own sexuality. To

illustrate this, she shares painful personal anecdotes about the sexual mistreatment she

received at the hands of her master. Given a backdrop where virtue was preached

heavily by the church, she was also in many ways offering a religious argument

against slavery.
 15

A discussion of femininity and slavery appears in many of the Northern and

abolitionist works. While many of the other themes seem to correlate between North

and South, one of the biggest conflicts in thinking lies in the understanding of slavery.

Notably, in these works, neither Northern nor Southern writers advocated the

mistreatment of slaves. Despite the inference by many Northern writers of abusive

slavery being the standard, not a single Southern female discussed here advocated a

cruel approach to slave ownership. In fact many were appalled by it. Mary Chesnut

specifically notes that she cannot stomach a scene in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle

Tom’s Cabin that depicted a slave being whipped at the hands of his master. Almost

unanimously, these Southern authors thought of their slaves as part of the family and

their responsibility to them one of protection and provision. Their narratives are full

of touching stories about slaves who were given gifts of family heirlooms (Gone With

the Wind) or who felt such an affection for the family that they stayed long after

emancipation (Mary Chesnut: Diary from Dixie). While Northern writers often cited

abuses as a reason to end slavery, Southerners pointed out the positive aspects of

slave ownership and used them as an argument against this. They did not feel that the

misdeeds of some were cause enough to end the entire financial structure of the

South.

Patriotism is an important theme in many of these works, each for their own

respective region. Ironically, very few of these writers demonstrate any real

knowledge of the issues behind the war. It is not the political arguments, but rather

the lack of them that are most notable. Regional politics are not a common theme

themselves, despite the fact that both Northern and Southern authors frequently
 16

mention “the cause.” Instead they speak of regional loyalty, with some even

questioning that, like Sarah Morgan. Moreover, political discussions permeate these

works even without them being presented as rhetorical political arguments. Without

political offices and platforms available to them, these writers found a way to make

their points anyway simply with an appeal to the hearts of their readers.

There are two themes that are very specific to Southern literature and are

rarely touched upon by their Northern counterparts in relation to patriotism. One is

the idea of Southern tradition. Whether they feel that it is a hindrance to the South’s

ability to move forward or something about which to reminisce, almost all of the

Southern writers address the powerful force of Southern tradition in their own lives,

in the South, or the lives of the characters in their works. The other theme specific to

Southern literature is the idea of explanation and justification in relation to the

Confederacy and some of the misdeeds in the past. Whether they are in agreement or

disagreement with the past actions of the South, they seek to give readers an

understanding of the mindset and events that led to their unique Southern history.

There is little mention of justification of their history or cause in Northern literature.

The tie that binds all of these works together and makes them an important

part of American literary history is the emotive quality of their writing. So few of

them were trained in rhetoric, but to say that they were not persuasive would be

giving them too little credit. Instead of the political arguments offered by the male

political leaders of the time, these writers offer a uniquely emotional perspective,

relying on anecdotes and the hearts of their readers to persuade. All of these works

are filled with passion and intensity about the things that were right in front of them,
 17

drawing on their own experiences to plead their cases. They captured the feelings

and complexities of a war that few were able to put into words, despite the fact that

most had never set foot on a battlefield. The personal reflections and candor in these

works of Civil War literature is their greatest asset.

 18

Harriet Beecher Stowe Takes on the South

In 1852, years before the Civil War would commence, New England’s Harriet

Beecher Stowe penned the famed Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a work that would go on to

define the abolitionist literature of the time period. She became a household name

almost immediately after her work’s first run in the antislavery newspaper the

National Era. It was published in book form shortly thereafter (Harper 355). Its

reach was far and wide, garnering popularity even from its earliest publications. It

influenced not only the public, but is referenced by many other authors of the time

period including Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Jacobs, Margaret Mitchell, Mary

Chesnut, and Lillian Smith. Whether they praised her work or loudly criticized it,

Stowe’s work left its mark on history. The novel was so significant that upon

meeting Stowe for the first time, it has been said that President Abraham Lincoln

noted that she had been, “the little woman who made this great war” (Young 24).

There can be no mistake made that Stowe’s work had influence. The question is,

why?

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was by no means one of the earliest abolitionist works in

the United States. Nor was it the most forward thinking; Stowe’s work contained a

number of controversial stereotypes that many considered offensive, cementing the

“Topsy” and “Uncle Tom” caricatures that would permeate literature for years to

come. More importantly, it was written by a woman who had no firsthand knowledge
 19

of slavery. However, it stood apart despite its downfalls because it was relatable.

While plenty of rhetoric had previously been authored on the downfalls of slavery,

Stowe’s work offered Northerners their first personal glimpse, and it was one of the

first instances where Northerners saw abused slaves and heartbroken mothers to

whom they could relate. Its power lay in the fact that this time the slaves had faces,

names, and hearts. It had readers wanting to see them succeed.

The irony of this is that Harriet Beecher Stowe had absolutely no real

familiarity with slavery when she wrote the work. She had never spent any

significant amount of time around slaves and had certainly never lived on a

plantation. Instead, she drew liberally from the firsthand accounts of other authors

and storytellers (Harper 355). Uncle Tom’s Cabin depicted the darkest cruelties of

slavery: brutal slave owners, long working hours, and children torn from their

mothers in Stowe’s fictional propaganda. Every attempt was made to make

characters relatable, not only through detailed descriptions and scenes wrought full of

emotion, but by using themes familiar to her readers. Rather than criticize and indict

the villainous parties, or even the indifferent masses, she attempts to convict them

through familiar topics and ideas to which they can relate, forcing them to see it

through a slave’s perspective. This was a tall order considering her limited exposure

to slavery, but it was one that many felt she accomplished.

Instead of experience with slavery, she draws from her own experience with

motherhood. Eliza’s fight to hold on to her child is one of the most distressing

aspects of the novel. The importance of this particular issue in the work is likely due

to the fact that Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin less than a year after losing her
 20

youngest son, Samuel Charles, to cholera. She later revealed that this experience was

the catalyst that led her to write her novel. The experience made her understand the

pain felt by slaves as their children are torn from them. She once shared in an

interview, “It was at his dying bed, and at his grave… that I learnt what a poor slave

mother may feel when her child is torn away from her” (Harper 355). She draws

from this emotional experience as she writes the relationship between Eliza and her

son. Moreover, she paints her own sadness into the work in this relationship, offering

readers the same glimpse into understanding the plight of the female slave that she

herself was given in the loss of her child.

This theme of femininity is one to which Stowe returns at several points

throughout Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In the character of Topsy, she discusses the idea of

denied femininity in the slave life. She describes Topsy as follows:

The black, glassy eyes glittered with a kind of wicked drollery, and the
thing stuck up, in a clear shrill voice, an odd negro melody, to which
she kept time with her hands and feet, spinning round, clapping her
hands, knocking her knees together, in a wild, fantastic sort of time,
and producing in her throat all those odd guttural sounds which
distinguish the native music of her race. (Stowe 211)

Topsy is almost asexual, a buffoon. Moreover, she shows no outward signs of

femininity, with Stowe describing her as “dressed in a single filthy, ragged garment,

made of bagging; and stood with her hands demurely folded before her. Altogether,

there was something odd and goblin-like about her appearance, -something, as Miss

Ophelia afterwards said, ‘so heathenish,’ as to inspire that good lady with utter

dismay…” (211). Nothing ties her to her own gender; she does not dress as a woman

nor does she show signs of femininity, which Miss Ophelia notes as “heathenish” or

in opposition to God. The link between religion and womanhood appears here and in
 21

several other places in Stowe’s work. Similarly, Topsy claims to be motherless, again

breaking ties with femininity. This asexual understanding of Topsy is so prevalent

that in many stage productions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the character of Topsy is

played by a male (Young 37-38).

Similarly in her discussion of the line that stands between femininity and

slavery, Stowe offers Cassy, whom she quietly asserts without any controversial

language, is Master Legree’s sexual slave. Once again, Stowe draws the connection

between religion and femininity, when Cassie shares a small piece of her story with

Tom:

“Did I want to live with him? Wasn’t I a woman delicately bred; and
he, -- God in heaven! what was he, and is he? And yet, I’ve lived
with him, these five years, and cursed every moment of my life, --
night and day! And now, he’s got a new one, -- a young thing, only
fifteen, and she brought up, she says, piously. Her good mistress
taught her to read the Bible; and she’s brought her Bible here – to hell
with her!” (Stowe 324)

She later laments of God, “But why does he put us where we can’t help but sin?”

(326). Cassy’s relationship with motherhood is also in contrast to Eliza as Cassy kills

her newborn child rather than see him suffer in slavery. Where Eliza desperately

chases her longing for femininity and motherhood at a risk to her own life as she flees

to freedom with her child, Cassy severs her ties to hers in what is arguably an act of

mercy. The symbolism of these two acts and their direct opposition to each other cry

of desperation. The fact that it is ultimately determined that Cassy is Eliza’s mother

seems appropriate as they begin a life of freedom together. Stowe illustrates that

motherhood for both of these women can only exist in freedom from slavery.
 22

Religion appears frequently in Stowe’s work, sometimes as an undercurrent

and sometimes much more overtly. In one of the earliest scenes, Stowe sets the tone

for the discussion of religion in her novel through a narration by Mrs. Shelby when

she finds out that her husband intends to sell Eliza’s son, separating the two:

“This is God’s curse on slavery! – a bitter, bitter, most accursed thing!

– a curse to the master and a curse to the slave! I was a fool to think I
could make anything good out of such a deadly evil. It is a sin to hold
a slave under laws like ours, -- I always felt it was, -- I always thought
so when I was a girl, -- I thought so still more after I joined the church;
but I thought I could gild it over, -- I thought by kindness, and care,
and instruction, I could make the condition of mine better than
freedom – fool that I was!” (31)

Her husband combats this claim by telling her she is wrong based on a sermon that

had been preached on Sunday, to which she replies: “Ministers can’t help the evil,

perhaps, -- can’t cure it, any more than we can, -- but defend it! – it always went

against my common sense. And I think you didn’t think much of that sermon either”

(31). In this case, the narrative is coming from a slave-holding character in an

attempt by Stowe to disarm her audience. Stowe gives the impression that she

understands these slaveholders, even sympathizes with them, since they too have

sermons preached at them that advocate slavery. She has given them permission to

be wrong and change their thinking with little judgment.

While her appeal is that slavery is in direct opposition to the Christian faith,

she reiterates this point in the discussion of motherhood that takes place in Uncle

Tom’s Cabin. It is an important conversation because motherhood and religion seem

to go hand in hand in this world; moreover, she explains, it is unjust because the

ability to raise one’s own children is a right frequently denied to slaves. This is also

pointed out through Mrs. Shelby when she tells her husband: “I have talked with
 23

Eliza about her boy – her duty to him as a Christian mother, to watch over him, pray

for him, and bring him up in a Christian way; and now what can I say if you tear him

away, and sell him, soul and body, to a profane unprincipled man, just to save a little

money? I have told her that one soul is worth more than all the money in the world;

and how will she believe me when she sees us turn round and sell her child?” (30).

Religion and womanhood are linked in the Southern world of this era and Stowe has

indicted the Christian South in her work by pointing out their hypocrisy.

Where the book opened the eyes of many in the North to the parts of slavery

that were rarely discussed, the South was enflamed and called the representation

“inaccurate” (Harper 355). Harriet Beecher Stowe would later publish a response to

this outcry with 1853’s A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin where she presents documents

and arguments citing her information used to write her original novel. In recent

years, Stowe’s credibility has been called into question. Jean Yellin, who wrote an

introduction to Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl discusses Harriet

Jacobs’ interaction with the famed Harriet Beecher Stowe, whom she was excited to

meet:

Her brief involvement with Harriet Beecher Stowe was divisive

in the genesis of Incidents. When Jacobs first agreed to a public
account of her life, she did not plan to write it herself, but to enlist
Stowe’s aid in helping her produce a dictated narrative. To this end,
Jacobs asked [Amy] Post to approach Uncle Tom’s creator with the
suggestion that Jacobs be invited to Stowe’s home so they could
become acquainted. Then, reading in the papers of the author’s plan to
travel abroad, Jacobs persuaded Mrs. Willis to write suggesting that
Stowe permit Jacobs’ daughter Louisa to accompany her to England as
a “representative southern slave.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe evidently responded by writing to Mrs.
Willis that she would not take Jacobs’ daughter with her, by
forwarding to Mrs. Willis Post’s sketch of Jacobs’ sensational life for
verification, and by proposing that if it was true, she herself use
 24

Jacobs’ story in The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which she was
rushing to complete. Reporting all of this to Post, Jacobs suggests that
she felt denigrated as a mother, betrayed as a woman, and threatened
as a writer by Stowe’s action. (Yellin 482)

Jacobs claims in her letters that Stowe was concerned that people would subject her

daughter to “petting” if it became known that Louisa was a slave, something she

deemed inappropriate for “this class of people” (Washington 60). Jacobs refused

Stowe’s suggestion that she take Jacobs’ story to use in her book and was insulted by

the belittling nature of her proposal (Yellin 482).

This and other evidence has been presented in opposition to Harriet Beecher

Stowe as a great leader of equality. For instance, many have criticized her caricatures

of African Americans, with Topsy the buffoon and Tom, the hard working devoted

negro. These characterizations would also create some of the earliest depictions of

blacks in American literature with the “Uncle Tom” characterization specifically

existing for many years to come. Similarly, the novel’s most intelligent African

American characters, George and Eliza, are mulattoes, half-white. Frank Durbam

offers criticism of Stowe and describes them as “the admirable mulattoes George and

Eliza Harris whose white blood presumably endowed them with intelligence and an

innate urge for freedom” (28). Simply, it appears as though her plea was not

necessarily for equality, but rather simply a race who required more dignity than they

were being granted. Durbam goes on to note:

Mrs. Stowe unconsciously promulgated the idea that Negroes are

inferior to whites, above the animals, yes, capable of salvation and
occasionally literacy but not really one hundred per cent human. Also,
through such characters as Mrs. Shelby, St. Clare, and Little Eva she
intensified the Southern doctrine of the noble and humane and paternal
plantation owner, with its concomitant suggestion that, on the whole,
slavery wasn’t always totally detestable. (28)
 25

While Rebecca Harding Davis would later break the mold with her autonomous free-

thinking African Americans, it is possible that in Stowe’s estimation an 1852 society

may not have been ready for this jump in thinking. Her argument may have been

better made by easing readers out of their engrained beliefs rather than offering a

novel based on new radical ones. If this was her belief, she may have been correct, as

her novel was wildly popular, much more so than almost any abolitionist work of the

time period.

Stowe’s novel would plant the seed for an entire genre of literature that came

to be known as “anti-Tom” literature, designed to negate the claims made by Uncle

Tom’s Cabin. This was a genre populated heavily by females as well. While the

most famous writer to come out of the anti-Tom genre was William Gilmore Simms,

female authors Caroline Lee Hentz and Mary Henderson Eastman, among others, also

produced some of the more popular works in this genre. It was designed to contradict

Stowe’s work and make the case for the need for slavery to control the African

American population. According to these works, slaves were content and well loved,

and plantations were peaceful places. This genre was short lived and did not survive

the Civil War, although many authors would discuss these same themes in later work.

In fact, Margaret Mitchell once claimed that Gone With the Wind was created to be an

argument to Uncle Tom (Young 232).

The arguments of this genre were unsuccessful; Stowe’s work would not slip

into obscurity. Although not a flawless argument for equality, it was a brilliant call

for a change in thinking. It was Stowe’s ability to draw from her own grief to write a

highly personal story about womanhood, motherhood, and its relationship with
 26

slavery that bridged a gap between a disconnected population and the enslaved. It

made those living in slavery relatable. It was not with persuasive rhetorical

arguments that Harriet Beecher Stowe told the American people why the abolishment

of slavery was a cause worth fighting for; instead she used stories and emotional

appeal, which urged he reader to draw a conclusion about the brutality of slavery on

their own.
 27

Lydia Maria Child and Harriet Jacobs: An Emotional Appeal for Abolition

The vast majority of the nonfiction and rhetorical pieces written by women

that were pertinent to the Civil War came out of the North, many as abolitionist

works. Lydia Maria Child of Massachusetts offered one of the most powerful

arguments of the anti-slavery movement in her work years before the Civil War,

penning An Appeal in Favor of the Class of Americans called Africans in 1833.

Unlike many other works written by women of this time period, An Appeal was

unquestionably rhetorical. However, she relies on emotion, much like the other

female writers of the time period, to make her points. While she uses logic and

reason, she builds on her well-reasoned arguments with anecdotes and emotional

appeals to reach her readers with stories of hardship and heartache rather than just

facts and figures. She humanizes her arguments, making them more than just words.

Child talks about the cruelty and how it affected slave families, speaking

directly to female readers. This same appeal to female readers would later be echoed

by former slave Harriet Jacobs, whom Child would assist in penning her memoir. In

An Appeal, Child uses detailed and emotionally charged descriptions such as the one

that follows about the slave ships coming to America, often using first-hand accounts

such as this one:

A child on board a slave-ship, of about ten months old, took sulk and
would not eat; the captain flogged it with a cat-o’-nine-tails; swearing
that he would make it eat, or kill it. From this, the other ill-treatment,
the limbs swelled. He then ordered some water to be made hot to abate
 28

the swelling. But even his tender mercies were cruel. The cook, on
putting his hand in the water, said it was too hot. Upon this, the captain
swore at him and ordered the feet to be put in. This was done. The
nails and skin came off. Oiled cloths were then put around them. The
child was at length tied to a heavy log. Two or three days afterwards,
the captain caught it up again, and repeated that he would make it eat,
or kill it. He immediately flogged it again, and in a quarter of an hour it
died. And after the babe was dead, whom should the barbarian select to
throw it overboard, but the wretched mother! In vain, she tried to avoid
the office. He beat her, till he made her take up the child and carry it to
the side of the vessel. She then dropped in into the sea, turning her
head the other way, that she might not see it. (Child 238-239)

Specifically in this section, Child appeals to women who might sympathize with the

plight of a devastated mother. Later, she targets this audience in a discussion of

womanhood, explaining: ”…it is only necessary to repeat that the slave and his wife,

and his daughters, are considered as the property of their owners, and compelled to

yield implicit obedience…” In this, she alludes to a highly controversial subject that

she would later use as one of her strongest arguments in the abolitionist fight: the

sexual abuse of female slaves. While this is not a topic she addresses here with any

detail, likely fearing that this early manuscript would be banned, it is a topic to which

she later returns. In fact, this would become the central topic of Harriet Jacobs’

memoir, which Child would help her publish in 1861.

While in other parts of the work Child does attempt to use reason and statistics

to appeal to her audience, no other parts preach her point nearly as well as the

anecdotes. These personal stories take her thoughts and give life to them. Because of

the strength of these arguments, Child’s work laid an early foundation for abolitionist

literature. Years later Harriet Beecher Stowe would take these same types of stories

and turn them into a fictional work that would find an even greater audience. Where
 29

Stowe’s work was only loosely based on real people and situations and things that

could hypothetically happen, Child’s accounts are presented as factual.

With Child’s help, in 1861, former slave Harriet Ann Jacobs published

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl under the pseudonym Linda Brent. Instead of

short stories of the mistreatment of slaves, this narrative gives readers an entire life

full of it. Through Jacobs, they might begin to understand slavery from the viewpoint

of someone who actually lived it.

Jacobs shares the harrowing story of her enslavement and years of sexual

mistreatment at the hands of her master, a doctor to whom she gives the alias Dr.

Flint. In her memoir, she calls out slave ownership as an abomination to Christian

virtue, noting “there is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the

south” (Jacobs 67). This is a powerful accusation of the Christian South and one for

which she offers a convincing argument; requiring purity of Christian women but

denying it to slaves is a contradiction. She also notes the corrupting power of slavery

to everyone, slaves and owners alike, a sentiment that would later be echoed by many

others including famous Civil War diarist Mary Chesnut, who ironically, was a slave

owner herself.

Ultimately, her work does not present any new information to the public. She

shares exactly the same information as many abolitionist writers before her, including

her editor Lydia Maria Child. What her story does, however, is something that they

cannot. She invites the reader into the world of a female slave. It makes her work a

powerful addition to the abolitionist genre and even became one of the forerunners of

slave narratives.
 30

In Jacobs’ narration, she uses emotion and vulnerability to appeal specifically

to women, calling them out as her audience. She recounts the painful aspects of

slavery with emotionally charged descriptions, language, and ideas geared towards

women and written in a way that women would best understand. She appeals to

mothers as she shares her anguish at silently watching her children grow up while

hidden in a building behind their home, unable to divulge that she is near for fear that

their safety would be jeopardized if it became known that they were harboring a

runaway slave. She laments: “Season after season, year after year, I peeped at my

children’s faces, and heard their sweet voices, with a heart yearning all the while to

say, ‘Your mother is here’” (Jacobs 137). She also appeals to women in her

discussion of sexuality, as she suffers of sexual mistreatment at the hands of her

master. She states even in the earliest pages of her book:

I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is

a curse to the whites as well as the blacks. It makes white fathers cruel
and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the
daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race,
it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their
sufferings, the depth of their degradation. (46)

Not only are her appeals to women, they are specifically to white women.

The intimate language and level of disclosure is a perfect fit for the audience from

whom she hopes to elicit compassion. One of the most powerful themes of this book

is the inability of the women in slavery to practice femininity as women of the time

period would have believed that God intended it, the way white women are able to

practice it. Not only is the slave woman stripped of her ability to practice virtue, the

institution of slavery also takes from her the freedom to mother her own children, an

ability believed to be the right of every woman and also for many, the means by
 31

which they define themselves as women. To illustrate Jacobs’ inability to have

control over her own sexuality, coupled with the longing glances at her own children

as they are raised by someone other than herself, speaks to the very core of her white

audiences. Even if they cannot easily relate to the plight of a slave woman in most

aspects, womanhood they can and for this reason, it is womanhood that Jacobs uses.

If virtue is a predominant theme in her work, underlying this theme is the

understanding that her audience must value it. She knows her audience well. She is

almost apologetic in her confession that her degraded sense of self-esteem and

devaluing of her sexuality is what led her to a sexual relationship with the white

lawyer outside of marriage, in hopes of escaping her situation. She notes,

apologetically, speaking to them:

But, O, ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from

childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection,
whose homes are protected by law, do not judge the poor desolate
slave girl too severely! If slavery had been abolished, I, also, could
have married the man of my choice; I could have had a home shielded
by the laws; and I should have been spared the painful task of
confessing what I am now about to relate; but all my prospects had
been blighted by slavery. I wanted to keep myself pure; and, under the
most adverse circumstances, I tried hard to preserve my self-respect,
but I was struggling alone in the powerful grasp of the demon Slavery;
and the monster proved too strong for me. (47-48)

Her impassioned pleas read like she is begging for forgiveness of her audience for

what her horrible life led her to do. Her appeal to this white audience is not only

powerful but it is also one of humility and bravery. Given a society that values

chastity, this disclosure comes with certain humiliation. She lays herself bare in this

appeal to her audience in an attempt to disarm them.

Franny Nudelman notes this momentous act of vulnerability:

 32

In her introduction to the 1987 edition of Incidents in the Life of a

Slave Girl, [Jean Fagin] Yellin pays tribute to Jacobs's decision to
publicize the sexual exploitation of slave women at the cost of
personal humiliation. She argues that Jacobs "addresses this painful
personal subject in order to politicize it, to insist that the forbidden
topic of the sexual abuse of slave women be included in public
discussion of the slavery question" (xiv). Understanding Jacobs's
narration of her sexual experiences is itself unconventional. Yellin
asserts that Jacobs modifies the contours of public discourse. (940)

Her vulnerability is perhaps what sells her work as a credible one. The narrative

often reads like chatting with a friend as she discloses some painful memory. In other

places, it reads like a confessional. By sharing such personal and painful details that

might cause the reader to disrespect her, Jacobs makes her work believable. It is

apparent that she does so at a great risk and humiliation to herself. She has given the

impression that she has candidly offered her story and draws her audience close, in

hopes that they will embrace her in return for her vulnerability. She notes, "you may

believe what I say; for I write only where of I know" (Jacobs 52). In her statement,

she advocates for her own vulnerability and attempts to disarm her readers of the

assumption that she comes with a motive. The vulnerability lay not only in her

honesty, but also in the subject matter.

The work was by default, erotic, and in many ways considered inappropriate

for the time period. Publishing it was a risk, and in doing so, she and her editor Lydia

Maria Child, already famous for her powerful abolitionist writings, chanced the

possibility of being discredited entirely. This likely would have weighed heavily on

both author and editor, as Child addresses this breach of etiquette in her introduction:

I am well aware that many will accuse me of indecorum, for

presenting these pages to the public; for the experiences of this
intelligent and much-injured woman belong to a class which some call
 33

delicate subjects, and others indelicate. This particular phase of

Slavery has generally been kept veiled; but the public ought to be
made acquainted with its monstrous features, and I willingly take the
responsibility of presenting them with the veil withdrawn. I do this for
the sake of my sisters in bondage, who are suffering wrongs so foul,
that our ears are too delicate to listen to them. I do it with the hope of
arousing consciences and reflecting women at the North to a sense of
their duty in the exertion of moral influence on the question of
Slavery, on all possible occasions. (Child, Introduction to Harriet
Jacobs: Incidents in the life of a Slavegirl 7-8)

Child takes several risks in this introduction to Jacobs’ work. Not only does Harriet

Jacobs bare all, but Child risks the work she has done so far as a credible abolitionist

in publishing a work that many might consider smut. Again, in this introduction, she

offers instead of an apology, the feeling that she has just drawn her audience closer,

made them friends, with whom one shares the most intimate details. The risk, she

seems to believe, is worth it.

Nudelman agrees that the sexual exploitation of female slaves was not a new

topic to the abolitionist argument. She explains, “While there is no doubt that Jacobs

describes her sexual victimization at great personal cost, in the context of an

abolitionist tradition that is preoccupied with slave suffering her revelations are not

innovative” (941). Perhaps they were not; however, Jacobs’ work was easily the

most graphic and personal that had been published at that point in history. Even

Sojurner Truth’s works, published in 1850, actively skipped over this painful part of

her life, despite the fact that she, too, was sexually abused as a slave. Olive Gilbert,

who had taken the dictation of Truth’s story admits that she “purposefully omitted

sexual improprieties” (Washington 57). Many people have noted this as the

difference between the credibility of Jacobs’ work and Truth’s, calling Truth’s

“sanitized” (58). For Jacobs and Child, it was a gamble. Yet, it seems to be one that
 34

works. These deep dark secrets simultaneously shock and provide a feeling of

disclosure and closeness. In drawing her audience closer, Jacobs creates a platform

where she is relatable, making even more clear the obvious differences between her

white audience and herself.

Jacobs was not alone in her decision to share these painful and illicit truths.

1861 is also the year that Louisa Picquet shared her story with a Methodist minister

who transcribed it on her behalf. Her story was about her long term forced sexual

relationship with a master that produced four children (Mattison). Notably, Picquet’s

work never saw the popularity that Jacobs’ did, possibly because Jacobs was assisted

by the fame of Lydia Maria Child (Washington 64). The reason for her success

might have also been the fact that Jacobs actually wrote her work herself, with very

little help from Lydia Maria Child, evidenced by her letters found years after her

death written to her friend, Amy Post, in which she discusses how little her editor

altered her narrative (Washington 60). Picquet, however, did not pen her own work

but simply narrated her stories. Nudelman agrees that the power in Jacobs’ work

comes from the fact that the arguments came from Jacobs herself: “Her first person

narration however, radically alters the structure of a discourse that typically

constructs the suffering slave as a mute object whose experience must be translated

by an empathic white observer” (942).

Realistically, Jacobs’ place as one of the forerunners of slave narratives was

one of default because she was one of the few with the freedom and writing ability to

do so. In fact, Child feels compelled to justify in her introduction to Jacobs’ book

how her writing came to be so eloquent, likely so that she would not be accused of
 35

writing on Jacobs’ behalf, although many still believed this to be the case. Jacobs’

work was not only an act of bravery in sharing these painful experiences that people

might look down upon and placing them in the public view, it was also an act of

bravery for a person of her position in general. For these reasons, she wrote with

little certainty of whether her work would be received at all and fear that the whole

painful experience of not only remembering these experiences in detail but also

sharing them might be in vain. She did so anyway. In taking this leap of faith, she

led the charge of many illuminating women’s slave narratives to come.

It is this “experience and observation” (Jacobs 46) that gives her work

strength. Nudelman describes Jacobs’ writing style as one that “vacillates between the

highly stylized and oblique language that characterizes the sentimental and domestic

fiction of the antebellum period, and a direct succinct-and descriptive style” (939).

The directness and honesty in her writing is her greatest asset. She does not attest for

the experiences of others. She does not discuss politics. Instead, she shares a tale

that illustrates far beyond any political argument the corruptible power of slavery. A

researched argumentative piece from Harriet Jacobs could have shared the same

information, but never could have held the significance of this work. Ultimately, the

greatest contribution that Harriet Ann Jacobs could make to the abolitionist

movement was to share the story of her life, down to the most raw and painful detail.

This is exactly what she did. She put a face to the facts shared by Child and others

and made people sympathize with her as she bared her soul.
 36

Diaries & Memoirs of the Civil War and the Self-Rhetoric of Womanhood

Some of the most famous works of Civil War literature were diaries and

memoirs. With their attention to detail and depictions of events and the feelings

surrounding them in their truest sense, straight from those feeling them, it is no

wonder that they have proven to offer some of the best insights about this volatile

time period. This holds true specifically for the female diary writers of the time

period, despite their distance from the battlefield. While the battlefield diaries offer

details of battle and an understanding of the wartime experience, the female writers

offer a unique and important vantage point as well. Through them readers are able to

experience the wartime world of the United States and capture the feelings of a

society torn apart, not just on the battlefield. Moreover, even as civilians, many of

these women experienced the War firsthand, though without a gun in their hand.

Their input is valuable in our understanding of history.

The famous diary of Mary Chesnut has been important to historians in

recording some of the behind-the-scenes action of the Confederacy. As her husband

was a high-ranking official, Chesnut spent most of her time during the War with the

biggest names in the South, including General Robert E. Lee and Confederate

President Jefferson Davis and his family. However, the majority of the diarists did

not hold this type of position. In fact, it is the mediocrity and commonplace of their

positions that make them so important. These first-hand accounts offer historians and
 37

readers a view of their world; readers are introduced to the everyman of the Civil War

era, rather than just the exceptional. Through this vantage point, readers are given an

understanding that goes beyond the facts of the time period to a greater view of

society during the Civil War. What were people feeling? How did it affect them?

How were they changed by it? These diaries took the historical facts and figures and

gave them names and faces. Where fiction allows readers the option of dismissing

depictions of the War as the author’s imagination, these diaries do not. The diaries

stand as the ideas, thoughts, and opinions of the women who wrote them, giving a

unique and valuable view of the Civil War.

With women pushed into new positions, self-reflection was of the upmost

importance and diaries and journals were often where these struggles, questions, and

concerns became ideas, decisions, and action. Kimberly Harrison reflects:

The War caused many southern women to move beyond the traditional
feminine sphere and to take responsibilities usually reserved for men,
such as managing slaves and overseeing family finances. Some women
left the domestic sphere as they were forced by rising inflation and
wartime losses to seek work; others chose to work outside the home
because of moral conviction, serving as nurses and, in a few cases,
soldiers and spies. While belonging to a culture built upon the ideal of
patriarchal protection, planter-class women through necessities of war
became their own protectors, striving to defend their family wealth and
possessions as well as their privileged lifestyle. Taking on such active
roles, however, called into conflict their identities as women. To deal
with identity challenges, women turned to their diaries. In large
numbers white southern women responded to national crisis through
writing. Drew Gilpin Faust notes the many women who responded to
the War through writing, stating that the War "made thousands of
white women of all classes into authors” (161). (263)

Harrison refers to this self-reflection through writing as “self-rhetoric” (263) noting

that most diary authors of this era were not trying to persuade the outside public, but

were simply in need of an outlet for their feelings of confusion. This self-reflection is
 38

prevalent in every one of these works. For this reason, many of these diaries are

wrought full of contradiction and questions, much more so than attempts to persuade.

They provide a rare glimpse into these diarists’ thoughts as they wrestled with

changes and ideas, giving a very authentic and vulnerable view of the Civil War.

With the War taking place in their backyard, many were without homes and

struggling to keep plantations afloat despite the absence of their fathers and husbands

who had previously shouldered this responsibility. During this time period, most

Southern women existed in a state of worry and confusion. For this reason, it seems

logical that the vast majority of Civil War era writing produced by Southern women

came in the form of a diary. Most of the exceptions to this came later; Caroline

Gordon’s None Shall Look Back and the similarly themed Gone With the Wind being

two examples, both written decades later, but in many ways served the same function

as the earlier written diaries. Both were an outlet and a place to explain and share the

woes of a displaced South.

The oddity among the Civil War diaries is interestingly, one of the most

famous: the aforementioned diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut. However, it is not odd in

its self-rhetoric, of which there is abundance, but rather in its lack of vulnerability on

some surprising key issues when she is so candid on others. Chesnut, almost 40 years

old when she first wrote, is notable because she was the wife of James Chesnut Jr.,

who served as Senator of South Carolina and became the first Southerner to resign

from the Senate upon the election of Abraham Lincoln (Harper 70-72). While the

diary does seem to act as an emotional outlet for Chesnut in some places, in others,

Chesnut treats it like a documentary, with emotionless dates and battles, or even a
 39

complete omission of important events. She alternates between disclosure of almost

inappropriate proportions, to a surprising silence about issues and events that would

likely have been considered important.

The pages of her diary, published in 1905, document the Civil War years from

her perspective, including a look into the private world of the high-ranking officials

of the Confederacy. Because of the value in these firsthand accounts, her diary has

been a favorite of historians and would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize (71). In addition

to the factual accounts of important events, it offers a glimpse into the confusion that

permeated the South as the war waged around them. She documents events from her

close vantage point when the South made the decision to secede, she narrates the

moments of the first shots on Fort Sumter, and she shares her dinnertime

conversations with the Confederate leadership. Moreover, through her own story, she

illustrates the slow decline into poverty experienced in the South as her fortune in

Confederate currency becomes worthless; her frequent lavish dinner parties have

ended and she has resorted to begging for food. It is little wonder that this work holds

such importance, for there are very few other accounts that take place this close to the

action.

What makes this work significant is that Chesnut documents the feeling of this

era, sometimes through her conversations with leaders, but more often where she is at

her most honest through personal reflection. For instance, Mary Chesnut shares this

powerful description when reflecting upon soldiers lost:

When I remember all the true-hearted, the light-hearted, the gay and
gallant boys who have come laughing, singing, and dancing in my way
in the three years now past; how I have looked into their brave young
eyes and helped them as I could in every way and then saw them no
 40

more forever; how they lie stark and cold, dead upon the battle-field,
or moldering away in hospitals or prisons, which is worse – I think if I
consider the long array of those bright youths and loyal men who have
gone to their death almost before my very eyes, my heart might break,
too. Is anything worth it – this fearful sacrifice, this awful penalty we
pay for war? (Chesnut 182)

It is important to note that her husband played a large part in the decisions that led to

the South being at war. Her description alone is powerful and captures the gravity of

the price of war; however, it is her husband’s own hand in it that makes it especially

enlightening. It is this type of honest reflection on the world around her that makes

Mary Chesnut such an asset.

Similarly she does something that very few others were able to do by offering

her readers an invitation into the secrecy of the Confederate leadership, her company

throughout the Civil War. Not only does she allow readers to eavesdrop into

conversations, but she also brings life to the names and faces of the War. In this

description of President Jefferson Davis, Chesnut provides insight not only into his

character, but also his demeanor at this pivotal time in history:

Now, the President walked with me slowly up and down that long
room, -- and our conversation was of the saddest. Nobody knows so
well as he the difficulties which beset this hard-driven Confederacy.
He has a voice which is perfectly modulated, a comfort in this loud
and rough soldier world. I think there is a melancholy cadence in his
voice at times, of which he is unconscious when he talks of things as
they are now. (274)

While many have discussed Jefferson Davis, Mary Chesnut places her reader in the

room with him. She does not just describe him, she introduces him to her reader.

With attention to detail and emotionally charged descriptions about the Confederate

leadership and their families, she allows her reader to get to know them as she does.
 41

In the introduction to A Diary From Dixie, editor Isabella Martin notes, “Her

words are the farthest possible removed from anything deliberate, academic, or purely

intellectual. They ring so true that they start echoes” (Martin xiii). Simultaneously,

Chesnut herself vouches for her authenticity, “Because I tell the tale as it is told to

me. I write current rumor, I do not vouch for anything” (111). Mary Chesnut was

aware of the unique vantage point from which she wrote and it was her reason for

doing so. It appears as though Mary Chesnut always intended for her work to be

published. She even notes several proofreaders along the way. Moreover, she

declares as she is writing her journal that it is available for viewing for anyone who

wishes to see it: “My journal, a quire of Confederate paper, lies wide-open on my

desk in the corner of my drawing-room. Everybody reads it who chooses” (335).

This implies that those who are permitted to see it are not confidants and the

information that she writes is not personal or confidential. Moreover, the document

has undergone several rounds of editing throughout its existence, thinning it from 48

volumes to 1 with pertinent information about the Civil War. Its earliest transcription

was by Chesnut herself when she transcribed her diary in the days after the war when

sturdier paper was available in order to give it longevity. It was again edited by

Chesnut herself and by her first editor C. Vann Woodward (Martin xiii).

Given the vast amount of editing and the fact that it was intended for the

purpose of sharing, these things would have led to decisions about what to disclose

and what to keep from public view. It gives pause as to whether this document

should be treated as a diary without reservations, or taken with a certain level of

skepticism despite her claims of candor. While it is a valuable document, her

 42

expectation was that the work would be read, not just far in the future but by people

with whom she interacted every day. There is no reason to question the historical

accuracy of the piece, but there is reason to wonder if it suffered at the hands of the

editing pen. There are several glaring places in her narration where events or

conversations seem to be superficial, reduced to facts and figures or missing entirely.

Given the frankness of some of her work, the omissions are often glaring and lead one

to believe that the work might have been sanitized, possibly because she was asked to

do so by her husband or his influential friends. However, it is certainly possible that

there was no intentional withholding of information at all and that Mary Chesnut had

little grasp as to the importance that these conversations and events would hold in

history and simply overlooked them in the moment. Still, they stand out, leaving us a

Chesnut who is sometimes silent, yet pushes the boundaries of what would be

considered proper thinking for a Southern woman and offers little filter in many other

places throughout her narration.

For instance, Mary Chesnut ventures back and forth between full disclosure

and a complete dismissal of any important information. In one entry, she details a

dinner party with Confederate leaders and describes the detailed sentiments of

Jefferson Davis on the War. In the next entry, she dines with him again and spends

paragraphs describing the food and very little war discussion. While these details

may have been important to her, the possibility that she escaped these long meetings

with the leaders of the Confederacy without the mention of war at all is unlikely. At

some pivotal points in the Civil War, these omissions are more glaring in her work.

For instance, in the weeks following the devastating Battle of Gettysburg, a critical
 43

moment in the War as the momentum changed direction, a discussion of the battle is

missing entirely. In the entries following the Battle of Gettysburg, Chesnut describes

a romance that she observes, several dinner parties that she attends, and the details of

a wedding dress. She says nothing of this notable event or how the Confederate

leadership feels about it despite spending time with people of great credential in the

Confederacy during this time period. It would be surprising if the Battle had never

been discussed with any importance amongst this company.

There are other moments when she mentions devastating battles or deaths

dismissively and without feeling, including her own cousin, whose death she notes in

two sentences “John L. Miller, my cousin, has been killed at the head of his regiment.

The blows now fall so fast on our heads they are bewildering” (309) before changing

her topic. She does not share which battle or any other information, and the

information comes as a passing thought at the end of a long entry where she discusses

food and clothing. While the death of her cousin receives only two sentences, she

offers five sentences and much more detail only paragraphs earlier for a description

of her dress. It is also a far cry from other parts of her diary where she speaks with

such intensity and passion about loss and the War that it might have been considered

inappropriate for the time period from someone of her position. While it has proven

to be a credible and valuable work, evidence would suggest that it is also one that has

been moderated. This fact does not discredit Chesnut’s work, a valuable piece of

history, but rather it illuminates how much more value could be attained from it had

this editing not taken place and also calls into question her claims of an uninhabited

work.
 44

This withholding might be less glaring if, in many other instances, she is not

as candid about her feelings, even impassioned about controversial ones. For

instance, Chesnut launches a heated attack on the practice of slavery, a surprise

considering her life and livelihood are dependent on her own slaves. Caroline

Clinton, author of a reading guide to Chesnut’s manuscript, shares in an interview

with her publisher:

During my earliest readings about slavery, I was convinced that the

sexual double standard was key to understanding the system—most
especially the way in which African American women were exploited
by plantation masters during the antebellum era. I was fascinated by
the psychosexual aspects of the system, and thunderstruck by those
flashes when Chesnut dropped the veil and exposed slavery's wrongs:
"But what do you say to this—to a magnate who runs a hideous black
harem with its consequences, under the same roof with his lovely
white wife and his beautiful and accomplished daughters? He holds his
head high and poses as the model of all human virtues to these poor
women whom God and the laws have given him… You see Mrs.
Stowe did not hit the sorest spot. She makes Legree a bachelor" (pp.
99–100). These rare but riveting moments bring alive women's
dilemmas in the Old South—for black women as well as white
women. Chesnut was one of the few southern white women to break
the silence on these issues. (Penguin)

Indeed, Chesnut’s statement is an important one. She calls slavery “a curse to any

land” (42), powerful words in the Confederate South, especially from the mouth of

someone so connected to its leadership. Her views on slavery are one of the most

interesting aspects of the narrative because they give a very heartfelt and conflicted

perspective that likely echoed more of the feelings of the South during this time

period than history alludes, with other authors such as Sarah Morgan offering similar

conflicting ideas. However, Chesnut is bold in her assertions, not only because she is

a Southerner, but also because she was fully aware that her diary would be read and

made her controversial statements on this issue anyway.

 45

Of course, the irony stands that Chesnut’s own slaves are the foundation on

which she built her fortune and family name and also the means by which she

maintains these even as she writes her diary. Moreover, only pages away from this

statement, Chesnut comments, “Now if slavery is as disagreeable to negroes as we

think it, why don’t they all march over the border whither they would be received

with open arms?” (93). Chestnut’s diary also states that many of the slaves of her

friends had left, yet most of her own barely acknowledge their freedom and continue

with business as usual. She praises them for this and most certainly does not

encourage them to leave. Despite the fact that she criticizes slavery, she is in no

hurry to give her own slaves freedom. Also as a contrast to slavery as a “curse,” she

discusses and disputes Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famed Uncle Tom’s Cabin:

Read Uncle Tom’s Cabin again. These negro women have a chance
here that women have nowhere else. They can redeem themselves –
the “improper” can. They can marry decently, and nothing is
remembered against these colored ladies. It is not a nice topic, but
Mrs. Stowe revels in it. How delightfully Pharisaic a feeling it must
be to rise superior and fancy we are so degraded as to defend and like
to live with such degraded creatures around us – such men as Legree
and his women…
…There are cruel, graceful, beautiful mothers of angelic Evas North as
well as South, I dare say. The Northern men and women who came
here were always hardest, for they expected an African to work and
behave as a white man. We do not…
…Topsys I have known, but none that were beaten or used. Evas are
mostly in the heaven of Mrs. Stowe’s imagination. People can’t love
things dirty, ugly, and repulsive simply because they ought to do so,
but they can be good to them at a distance; that’s easy. You see, I can
not rise very high; I can only judge what I see. (Chesnut 142-143)

While it may seem that she frequently speaks in contradictions, this discussion

of slavery is an example of the authentic Chesnut, sharing honesty and with passion,

unlike some of the other parts of her narrative where she is reserved. Problematically,
 46

the extensive editing makes it impossible to tell which are authentic sentiments and

what was added or removed at a later date. Still, in assuming credibility to these

contradictions, Mary Chesnut illustrates the changing face of Southern womanhood.

Where one moment she displays characteristics of a typical Southern belle, filling her

time with dinner parties regardless of the war going on around her and seemingly

content to abide by the opinions of others, the next she is displaying wisdom and

maturity with observations like these, even contradictory ones. It is proof that not

only is she a thinking woman, but that she is one who has the ability to question her

own region, a surprise not only in a divided nation but also as the wife of a

Confederate leader. This wrestling with ideas is evidence to the transformation of

Mary Chesnut and by extension the change in womanhood in the Civil War era in

general.

If oblivious and pampered Scarlett O’Hara had a true-to-life form, it would be

Mary Chesnut, although she is much older. She spends the first half of her work with

her primary focus on things that are superficial. While she might offer a short

impassioned political argument or description of a notable event, she takes no action

and her primary focus is on lavish dinner parties and lamenting over the inability to

buy pretty clothes. Despite the fact that her world is at war, including her own

husband, superficial things seem to occupy her mind as they dominate her writing.

Her husband even chastises her for this, considering the financial situation of the

South. She shares: “My husband laid the law down last night. I felt it to be the last

drop in my full cup. ‘No more feasting in this house,’ he said. ‘This is no time for

junketing or merrymaking’” (263). While she does not discuss the fact she is defying
 47

him by doing so, his mandate does not seem to stop her from continuing with the

festivities. Moreover, she wants little to do with any real duty in the war effort until

she is pressured into doing so. When she is finally, months after the other Southern

women have begun their hospital duties, convinced to join them, she childishly notes:

“I take my hospital duty in the morning. Most persons prefer afternoon, but I dislike

to give up my pleasant evenings. So I get up at five o’clock and go down in my

carriage all laden with provisions” (324). In her early entries, to Mary Chesnut, the

Civil War is more of an inconvenience than it is a crisis.

In these entries, she describes herself and her fellow Southern women as such:

“soft, and sweet, low-toned, indolent, graceful, quiescent” (52) and she seems proud

of this description. Yet, the war changes her. As her narrative progresses, she takes

notice of the changes in the attitudes of others, although never herself. She discusses

specifically the change in these previously mild Southern women:

Willie Preston fired the shot which broke Anderson’s flag-staff. Mrs.
Hampton from Columbia telegraphed him, “Well done, Willie!” She
is his grandmother, the wife, or widow, of General Hampton, of the
Revolution, and the mildest, sweetest, gentlest of old ladies. This
shows how the war spirit is waking us all up. (43)

Although she does not share any notice of the changes in herself, by the end of her

journal, the change in Mary Chesnut is apparent to her reader as well. Poverty has

become a part of her life and although she maintains a sense of good humor about it,

it is visible in her countenance that her position has fallen. When she finds herself

poor and begging for food, she laments:

Is the sea drying up, is it going up into mist and coming down on us in
a waster-spout? The rain, it raineth every day. The water typifies our
tearful despair, on a large scale. It is also Lent now—a quite
 48

convenient custom, for we, in truth, have nothing to eat. (357)

The jovial party-going woman of society exists no more. There is also the ironic

moment where she offers criticism to the young people in the war-torn town for

throwing a party despite the destruction; “To my amazement the young people of

Winnsboro had a May-day celebration amid the smoking ruins. Irrepressible is

youth” (385). This honest glimpse inside the world of Mary Chesnut, when she

allows us, offers a perfect vantage point not only to see but also to feel the destruction

caused by the Civil War and its impact on society and Mary herself. While it is

obvious that the War changed the women whom it impacted, Mary Chesnut’s diary

makes this a reality.

A more vulnerable look at the War comes at the hands of young Sarah

Morgan, 19 at the time the Union soldiers took over the town of Baton Rouge, which

she called home. Her diary was never intended for public view and was only

published years later at the hands of her son. It spans the course of several years, and

in it she broods over war and conceals in its pages thoughts that would probably have

had her tried for treason if read by the Union army who spent long periods of time

living just outside her door. For Sarah, like many of the others, her diary is a practice

in self-rhetoric, where she explores ideas and comes to terms with a changing society.

Like Southern diarist Chesnut, it is the honesty and vulnerability that makes the work

so powerful; however, evidence would suggest that the work is more unguarded than

Chesnut’s account. Sarah’s work is like a looking glass into the 1860’s. It is honest

and vulnerable, complete with complexities, contradiction, and confusion.

 49

There are several aspects of her diary that make it an important piece of

literary history. Most notably is Sarah’s openness about her hostility towards the

expectations for women. At a point in history where womanhood was being

transformed, she allows her readers to experience this transformation with her. While

she seems to accept her role as an upper class white woman, she wrestles with what

that really means. She begins with radical views for a young Southern woman, even

before the War has come to impact her, noting early in her diary: “Shall I say it here,

if not aloud, why is it I have never yet fallen in love? Simply because I have yet to

meet the man I would be willing to acknowledge as my lord and master” (Morgan

60). However, by the end of the war, her independence and strength goes far beyond

radical perspectives on marriage.

Her view of her own capabilities evolves throughout her writing and as the

war continues. While it is apparent that Sarah Morgan was never a girl one would

describe as meek, it is anger and a necessity to take care of herself and her family that

forces her to reevaluate her role as the War rages on. This loss of innocence takes on

an identity of its own in Morgan’s work. She notes this change, looking backwards:

how I love to think of myself at that time! Not as myself, but as some
happy, careless child who danced through life, loving God’s whole
world too much to love any particular one, outside of her own family.
She was more childish than [words lined through] yet I like her, for all
her folly; I can say it now, for she is as dead as though she was lying
under ground. (Morgan 35)

Yet again, Sarah speaks of her metaphorical aging shortly after the town has been

taken over by Union troops: “I feel a thousand years old to day” (104).
 50

In an example of how this change looks in her world, Sarah Morgan’s family

finds themselves servant-less and she, for the first time, finds herself doing

housework. She reflects:

What a day I have had! Here mother and I are alone, not a servant on
the lot. We will sleep here tonight, and I know she will be too nervous
to let me sleep. The Dirt and confusion was extraordinary in the
house. I could not stand it, so I applied myself to making it better. I
actually swept two whole rooms! I ruined my hands at gardening, so it
made no difference. I replaced piles of books, crockery, china that
Miriam had left packed for Greenwell; I discovered I could empty
dirty hearth, dust, move heavy weights, make myself generally useful
and dirty, and all this thanks to the Yankees! (103)

The change in her as a woman is not simply a reevaluation of her role, but rather a

call to action, or duty, a sentiment that she notes with the war effort as well. This

idea is echoed in other works of the time period as well, with Alcott’s Josephine

March of Little Women voicing her disappointment at being a woman and unable to

fight in the Civil War herself broods “And it’s worse than ever now, for I’m dying to

go and fight with Papa. And I can only stay home and knit, like a poky old woman”

(Alcott, Little Women 3-4). Similarly, Sarah Morgan laments after war has come to

Baton Rouge:

I am proud of my country, only wish I could fight in the ranks with our
brave soldiers, to prove my enthusiasm; would think death, mutilation,
glorious in such a cause cry “war to all eternity before we submit!”
But if I cannot fight, being unfortunately a woman, which I now regret
for the first time in my life, at least I can help in other ways. (Morgan
410-411)

This statement is also an interesting one because it contradicts her earlier compassion

towards the Union Army. It is clear her words are brought on by anger, but it is also

a testament to the weight on the shoulders of Southern women as the war progressed.

Where once the stress and decision-making in crisis was shouldered by the men, it
 51

was now theirs to bear as well. Morgan acted the part of caretaker for her small

family with her father recently buried and her brothers off at war. Like Alcott’s Jo

March, Sarah must change her thinking from an understanding that she will be taken

care of to accepting her role as a caretaker, someone who must take action if there is a

job that must be done. Still, in this example, her response is one of passion and

frustration, not traits often attributed to humble and mild antebellum women. In

short, Sarah is changing and while she does not always take note of it, she shares her

story with her readers who watch it take place.

Morgan’s radical free thinking also becomes apparent as she speaks with

compassion for the Union soldiers and their families, a very unpopular opinion in a

South filled with propaganda supporting “the cause,” the all-encompassing cry of

regional support with little explanation. A criticism and blame of the other side

comes from both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line and seems to be a normal part of

Civil War conversation. Part of Sarah’s evolution comes as she begins to question

everything, instead of trust, forming her independence. She declares her distrust for

the propaganda filled newspapers, describing them as “abusive newspapers of both

sides” (Morgan 108). She offers sympathy for the Union families. She questions

slavery. She questions the point of the War, finally lamenting “I see no salvation on

either side” (93). While the North may have believed that all Southern women were

unthinking ruthless slaveholders, writers like Sarah Morgan and Mary Chesnut prove

them wrong. Beneath the parties and hoop skirts lurked a female population with

depth, passion, and intellect, one that was brought to light by the demands of the Civil

War.
 52

Sarah Morgan’s relationship with religion surfaces at several points in her

diary and also echoes in many of the other works of the time period. Her repeated

phrase throughout her journal is taken from an old song, “I hope to die shouting the

Lord will provide” (121). It is clear that her faith plays an active role in her life, but

like most parts of Sarah Morgan’s world, she questions aspects of this as well. While

she seems unchanging in her faith in God, she does question the relationship of her

fellow Southerners with what she believes to be Biblical truths. In one particular

scene, one of the earliest moments where she offers any kind of criticism of the

South, she discusses her relationship with Union Colonel McMillan, who has offered

protection to the Morgan family who are without male care. He frequently sends

soldiers to check on the family and is adamant in orders to his soldiers that the family

be treated with respect. In turn, the Morgan women form a friendship with him and

for this the family is criticized for their kindness to the Union soldiers. Although they

had not previously offered any aid, Sarah crosses that boundary in this moment by

taking him food and bandages after he has been shot. Because of this, she becomes

the center of town gossip. She notes the hypocrisy of this in light of her neighbors’

professed Christianity:

Public opinion, I say, is nothing to me when counterbalanced by what I

believe to be the foundation stone of our religion. “Do unto others as
you would they should do unto you.” I never hated man or beast in my
life, no matter what they might say or do to me; why should I hate this
wounded man? …”Love your enemies” Christ said. Are we to keep
his commandment only on certain occasion? (113)

Again, she reiterates this hypocrisy later, observing the power of the War to

undermine Christian beliefs:

 53

This war has brought out wicked, malignant feelings that I did not
believe could dwell in a woman’s heart. I see some of the holiest eyes,
so holy one would think the very spirit of Christ lived in them and all
Christian meekness, go off in a mad tirade of abuse and say with the
holy eyes wondrously changed “I hope God will send down the
plague, Yellow fever, famine, on these vile Yankees, and that not one
will escape death” O what unutterable horror that remark causes me as
often as I hear it! I think of the many mothers, wives, and sisters who
wait anxiously, pray as fervently in their far away lonesome home for
their dear ones, as we do here… (123)

Morgan’s contribution to understanding the mindset of Southern women is

invaluable to history. Leann Whites, in The Journal of Southern History notes:

What is particularly intriguing about Morgan’s diary is the

contribution it makes to our understanding of the character of elite
southern women’s political and social allegiances. As in the cases of
both [Ella Gertrude Clanton] Thomas and Chesnut, Morgan combines
an intense loyalty to both the Confederacy and to the class and racial
hierarchies it represented with a more ambiguous stance toward her
own position as a woman in a patriarchal society. [Editor Charles]
East asserts in his introduction that Morgan was a rebel – in more
ways than one. Although loyal to the Confederacy to the bitter end,
she opposed the “hypocrisies and tyranny” of her own society,
especially the “restraints imposed on her as a woman.” (386)

Again, Morgan did what women writers of the Civil War era did best. She captures

her world, she wrestles with ideas, and she depicts heartfelt descriptions of her time in

history. Morgan seems to hold back little and has little concern with contradiction.

The vulnerability expressed in this diary is what Harrison describes as “self-rhetoric”

(245). In this vulnerability, Sarah Morgan unlocks the door to her world and invites

her readers inside, illustrating the power of the Civil War on herself and other women

of the time period.

Another diarist of note is Phoebe Yates Pember, also Southern, who wrote of

her trials as the matron of Chimborazo Confederate hospital in Virginia. In 1862, the

Confederacy passed the Matron law, putting women in charge of hospitals to free
 54

overworked doctors for more important tasks and men to return to the battlefields

(Pember 1). Pember would become one of the earliest matrons. While her memoir

speaks of the trials of wartime and the painful things that she witnesses, the majority

of her memoir is devoted to her quest to be respected as a woman in this position.

This idea of the changing roles of women in the South and the necessity to do

so brought on by the war is a repeated theme in literature of the time period; however,

the memoir of Phoebe Yates Pember also speaks to the ability of society to embrace

that change. Her time at Chimborazo included petty fights over her ability to

administer alcohol and an incessant questioning of her authority based on her gender.

Drew Gilpin Faust discusses this idea of the reluctance to accept new roles in this

changing Civil War society:

Many women shared the aversion to female nursing. Ladies

who dedicated themselves to ward work, such as Pember, Cumming,
and Louisa McCord, were subjects of gossip and speculation. Women
working in the hospitals seemed in the eyes of many Southerners to
display curiously masculine strengths and abilities. Clara MacLean
confided to her diary that her neighbor Eliza McKee, recently departed
for Virginia as a nurse, had always possessed such strength as to seem
“almost masculine – Indeed I used to tell her I never felt easy in her
society if discussing delicate subjects; I could scarcely persuade
myself she was not in disguise.” And Mary Chesnut, the famed South
Carolina diarist, felt much the same about the intimidating strength of
her friend McCord, who seemed to possess “the intellect of a man.”
Nurses were not truly women, but in some sense men in drag.
Such attitudes enabled Southerners to blunt the impact and
significance of women’s changed behavior by framing it within
existing ideological categories. (1215-1216)

Instead of being rewarded for their empowerment and willingness to evolve to fill a

need, the women were considered manly and criticized for their war efforts. Pember

draws attention to this change in womanhood, noting own her acceptance of it, even

when others do not. She shares in her memoir that “women of the South had been
 55

openly and violently rebellious from the moment they thought their States' rights

touched” (Pember 13). Words like “violently” and “rebellious” are strong ones given

the Southern understanding of femininity where women are to be gentle and gracious.

While Pember seems to believe that this passion is appropriate given the dire situation

in which she and her fellow Southerners find themselves, it is clear that not everyone

agrees.

The move to hospital matron was a surprising choice for Pember, someone

who was well educated and a member of the social elite. In this, she is rebelling not

only against female roles but also societal constraints, another line that blurs in the

wake of the Civil War. Moreover, she does not praise herself for her sacrifice in

taking on the role of Matron, an unpleasant position with an unenviable salary. She

views it as a duty, much like the ones taken on by soldiers. In lieu of self-praise, she

offers credit to Southern women as a whole for their contributions during the war:

“feeling a passion of interest in every man in the gray uniform of the Confederate

service; they were doubly anxious to give comfort and assistance to the sick and

wounded” (15). Pember exemplifies the changing idea of womanhood during the

Civil War, taking on a position of authority as duty calls her-- one that until her recent

past would have been offered only to a man. While she notes the recent death of her

husband as a motivating factor to her newfound position, the fact that the position is

even available to her, a woman, is a tribute to the momentous change in the roles of

women that took place during the Civil War (Harper 301). The fact that she does so

with much resistance is an illustration of the struggle that came with it.
 56

Pember’s story is one that is full of emotion and the frustration of her situation

saturates every sentence, even without her actively sharing it. There are few

moments of self-disclosure; however, she paints detailed pictures of situations,

inviting her reader to share in her frustrations rather than venting about them. She

describes the small room where she is placed and the confusion when she arrives that

she is assumed to be there to do nothing other than cook and clean by virtue of being

a female. While she never claims to be insulted by this, her details of these

interactions are what paint the picture so richly. Rather than tell her readers about her

struggle, she uses an emotional appeal to illustrate it for them. She simply details her

world during her time at the hospital and allows these interactions to speak for

themselves.

Another item of note from Pember’s memoir is the role of the African

Americans by whom she is surrounded. The important fact lies not in what she

describes, but what she does not. The absence of any mention the African Americans

at Chimborazo, orderlies, cooks, and laundry attendants, is a powerful statement

(Harper 301). Despite detailed descriptions of white associates who work in the

hospital, some only for days before making their leave, these much more permanent

hospital personnel are never once mentioned. If this omission offers any commentary

about race relations in the South it is that Pember is conditioned to offer little heed to

the importance of slaves and other African Americans.

While these Southern diaries, journals, and memoirs detail the Southern

experience, there are very few well-known diaries of Northern women. This shortage

is of little surprise. Other than those that acted as nurses or served other vital roles to
 57

the Union cause, there were very few women in the North that saw the level of

destruction as was brought to the South. In this way, the memoir of Gettysburg’s

Tillie Pierce Alleman is a rare glimpse into war from a Northern viewpoint during

this time period. There are several reasons why Alleman’s work is significant and her

role as a Northerner is one of them. At Gettysburg: What One Girl Saw and Heard of

the Battle is one of the few published firsthand accounts of battle written by a woman,

either Northern or Southern.

In her memoir, she tells how she found herself the nursemaid to Union

soldiers, almost by accident. In evacuating her home in downtown Gettysburg at the

onset of battle to run to safety with a neighbor, she accidentally places herself in the

midst of battle instead of further from it. She shares her flight to the home of the

Weikert family on the outskirts of town with the battle taking place around her:

As I looked toward the Seminary Ridge I could see and hear the
confusion of the battle. Troops moving hither and tither; the smoke
from the conflict arising from the fields; shells bursting in the air,
together with the din, rising and falling in mighty undulations. These
things, beheld for the first time, filled my soul with the greatest
apprehensions. (Alleman 39)

Upon arriving at the Weikert home and finding it full of Union wounded, she

immediately takes on the role of caretaker and a face of kindness to the Union

soldiers for whom she nurses amidst the painful drama going on around her. She also

encounters several key players in the Civil War, including General Meade and

General Weed of New York. Alleman’s account of the death of General Weed

contradicts earlier assumptions that he died during battle. Instead she recounts sitting

beside him in his final hours without knowing who he is until being told the following
 58

morning when he had already passed. Despite this helpful information regarding the

demise of General Weed, it is not a particularly prominent work.

One of Alleman’s most notable contributions to history is not necessarily a

positive one. Through her work, Alleman called into question the character of

Gettysburg’s most famous martyr, Jennie Wade, the only civilian killed at the battle

of Gettysburg. Prior to Alleman’s narrative, Jennie Wade was spoken of only in the

most respectable ways. Despite the fact that Tillie Pierce Alleman never names her,

she does note that the sister of their hired boy, Sam, gives the Rebels information

about her family. She remarks, “it would surprise a great many to learn who this

person was, but as no detraction is intended, I will dismiss the subject at once”

(Alleman 27). In the book’s brief introduction, William Frassinato clarifies that the

boy who worked for their family was Samuel Wade, and his famous sister was Mary

Virginia (Jennie) Wade who lost her life on July 3 while she was said to have been

baking bread in her sister’s kitchen. Local rumors have since speculated that Jennie

Wade’s motives in staying in Gettysburg at the onslaught of battle were much more

sinister, including claims that match Alleman’s profession of Jennie Wade as a traitor.

While the legacy of Jennie Wade would be an unsettled topic of debate for years to

come, Alleman’s account is the first documented assault to her character (iv).

One of the major themes of Alleman’s memoir is the idea of “duty” and

patriotism. Before the Battle of Gettysburg has begun, as the Union soldiers march

into town, Alleman and some of the other ladies of the town sing “Our Union

Forever” as they pass (Alleman 29). It is a similar sense of duty that leads her to her

nursing duties, a task she falls to almost immediately upon her arrival at the Weikert
 59

house, simply by necessity. However, it is not a task that comes easily to her. She

narrates her first glimpse of the barn-turned-hospital:

Nothing before in my experience had ever paralleled the sight

we then and there beheld. There was the groaning and crying, the
struggling and dying, crowded side by side, while attendants sought to
aid and relieve them as best they could.
We were so overcome by the sad sad awful spectacle that we
hastened back to the house weeping bitterly. (44)

She is afraid; however, a sense of patriotic duty compels her. A chaplain whom she

meets urges her to be “in a cheerful mood” (45). She takes this to heart, and spends

the rest of the battle making her duty, first and foremost, to be a positive force and a

substitution for the mothers, sisters, and wives at home who are unable to be there to

support their soldiers.

This commentary on the role of the female is an interesting one. The chaplain

does not urge any of the male doctors to do likewise. His advice is offered to Tillie, a

young woman. Similarly, with very few nursing skills, Tillie spends the majority of

her time baking bread and delivering food and water. She explains “I wanted to do

something for the poor soldiers if I only knew what” (61). As we will see later

through Alcott’s March sisters, this idea is a shared one; Alleman believes that her

duty exists in self-surrender, not just in time and energy, but in attitude. Despite the

fact that she is separated from her family and unsure about their safety, she puts aside

her own fears and turns her focus to maintaining a positive attitude for the sake of the

soldiers, tending to the sick and wounded. She brings them food and attempts to lift

their spirits. This idea of women taking on duties at all would have been a new

concept in a world where women were often taken care of by men, yet she
 60

immediately accepts this as her responsibility without question out of a sense of duty.

Moreover, she believes that she must do so cheerfully despite her fears.

Engrained in the memoir is one of the biggest themes of Civil War women’s

literature; Tillie Pierce Alleman is changed by the Civil War and her experiences.

While young women were once protected from these types of gruesome and scary

scenes, Alleman is thrown into it. While the ever-candid Sarah Morgan shares openly

in her diary about the changes she sees in herself as the war wages on, Alleman never

addresses the changes in herself directly. This could be attributed to the fact that

Alleman’s work was written years after the Civil War, while Morgan’s was written as

the war took place. However, in Alleman’s actions, similar themes are illustrated as

the ones shared by Sarah Morgan. For instance, in the earliest parts of the memoir,

Alleman shares her own squeamishness about the impending war, wrought full of

emotion. She describes the scene as hearts that “throb with fear and trembling” (20).

However, upon arriving at the Weikert home during the battle, she immediately

springs in to action with little mention of fear for her own life but rather those around

her. Moreover, when she returns to her home, the family harbors and nurses Union

soldiers in their basement despite the fact that the Confederate Army is searching

homes and the repercussions if they are found will be harsh (90). While Alleman

expresses fear and concern in the early parts of her memoir, she makes no mention of

it as she discusses the Union wounded with whom her family shares their home. Her

concern is instead for the wounded soldiers alone. Whether she has evolved to be less

fearful or she now believes there are causes more important than her fear, a change

has taken place in her.

 61

Alleman notes the contribution of these females to the Civil War effort; “Who

will dare to say that with such sacrifices upon our country’s altar our national

inheritance is not sacredly precious?” (111). Although she offers excellent details

and heartfelt descriptions, almost placing her reader in the chaos of the battle and

hospital of the Weikert home, Alleman makes no political claims in her work. For

what these sacrifices are made, she never says. While she makes it abundantly clear

that her support is with the Union and no one would dare question her patriotism,

given her contributions, she never explains what it is that she believes her sacrifice is

accomplishing. In this way, Alleman is at a contrast from diarists Sarah Morgan and

Mary Chesnut who criticize their own region. It leaves questions as to whether it was

these women or Alleman who were in the minority.

These themes are what make Alleman’s work valuable. Although written

years after the battle, her authentic discussions of what she saw are in their most pure

form. She offers very little political thought and no official argument whatsoever, but

vivid and powerful recollections of what she thought and felt, as she found herself

changed at the hands of the Civil War. Through every raw feeling and emotion, she

places her reader at the battle with her, a scared little girl who becomes a woman in

three short days and right before the eyes of her reader.

Alleman’s work bares a strong resemblance to one of the few other well-

known Northern Civil War memoirs, although it is not a pure memoir. Louisa May

Alcott, of the Little Women fame, penned part memoir and part fictional story,

Hospital Sketches in 1863.

 62

Louisa May Alcott’s Civil War Womanhood

Alcott’s Hospital Sketches is the story of Civil War nurse Tribulation

Periwinkle, whose time at a Union Civil War hospital is a short-lived due to illness.

The story aligns with Alcott’s own experience at a Georgetown Civil War hospital

and was written using a compilation of the letters sent home by Alcott during her

short stay (Harper 16). It is hard to determine exactly why Alcott wrote this as a

fictional tale and not a memoir when so much of it is factual. It could be for the same

reason that despite its painful theme, Alcott actively attempts to take a lighter tone

with her work, possibly as a mechanism of self-defense in recalling the horrors that

she witnessed. However, it should also be noted that Alcott’s infusion of herself into

this work is not unique to this story. Little Women is also wrought full of reflections

of Alcott’s own character and even blends in many places with Hospital Sketches.

As Tribulation Periwinkle likens herself to a soldier headed off to war, so does

Jo March share her frustration at being unable to go to war. Both also come to new

conclusions about what duty really means. Elizabeth Young, who has done

considerable research on the feminine and masculine dynamic in women’s Civil War

literature, discusses a particular section of Alcott’s Hospital Sketches:

Though she leaves for Washington "as if going on a bridal tour,” she
more closely resembles a soldier on his tour of duty. Requesting a
nursing position at the start, she declares, "I've enlisted!” as she
describes her teary farewell to her family in masculine terms: "I
maintain that the soldier who cries when his mother says 'Good bye,' is
 63

the boy to fight best." (Young 444)

In both of these novels, the language of duty in relation to the Civil War is present,

however only for the female characters. Moreover, Alcott self-depreciatingly

pretends as though the call to begin nursing wounded soldiers was simply from lack

of better options, noting “I want something to do” and finally heeding the suggestion

to “go nurse the soldiers” (Alcott, Hospital Sketches 3) after she has run out of other

feasible suggestions. This lack of something to do could be taken several ways.

While in some cases, this might have been how women found themselves on this very

unique battleground, Alcott’s duty- driven language appearing only paragraphs later

would suggest that she does not take this job so lightly. A more likely interpretation

would be that her narrator felt helpless at home while men fought a war. Although it

is possible that the negative attitudes towards female nurses heavily contributed to her

decision to depict it lightly, it is even more likely given Alcott’s frequent use of the

idea of duty, that the narrator, or Alcott herself, had felt a sense of helplessness at

watching the war from a distance and felt the need to “do something.” This was one

of the few options available to her as a woman.

Masculinity and femininity is an ongoing and very important discussion in her

work. Her heroine, Nurse Periwinkle, is a capable and strong woman. No mistake is

made of this. Even as she begins her trek to her new position, she finds herself very

scared in a new town. Still, she shares the struggle inside of her between strength and

fear at facing this new uncertainty upon her arrival:

I am a woman’s rights woman, and if any man had offered help in the
morning, I should have condescendingly refused it, sure that I could do
everything as well, if not better, myself. My strong-mindedness had
rather abated since then, and I was now quite ready to be a “timid
 64

trembler,” if necessary. (Alcott, Hospital Sketches 8)

Although moments later, still uncertain, she notes the condescension offered to her by

a “Boy” (10) as she continues her trek to her new position. She describes the

interaction as such:

Having waited some twenty minutes, it pleased this reprehensible Boy

to make various marks and blots on my documents, toss them to a
venerable creature of sixteen, who delivered them to me with such
paternal directions, that it only needed a pat on the head and an
encouraging – “Now run home to your Ma, little girl, and mind the
crossings, my dear,” to make the illusion quite perfect. (10)

This time, however, she seems insulted by it. She also observes that in Philadelphia

that the women seem to be doing all the business, “which, perhaps, accounts for its

being done so well” (14). It is statements like these that exemplify this discussion of

strength and femininity that features prominently in Hospital Sketches, a sentiment

Alcott also echoes in Little Women. She appears to be mocking her more masculine

characters for their lack of femininity one moment and praising their strength and

drive the next.

Tribulation Periwinkle’s ability to dismiss her struggle and continue with her

duty illustrates another part of this masculine and feminine conversation. She is

resilient, despite her fears. On her first day, upon seeing stretchers, each filled with

one “legless, armless, or desperately wounded occupant,” (21) she reminds herself

that she must act as a man would be expected to act. She uses more soldiering

language, as she “returned to the path of duty.” While she contests that her presence

there is to be “motherly” (54) and a substitute for the wives, sisters, and mothers who

cannot be there, much like Tillie Pierce Alleman, her actions often seem to negate

this. While she is often respectful, her actions and decisions are still often
 65

unemotional, detached and duty driven, not at all like the ideal of femininity in that

era. She shares the anecdote of crying with the sister of a lost soldier, notable

because it is a woman with whom she shares her tears, and does not do so in front of

the men. Moreover, she mentions the rarity of her willingness to shed tears in her

position instead of maintaining composure (49). Similarly, when she is tasked with

informing soldier John that he is dying, she comments, “I had forgotten that the

strong man might long for the gentle tendence of a woman’s hands, the sympathetic

magnetism of a woman’s presence” (31). In adding this, it is apparent that Nurse

Periwinkle has actively dismissed this part of her persona at some point since

beginning her career as a nurse if it ever existed.

Alcott spends a considerable amount of time discussing amputation. Young

suggests that Alcott intended this to be an allegory for the divided nation, citing a

quote from a young soldier who jokes about his limbs being divided across the nation.

However, amputation is also something that Alcott treats as a mark of having done

one’s duty. In losing a limb, the amputee has officially been marked as a soldier.

Later, when Nurse Periwinkle ends her career after falling ill, Alcott uses amputation

to note the alignment of the ailing nurse to the soldiers. Not only does she use similar

descriptions to link the nurse’s fight with delirium to the ailing soldiers, but also in

describing Nurse Periwinkle’s own “amputation,” as her hair falls out. This is not the

first example of Alcott using the loss of hair as a marking of a woman’s duty in war.

When Little Women’s Jo March cuts off her prized hair to earn money to send her

mother to be with her ailing father, she does so as an act of duty. In considering

herself the “man of the house” (Alcott, Little Women 6) in the absence of her father,
 66

she believes that she must take care of the family. In this metaphorical act of

amputation, she crosses from little girl to warrior, having done her duty, much like

Nurse Periwinkle (Young 80-102).

The ironic switch is that while Nurse Periwinkle often exhibits more

masculine characteristics for her time period, the men seem to exhibit more feminine

ones. Elizabeth Young notes of this, “The nexus of disruptive and disrupted bodies

centers on two Civil War figures: the wounded male soldier and the female nurse….

The suffering soldier is marked by and praised for his proximity to femininity… Even

as she valorizes the injured soldier for his feminine characteristics, she also relocates

the traits of masculinity within the female nurse” (Alcott, Hospital Sketches 71). For

example, she discusses the dying soldier John, praised for his masculinity, however

several times the narrator points out his more feminine characteristics. In one

instance, she notes his smile “sweet as any woman’s” (31). In another she discusses

his sensitivity to his close friend, in their final goodbyes as “they kissed each other,

tenderly as women” (35). Also, as she discusses the separation of the rooms where

she visits soldiers, she describes the scene as such:

My ward was now divided into three rooms; and, under favor of the
matron, I had managed to sort out the patients in such a way that I had
what I called, “my duty room,” my “pleasure room,” and my “pathetic
room,” and worked for each in a different way. One, I visited armed
with a dressing tray full of rollers, plasters, and pins; another, with
books, flowers, games, and gossip; a third, with teapots, lullabies,
consolation, and sometimes, a shroud. (26)

The needs and desires of these ailing men are flowers, teapots, and lullabies, things

typically considered to be feminine. In their helplessness, there has been a role

reversal. They are no longer the provider or the emotionally stronger; Nurse
 67

Periwinkle, despite being a woman, must act in this role since they cannot. While her

duties are still often feminine, as seen in this passage, emotionally, there has been a

switch. Someone must take charge, and it seems that it is to be her. Alcott illustrates

this switch in masculine and feminine traits between male and female in Little Women

as well.

While Alcott tends to take a lighter tone in Hospital Sketches, there are

moments where she describes powerful and painful scenes in the hospital. Using the

same method employed by so many of the journal writers of the time, she focuses on

describing the scene rather than interpreting it and appeals emotionally to her

audience. She has little time for political arguments but dedicates much more to

capturing the sorrow of war. In a particularly revealing conversation, the narrator

poses the question to a young soldier whom she describes as having a “strong young

body, so marred and maimed.” She asks, “Is this your first battle, Sergeant?” (20).

He lightheartedly replies:

“No, miss; I’ve been in six scrimmages, and never got a scratch till
this last one; but it’s done the business pretty thoroughly for me, I
should say. Lord! What a scramble ther’ll be for arms and legs, when
we old boys come out of our graves, on the Judgment Day: wonder if
we shall get our own again? If we do, my leg will have to tramp from
Fredericksburg, my arm from here, I suppose, and meet my body,
wherever it might be.” (20)
 68

Coupled with her description of him, even in his jest, the scene speaks to the painful

aspects of war. She then describes the heartache she felt when she walked away from

a different soldier to do her duties, only to come back and find him dead, lamenting

over leaving him alone in his final moments. She describes amputations, slow painful

deaths, and family members learning of the loss of their loved ones. No lighthearted

tone can disguise the gravity of these things. Her readers are not simply told about

the pain and loss experienced in this Civil War hospital, they are invited inside.

There are no political statements about the heartache of war, but Alcott makes her

point nonetheless.

Louisa May Alcott is someone who frequently used fiction writing to distance

herself from her own experiences. In Hospital Sketches, a work that could be argued

as either a memoir or a fictional story, she uses letters written during her time as a

Civil War nurse to tell about exact events, but through a fictional character, one who

very closely mirrors Alcott. Similarly, Jo March in Little Women is a reflection of

Alcott herself, also a writer, and also someone who felt she did not measure up to the

expectations for “womanliness” in her time period. Through Jo, she is able to express

herself and some of her own ideas, most notably with Jo’s strength and resilience

emerging over a more gentle and timid femininity, this mild femininity often the

expectation for women in the pre-Civil War time period. She uses Jo to illustrate how

this view of womanhood is changed by the Civil War.

Alcott was one of many who used fictional works to illustrate points much

more powerfully demonstrated than discussed through rhetoric. While diarists rely on

their own emotional response to moments to interpret events and rhetoricians often
 69

take a more logical approach, fiction writers often combine the two. They create

scenarios that cause the reader to come to these conclusions on their own. While one

of her most notable Civil War works is her fiction and memoir hybrid, Hospital

Sketches, it is difficult to overlook the impact of Louisa May Alcott’s most famous

work in any genre, Little Women, written in 1868. In this novel, the Civil War itself

is not spoken of with the detail and intensity that many of the other Civil War works

offer; however, it cannot be overlooked that the War acts as a driving force and even

a catalyst for so many of the important themes in the novel.

The story follows four sisters as they grow up during and after the Civil War

and the impact that it has on them. In the earliest parts of the novel, their father, Mr.

March is away at war, and upon his return he never speaks of these events nor

discusses how they have changed him. In fact, he and his experiences are so one-

dimensional in the novel that he is never given a first name. Similarly, Meg’s

eventual husband Mr. John Brooke is said to have been wounded at war, although to

what extent Alcott never shares; this is discussed only in passing through a quick

recap (Alcott, Little Women 330). Also, their neighbor, young and wealthy Teddy

Lawrence, makes little reference to the fact that he is not at war, despite sharing

secrets and heartfelt conversations with the March girls. He is instead bound for

Harvard and never shares a comparison of himself to the many other young men his

age who are off fighting. In these omissions, it is very clear that Alcott does not want

the men in her novel to be main characters, and that she does not want their Civil War

experiences to overshadow the events that take place in the March home. The

vantage point of the Civil War is the March girls: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy; the fact
 70

that they would not have war stories to share keeps it from being a frequent topic of

conversation. Still, despite so few actual references, the Civil War is a main

character.

Acting as the backdrop for the novel, it is unmistakably present; it is the

elephant in the living room. The world of the March family is shaped by it and their

attitudes changed by it. Feminist writer Judith Fetterley notes:

Yet clearly both anger and political perception are present in Little
Women, and, not surprisingly, there is evidence within Little Women
of Alcott's ambivalence toward her true style. Little Women takes
place during the Civil War and the first of Jo's many burdens on her
pilgrim's progress toward little womanhood is her resentment at not
being at the scene of action. Later, however, she reflects that "keeping
her temper at home was a much harder task than facing a rebel or two
down South" (p. 19). (Fetterley 370)

In fact, this foundation of the impact of the war on the March family is laid even

from the opening scene where Mrs. March shares a letter sent from the girls’ father

who is, at this point, away at war. In his letter, Father sends love and encouragement

to his wife and young daughters, with the closing words:

“A year seems very long to wait before I see them, but remind them
that while we wait we may all work, so that these hard days need not
be wasted. I know they will remember all I said to them, that they will
be loving children to you, will do their duty faithfully, fight their
bosom enemies bravely, and conquer themselves so beautifully that
when I come back to them I may be fonder and prouder than ever of
my little women.” (Alcott, Little Women 12)

It is their father’s words that bring the girls to tears and each offering their promises

to do their duty at their home. Words like “duty” (13) are powerful ones and offer

imagery of soldiering. Before the first chapter has ended, Alcott has presented this as

a major theme in her novel. The girls must adapt, and grow up, given the new Civil
 71

War world in which they have been thrust. New things will be required of them; they

must be brave and fight their own battles, not on the battlefield, but from their home.

Their father notes in his letter the added responsibility on the girls and on their

mother, true to the idea of new societal roles in a world that is changing for women.

Jo, on whom the novel is most often focused, notes her added duty with Father gone,

“I’m the man of the family now Papa is away, and I shall provide the slippers for he

told me to take special care of Mother while he was gone” (6). Later, when their

father is hospitalized and their mother goes to be with him, Jo and her sisters see their

wartime duty as being mature and responsible in her absence. Not only do they rise

to the occasion, but it also leads Jo to give her hair in order to financially support the

family. It is a symbolic amputation and an act of duty, much like the soldiers at war.

In his absence, they must adapt and fill new roles; irresponsibility is no longer an

option given a war that requires more of them. Each girl is required to change in

some way. Jo and Meg both go to work to help support the family in the absence of

their father and the family’s recent poverty. Beth is expected to help around the

house. Amy is expected to stay out of trouble at school.

The girls are urged to become “little women” (13), or rather to grow up, given

the changes in their world. The irony in this idea of “little women” is that what is

truly required of them is that they become stronger and braver, not at all what their

society would associate with womanhood. In this way, the novel illustrates a society

that has one expectation for women and requires another for survival, or one that has

not yet adapted to the changing idea of womanhood brought about by the Civil War.

Alcott notes the self-sacrifice in womanhood, having each girl “conquer” herself (12),
 72

however Alcott ultimately illustrates that self-sacrifice does not mean a timid and frail

version of womanhood. On the contrary, it requires strength. It is ironic that Alcott

chose to call her book Little Women when so much of the book is focused on the girls

learning how to take on characteristics that had previously been associated with men.

The most obvious example is that frail and gentle Beth, who is the most

womanly by their society’s standards, does not survive the novel. Her death by

scarlet fever seems symbolic when it is strong and confident Jo, often criticized for

opposite traits, who thrives by the novel’s end, achieving her dreams. It seems to be

by no mistake that Alcott makes Jo and Beth confidants despite being drastically

different. It places them side-by-side for comparison. This contrast is made early on

in the novel as Jo describes herself:

“It’s bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boy’s games and
work and manners! I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a
boy. And it’s worse than ever now, for I’m dying to go and fight with
Papa. And I can only stay home and knit, like a poky old woman!”
(Alcott 3).

Jo is criticized and told that she must be more “womanly” (3) while Beth is most

considered to be ideal in their society, quiet, yielding, and sacrificial. Quite the

opposite of her sister, Beth is described as having a “shy manner, a timid voice, and a

peaceful expression which was seldom disturbed” (5). Beth is pensive and afraid,

often hiding in the March home to avoid things that scare her. Yet these “negative”

traits that Jo exhibits: being outspoken, stubborn, and taking on roles that are

considered unwomanly, are ultimately her means to thriving as she achieves many of

her goals in her writing and career, whereas Beth’s frailty ultimately causes her

demise.
 73

Alcott makes her commentary on Beth and her gentle quiet character in

another way; while unruly Jo is so often the focus, this is rarely the case for Beth.

Despite the praise of her character, Beth is rarely at the center of any scene; while she

is often in a room, she is rarely at the center of the action. Moreover, the narrator

seems to have no access to her thoughts. Where the thoughts in the minds of Meg, Jo,

and even young Amy are shared, Beth rarely has her own vantage point. Still, despite

the fact that Beth March is not often a main character, this does not make her an

unimportant one. In fact, even after her death, her absence is frequently noted at the

piano and in front of the fire, places that were once her favorites. Alcott makes it

apparent that while Beth so frequently faded into the backdrop, she was an important

part of their world and her continuing impact must be noted. In fact, she might be the

most important character in understanding Alcott’s commentary on women.

In every situation, she acts as the voice of virtue and kindness, a conscience of

sorts to her sisters and an unwavering support to her family even at a sacrifice to

herself. In contrast, Jo is chastised for her temper and harsh words. While Jo

marches boldly to the Lawrence home to introduce herself, it takes Beth weeks to

gather the courage to visit, despite the invitation and lure of a beautiful piano.

Moreover, where Jo is a fighter and rarely sits back to simply let life happen to her,

Beth fights for nothing, including her own life. In her final days, she shares with Jo

that, even when she was young, she never truly expected to live to see adulthood.

She tells Jo, “I have a feeling that it was never intended I should live long. I’m not

like the rest of you. I never made any plans about what I’d do when I grew up.”

When Beth shares the news that she is dying, Jo immediately begins a fight, “’God
 74

won’t be so cruel as to take you from me,’ cried poor Jo rebelliously, for her spirit

was far less piously submissive than Beth’s” (353). While there are many places

where the differences between Jo and Beth are noted, none is quite so illuminating as

this contrast. While Alcott is almost critical in her interpretation of Jo’s fight to keep

Beth alive, ultimately it is Beth’s refusal to fight that is her commentary. In the death

of Beth March, Alcott illustrates the dying off of the antebellum view of women.

With the Civil War came new roles and ideas about womanhood. In a post-Civil War

world, Beth March’s sacrificial and timid womanhood simply cannot survive. Still, if

it seems that Alcott does not value it, this is certainly not the case.

Alcott fights to keep Beth alive after her death, not only in noting her absence

but also in the way that Jo takes on the best characteristics of her lost sister. The

author is intentional about this, and points it out with such zeal that it cannot be

overlooked. In the final scene between the two sisters, Beth stumbles upon a poem

written by Jo that talks about Beth’s influence over her:

O my sister passing from me,

Out of human care and strife,
Leave me, as a gift, those virtues
Which have beautified your life
Dear, bequeath me that great patience
Which has power to sustain
A cheerful, uncomplaining spirit
In its prison-house of pain.

Give me, for I need it sorely,

Of that courage, wise and sweet,
Which has made the path of duty
Green beneath your willing feet.
Give me that unselfish nature,
That with charity divine
Can pardon wrong for love’s dear sake –
Meek heart, forgive me mine! (329)
 75

Upon reading it, Beth then begs Jo to take her place, to which Jo “renounced her old

ambition, pledged herself to a new and better one, acknowledging the poverty of

other desires, and feeling the blessed solace of a belief in the immortality of love”

(329). In this symbolic moment, Jo begins to take on the characteristics of her sister.

She harnesses her drive and passion, and combines them with selflessness and

gentleness, and through this, Jo finds success. In Alcott’s post Civil War world,

meekness and self-sacrifice alone can no longer survive. In combining the best of her

sister and herself, we see a Jo March who embodies the new post-Civil War

womanhood. She is strong and brave, but also kind, gracious, and selfless. If there is

an ideal of womanhood in this changing society proposed by Alcott, this is it.

Through Jo’s strength and resilience, she finds publishing opportunities for

herself and makes her own way in the world. Still, after this moment, she does not do

so without a sense of morality, giving up a well-paying writing job when she decides

that her stories are inappropriate and becomes ashamed. This event is especially

notable because years earlier, Jo published a similar work with little shame, also for

financial gain. These contrasting events prove that Jo has grown up and adapted. She

has proven that women can be resourceful and strong and also do so with goodness as

their guide.

While many accepted the inevitable change that came with war, specifically

for the women who were pushed into new roles, new attitudes, and new ideas, like

any change, many others were slow to accept it. This struggle between old and new

values echoes throughout Alcott’s work, along with the question of how womanhood

should ultimately look. Despite the fact that many characters claim that this gentle
 76

womanhood is ideal, this is contradicted many times over, especially in Beth’s

demise.

Beth is not the only March sister to whom Jo is frequently compared.

Youngest sister Amy March and Jo offer an interesting contrast in their conflicting

ideas about womanhood in the post Civil War era. When Amy is young she shares

her desire to be wealthy and notes her biggest hardship in life is going to school with

girls who laugh at her dresses and tease her because her father is no longer wealthy

(2). Similarly, her nose, not quite prominent and “aristocratic”(56) enough, is what

she describes as her greatest trial in life (56). It is Jo who reprimands her for such

shallow ideas. While Jo has little concern for social conventions, illustrated later

when the two travel together to make social calls and Jo embarrasses her younger

sister, Amy considers them of the upmost importance. The side-by-side comparison

of the characters takes place in several different ways throughout the novel, and

through this, Alcott offers a commentary on the ambition of women.

The career ambitions of both girls are an ongoing comparison given the fact

that they are both artists, Jo a writer and Amy one who paints and draws, both with

work praised by many. Early in the novel, Amy symbolically rips up a manuscript of

Jo’s on which she had spent countless hours and throws it into the fire. It is obvious

that Amy gives little value to the toil and importance of her sister’s hard work. It is

interesting that it is Amy who does this, given the fact that she, too, is an artist. Of all

of the sisters, Amy might be the one to most understand her sister’s dreams.

However, in this act, it becomes apparent that Amy does not. It is Mrs. March who

“brought Amy to a sense of wrong” (105), as Alcott highlights that it must be

 77

explained to Amy why her actions were so horrific. From this, Alcott illustrates that

despite her position as a fellow artist, her own goals are centered on marriage and

position, with her art being merely an afterthought. Jo’s aspirations are quite the

opposite.

A momentous tie between the two is in their relationship with neighbor

Theodore “Teddy” Lawrence, wealthy, esteemed, and educated, who falls in love

with Jo but is scorned and marries Amy instead. They are both women whom Teddy

credits with changing him for the better. In denying him, Jo gives up position and

wealth and later marries someone who allows her to continue to follow her passions

of writing and starting a home for boys. Amy does chose to marry Teddy and

embraces the wealth and status that comes with that, notable through the fact that

shortly after their wedding, she begins calling him “my lord” and begins referring to

herself as “my ladyship” (323). Amy embraces many of the antebellum ideas about

women as her aspirations are ultimately to be an affluent wife. It is implied, although

not said specifically, that in this marriage, she gives up her art career. In marrying

Teddy, she leaves France, where she had gone to further her vocational opportunities,

and instead returns to New England to make a home with her new husband, leaving

those aspirations behind. Moreover, in the final scene, as she discusses having her

dreams fulfilled and obtaining her “castle in the sky” while Jo specifically notes her

continued dreams of “artistic hopes,” Amy does not (354).

The irony is that Amy is offered culture, refinement, and the opportunity to

pursue her artistic aspirations at Jo’s expense. After years of catering to her

incorrigible Aunt with the promise of studying abroad, the trip is instead given to
 78

Amy to expand her artistic opportunities and be introduced to society. As both of her

Aunts choose Amy in her stead, they also make the choice as to whether the artistic

aspirations of the girls or the importance of them becoming more schooled in societal

conventions is most important. If the only concern was for their art, Jo would have

been chosen as the one who was most committed to it. These links seem anything but

accidental. Stephanie Foote notes:

Jo, scorning social convention, and Amy, happily enslaved by it, are at
odds for nearly the entire first half of the novel. But while the narrator
generally (although, as we have seen, not always) generates sympathy
for Jo at the expense of Amy during their many contretemps in the first
half of the novel, the second half tells a different story by privileging
Amy, often at Jo’s expense. (Foote 74)

This gift draws attention to another stark contrast between the two sisters. While

Amy believes that things in life will be given to her and is hardly surprised when this

happens, Jo expects to have to work for them. The scene where Jo discovers that

Amy has been selected for the trip in her stead illustrates the attitudes of the two

sisters about working to achieve their goals. Amy expresses “joy” (Alcott, Little

Women 229) but not shock at the revelation that she has been given this opportunity

to study abroad. And while she halfheartedly notes that she is going with career

aspirations, she “made a wry face” (l229) at the idea of supporting herself. When Jo

challenges her, saying, “No you won’t. You hate hard work, and you’ll marry some

rich man and come home to sit in the lap of luxury all your days” (230), Amy agrees

that her hope is that she will not continue with her career aspirations and that

eventually, she hopes, a man will support her.

The novel’s outcome is exactly this, she marries Laurie and he makes her

wealthy. Where Jo has been gifted very little and Amy so much, Jo assumes that if
 79

she is ever to find success, it will be because of her hard work. Amy, who has been

gifted much, assumes it will come because she will find a man to give it to her. Even

when Jo finally inherits her Aunt’s large and beautiful estate, she does not choose to

simply live in it and be idle. Instead she chooses to start a home for boys. While

both sisters choose an altruistic path, Jo’s includes hard work in the form of a

partnership with her husband. Amy’s includes using her husband’s wealth, without

helping to provide it, to offer her generosity to the world. In this dichotomy, Alcott

presents the changing mindset of women during the Civil War, with Amy as the old

and Jo as the new. Where once women were expected to be passive in receiving their

role in society, the Civil War empowered women and gave them a control of their

own fate.

Alcott also turns the relationship between men and women upside down with

the relationship between Jo and Teddy and later Amy and Teddy. In a society where

women often expected men to take care of them, both of these sisters act as a

caretaker for Teddy Lawrence, whom Jo often calls “my boy,” (252) a title which

might seem almost degrading to bestow upon a grown man, but instead Teddy seems

to embrace it and Jo herself. She is not kind nor gentle in her criticisms of him, but

often harsh and blunt, a trait that was considered to be most unladylike. Similarly, he

is uninterested in Amy until she offers similar harshness with him. However, with

this, he flourishes and, in this admonishment, finds affection for Amy. Until he meets

the March girls, Teddy is miserable and lost. Their friendship brings him to life

again. What Alcott has done is radical for the time period. In her novel, the men are

defined by the women.

 80

She offers this role reversal again in the characters of Mr. March, John

Brooke, and Professor Baher. These men are never offered a voice. While the

narrator does seem to have insight into the thoughts of Teddy Lawrence on very rare

occasion, for these other three male characters, this is never the case. However

important they may be to the story and understanding Alcott’s intentions, they are not

main characters and they are not the focus. The allegory of this is interesting, as

Alcott essentially did to her novel what the Civil War did to society. She placed the

men in the background of their home lives, and watched the women adapt and

compensate without them.

Alcott’s two most popular Civil War works are similar, yet her one major

variation is her use of the Civil War itself. While Little Women manages to be an

entire novel about the impact of the Civil War with very little mention of it, in

Hospital Sketches war is everywhere. However, this is where the major differences

end. Alcott did something radical; she wrote Civil War novels without featuring men.

Instead she wrote about heartbreak, love, and duty, and offers shining examples of the

changes for women brought about by the Civil War all while turning the

predetermined gender roles upside down. Where society’s ideal men where strong

and confident, Alcott’s were meek and in need of help from women. Where society’s

ideal women were helpless and mild, Alcott’s were strong and duty-driven. Through

the experiences of Jo March and Tribulation Periwinkle, Alcott does not simply note

the changing roles of Civil War era women. Louisa May Alcott takes her arguments

a step further; through her emotionally charged and descriptive works, she invites

readers inside, and allows them to watch strong and powerful women experience it.
 81

Post-Civil War Literature: Looking Back vs. Looking Forward

In the years and decades that followed the Civil War, discussion of it became

a topic of more and more rarity in Northern literature. If Northern literature is any

indication of Reconstruction and the years that followed, the North had returned to

peace and harmony. However, in the South, this was not the case. There had been too

much damage, too much heartache, and too much anger. While the majority of

Northern writers fell silent, the Southerners were perhaps at their loudest.

Some of the most powerful Civil War literature was released during this time

period, decades after the War’s end but in a South that had yet to return to normalcy.

It was a genre, primarily by Southern writers, that had one common theme, dubbed by

writer Fred Hobson in 1943 as “the rage to explain” (3). Its writers were children and

grandchildren of the war and living in a post-Reconstruction South still wrought with

confusion, doubt, and questions not only about the past but about what the South

might look like going forward. They felt the need to sort through their history and

explain it to those who might not understand. Hobson further characterizes this genre

as such:

What we have in the South in the last few decades is nothing short of a
new literary mode, a subgenre as it were; a Southern confessional
literature has grown up and is firmly established in the twentieth
century, a particular kind of literature not seen in any other American
 82

region since perhaps New England in its colonial days. (16)

He notes how this type of confessional literature almost became a rite of passage for

Southern writers. It was simply something they did upon reaching a certain plateau in

their writing, whether advocating for or against the decisions of the South. However,

the binding factor in all of these instances is that the Southern writer “felt driven to

answer the accusations and misstatements of outsiders” (3-4). In the years and

decades that followed the war, these writers felt the need to share their side of the

story.

Civil Rights activist Lillian Eugenia Smith was born in 1897 in Florida but

spent her youth and most of her 20’s in Georgia (Gladney 8). Her Southern

childhood contributed heavily to her writing. In Killers of the Dream, a first-hand

narrative about the lasting impact of slavery and racial tension in the South as felt

throughout her childhood, Smith describes it as follows:

The haunted childhood belongs to every southerner of my age…. We

who were born in the South called this mesh of feeling and memory
“loyalty.” We thought of it sometimes as “love.” We identified with
the South’s trouble as if we, individually, were responsible for all of it.
We defended the sins and sorrows of three hundred years as if each sin
had been committed by us alone and each sorrow had cut across our
heart. We were just as hurt at criticism of our region as if our own
name had been called aloud by the critic. We knew guilt without
understanding it, and there is no tie that binds men closer to the past
and each other than that. (25-26)

Fred Hobson also addresses this same idea in Tell About the South: The Southern

Rage to Explain:

A constant assault from without, an indictment of every aspect of their

civilization, was the burden under which Southerners lived for more
than a century (as if defeat and poverty and failure were not enough),
and it is little wonder that such a legacy created men and women who
sought to justify their past and their tradition. But the siege from
 83

without was not all, was not even the principal factor in turning the
Southern mind upon itself. Even greater was the pressure from within
– the doubt honest Southerners had about themselves and their own
past – for the burden of Southern history was a burden primarily self-
imposed. (10)

This confusion and doubt weighed heavily on Southerners, even decades after the

War’s end. It is no surprise that a number of the Civil War’s most famous works

came out of this time of confusion.

While Smith’s focus is primarily on equality and repealing Jim Crow laws,

her Southern upbringing in this volatile time period is a repeated theme in both

Killers of the Dream and her critically acclaimed Strange Fruit, the story of a

Southern white man who falls in love with an African American woman. Smith

frequently returns to her Southern childhood, discussing the confusion she felt and

unsettled feeling that permeated the South. Her style is deeply personal as she shares

memories of her childhood that have created the foundations for her conclusions. In

Killers of the Dream, she shares the story of a light-skinned girl who lived with them

briefly before being turned out by Smith’s parents when they discovered that the girl

was black. She expresses her confusion through a child’s eyes in not understanding

why a little girl who had slept in her room was unworthy to do so and whether she

should feel guilty for having shared a room with a “colored girl” (Smith 38). She

shares:

And slowly, it began to seep through me: I was white. She was
colored. We must not be together. It was bad to be together. Though
you ate with your nurse when you were little, it was bad to eat with
any colored person after that. It was bad just as other things were bad
that your mother had told you. It was bad that she was to sleep in the
room with me that night. It was bad…
I was overcome with guilt. For three weeks I had done things
that white children were not supposed to do. And now I knew these
 84

things had been wrong. (38)

These are the stories that make her work such an important part of

understanding the South. There is a confessional quality in her writing and she

captures the confusion that she felt during her childhood about race, religion, and the

South. She discusses the mixed messages about race that dominated those years,

specifically in the church where she would listen to lessons about equality and

kindness, complete with confirmation from her pious parents, only to leave the

building and see an entire race of people who were treated as lesser. She also offered

open criticism of Southern tradition with an anecdote of a play where actors

pretending to be Southern tradition stand in the way of the main character’s forward

march.

Much like the other Southern writers, Smith offers many explanations for

slavery and the South’s role in the Civil War. She shames both sides for their greed

and stubbornness. She also blames guilt for the South’s inability to change:

Hypocrisy, greed, self-righteousness, defensiveness, twisted in men’s

minds. The South grew more sensitive to criticism, more defensive
and dishonest in its thinking. For deep down in their hearts,
southerners knew they were wrong. They knew it in slavery just as
they later knew that sharecropping was wrong, and as they know today
that segregation is wrong. It was not only the North’s criticism that
made them defensive, it was their own conscience. (61)

Smith suggests shame as the culprit responsible for the South’s refusal to embrace

equal rights: according to her, it was easier for the South to continue to justify

slavery rather than note their part in any wrongdoing. Instead, they grasp tightly to

inequality. She offers her blame to both sides but also discusses her justification for

it:
 85

And that is what you find so hard to understand. And I too have found
it hard. We need to remember the chaos, the confusion, the hurt
feelings, the poverty. The church, which might have been a guiding
principle throughout this bleak and terrifying time, had made so grave
a compromise with Christian belief on the issue of slavery that is
leaders, still defensive and guilty, were hardly in a position to give
moral guidance. So, a kind of gentleman’s agreement came about that
a state of emergency existed within the areas of race and money and
politics which necessitated a suspension of morals in these fields.
Preachers, politicians, judges, planters, factory owners, and plain
working folks agreed. People did not confess it aloud. (66)

This theme of justification is one that seems to permeate Southern literature

after the War, written by both men and women. Male authors Wilbur Cash, George

Fitzhugh, Ben Robertson, and Howard Odum had discussed this idea in one form or

another. One of the most famous statements was made by Cash, and summarized here

by author Fred Hobson:

In its secret heart [it] always carried a powerful and uneasy sense of
the essential rightness of the nineteenth century’s position on
slavery… The Old South, in short, was a society beset by the specters
of defeat, of shame, of guilt” (p. 63). Because the Southerner
“secretly” believed slavery to be wrong, he had adopted “defense
mechanisms” to hide the truth from himself. He had justified slavery
as beneficial to Negroes because it “civilized” and Christianized them.
He justified it by reasoning that an omnipotent God had predestined
it… He also told himself that he was noble, chivalrous, and kind, and
that the Yankee, particularly the critic of slavery was “low-bred, crass,
and money-grubbing.” (64)

Smith suggests that there are many different ways that people deal with this guilt. For

herself, it may have been the penning of Killers of the Dream itself, a medium

through which she made sense of and sorted out the turmoil and confusion of her

childhood. In these soul-baring and honest anecdotes of self-rhetoric, she finds

understanding and makes peace with the world of her childhood. She would later call

this an act of “redemption” (Hobson 308).

 86

Smith received ample criticism and even threats coming from her fellow

Southerners upon publishing Killers of the Dream. She was the aim of arsonists in

the early 1960’s and was often omitted from distinction as a Southern writer during

her lifetime (307-309). She was one of the earliest Southern women to speak openly

about the evils of segregation. She noted that she felt that this was because women

themselves had been such a segregated group in the South that “we have grown to

love our chains” and pointed out the white male’s oppression of both groups (Hobson

311). Lillian Smith linked racism and sexism and was one of the first to do so.

In a contrast, Margaret Mitchell author of Gone With the Wind, discusses the

idea of Southern tradition in her work but rather writes from a place of nostalgia and

explanation. Where Smith offers a plea to her readers for a forward thinking

America, Mitchell paints a beautiful fairy tale South that was better left alone. It is a

slow place where men are gentlemen and women are ladies. Things are beautiful and

people are filled with hope. Her novel highlights the toll that the war took on this

wonderland that she offers, leaving it in ruins. Notably, hard-hitting Lillian Smith

once called Gone With the Wind a “curious puffball of a book” (Hobson 310).

In many ways, the two works are surprisingly similar. At the core of their

work are two women attempting to explain the Southern history that took place

before them and make sense of the guilt and confusion of their own childhood.

Margaret Mitchell was also a fellow Georgian (Conroy 5), making that “haunted

childhood” (Smith 25) described by Smith one that the two would have likely shared.

While it led Smith to a lifelong fight for equality, it sent Mitchell the opposite

direction, in a fight to remember the days of the past. The greatest theme of her work
 87

is one of nostalgia. The major difference is that Mitchell offers no caveat for the

future and no charge to her fellow man. It is rather an indictment on the North for its

role in destroying the South. Lillian Smith echoes this charge but also holds the

South accountable for their role in it and urges a move forward, past the days of

segregation. Yet, both women have a story to tell, a push to explain their vantage

point and perspective of a Southern childhood that not everyone could understand.

Gone With the Wind opens on Tara, the plantation owned by Gerald O’Hara,

described in its splendor with “gleaming brightness the dogwood trees that were solid

masses of white blossoms against the background of new green” (Mitchell 3). It is in

this peaceful and vibrant scene where Mitchell introduces the story’s heroine,

pampered and flirtatious Scarlett O’Hara. In this scene she is a girl, toying with the

emotions of the Tarleton brothers, whom will shortly be lost at war. So too will be

lost the beautiful scene painted by Mitchell, of a green, vibrant, and healthy Tara,

which will also be decimated as the Union troops pass through. Each detail of this

introduction is carefully painted, from Scarlett’s expensive morocco slippers to her

cheerful dismissal of their talk of war. Mitchell constructs this happy scene so well,

down to the very detail, and offers it as a point of reference for the damage to come.

As the title Gone With the Wind suggests, the novel is a look backwards, a

reminiscing, and she wants to take her reader along as well.

The story walks with Scarlett through the Civil War, from the moment that

news reaches them that war has broken out to the devastating years of Reconstruction.

For Scarlett, this includes the death of two husbands and a child, the near destruction

of her childhood home, a narrow escape from Atlanta with bombs going off around
 88

her, and a business venture designed to save her home and support the object of her

desire, the married Ashley Wilkes. Romance is central to the novel, with Scarlett

twice married to men whom she does not love, once out of anger and once to escape a

financial crisis, before marrying the book’s other most prominent character, Rhett

Butler. In this Civil War world and the chaos it creates, she wrestles with her role as

a woman and the idea of Southern tradition, something that seems to be important to

most of the people around her.

The Civil War plays a main character in this story, with bombs exploding in

Atlanta while Scarlett escorts a frail Melanie Wilkes and her hours-old child out of

town, while their lives hang in the balance. It is present all the time, even when the

cannons are firing hundreds of miles away. Once wealthy and thriving, the O’Haras

fight to keep their plantation while once pampered Scarlett is reduced to raking and

tilling until her hands are calloused to save her childhood home. Heartwarming

scenes between slave and owner transpire and tears are shed as kind Confederate boys

are declared lost at war. Businesses struggle to stay afloat with Federal presence

palpable in the Reconstruction South. Margaret Mitchell does not ask for her readers

to sympathize with the plight of the Confederate woman during the Civil War; she

makes them feel it.

Mitchell reminisces for the uncomplicated days before the war and paints a

picture of happy slaves gently loved and cared for by compassionate owners. She

discusses the beauty of Tara and the wonderful people of the South, almost like a

fairytale. However, it should be noted that while nostalgia is prevalent on every page

of Mitchell’s novel, there is also an undercurrent of something else entirely. It seems

 89

that in many ways, Mitchell herself is torn as to whether or not the changes were

good or bad. She frequently contradicts herself and shows evidence, like many of the

other female Civil War writers, of a self-rhetoric, using her writing to sort out her

own sometimes contradictory thoughts.

While a recurring theme in women’s writing of the Civil War is the idea of the

change in women during this time period, Mitchell seems to be indecisive about

whether or not the change in Scarlett is positive. Like Alcott’s Jo March and Sarah

Morgan, Scarlett offers a direct contradiction to accepted gender norms of her time

period, even before the Civil War. Even in her earliest scenes, Scarlett asserts control

of the men around her, allowing them to compete for her attention and cater to her.

When she tells the Tarleton twins that she does not want to talk about the war

anymore, she uses the guise of her femininity for her reasoning, when ultimately her

motives are much more self-centered. However, at this early interval, Scarlett seems

to believe that despite the fact that she is capable of leadership and intellect, as a

woman, these are traits she should not display. She cries to Mammy, her nursemaid:

“I’m tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I

want to do. I’m tired of acting like I don’t eat more than a bird, and
walking when I want to run and saying I feel faint after waltz, when I
could dance for two days and never get tired. I’m tired of saying
‘How wonderful you are!’ to fool men who haven’t got one-half the
sense I’ve got, and I’m tired of pretending I don’t know anything, so
men can tell me things and feel important while they’re doing it.”
(Mitchell 78-79)

While she is already showing traits in conflict with traditional mild and meek

womanhood, like Melanie Wilkes, the wife of Scarlett’s love interest, she seems to

understand that these unwomanly traits are unacceptable to share. For Scarlett, a

sense of significance does not come about as a result of the Civil War. Instead of a
 90

masculinized Scarlett because of the changes brought about by the Civil War, the

Civil War simply gives Scarlett permission to be who she has always been.

This is one way that Mitchell seems to contradict herself. If things were better

before the Civil War, then the seemingly flighty, directionless, and helpless Scarlett is

ideal. The smarter, less helpless Scarlett is the one who is unacceptable to Mitchell.

However, if this is true, then the wealth that she accumulates by her savvy and hard

work, something a Southern woman would never be required to do, is useless. Yet

her breach of Southern tradition is ultimately her means of survival.

While Scarlett allows herself these masculine traits, many of the men of Gone

with the Wind seem to err on the side of femininity. The language that Mitchell uses

to describe them is feminine, especially in the case of Scarlett’s first two husbands.

Even as she is deciding that she will accept his proposal, Scarlett describes Charles

Hamilton as “a pretty, flushed boy” (125) and Frank Kennedy gets little better

treatment, as she calls him “an old maid in britches” (95). Gerald O’Hara has little

better to say about his future son-in-law, noting: “Frank Kennedy still pussyfoots

about, afraid of his shadow…” (202). While Charles Hamilton has little chance to

allow Scarlett to control their marriage before he meets his end, his skittish behavior

around her even before the two are engaged indicates that he would have likely had

little ability to stand up to her. Frank Kennedy spends several years married to her

before his death and during that time Scarlett disgraces him by taking control of his

store and simultaneously running a businesses on her own with no input from him and

little concern for his approval. The narrator notes that Frank had noticed “so long as

she had her own way, life could be very pleasant” (617). For Scarlett, what were
 91

once quiet manipulations become blatant and visible control of everything around her.

If the strength gathered through the War has changed her perception at all, it is that

she no longer has to disguise the assertion of her will.

If there is a character in which Mitchell seems to exemplify the changing

gender roles between males and females as a result of the war, it is in the love interest

of Scarlett O’Hara, Ashley Wilkes. While Gone With the Wind aims to make people

long for the South of old, gentlemanly Ashley Wilkes, a product of this old South, is

unable to fend for himself when the South is destroyed. He returns from war useless.

He is unwilling to work and more importantly, does not know how. For this, he is

depicted as feeble and weak, and the fact that he is willing to let Scarlett take care of

his family is by no means an asset to his character or considered manly. Rhett Butler

notes of him:

“I pity him because he ought to be dead and he isn’t. And I

have contempt for him because he doesn’t know what to do with
himself now that his world is gone…
It isn’t losing their money, my pet. I tell you it’s losing their
world – the world they were raised in. They’re like fish out of water
or cats with wings. They were raised to be certain persons, to do
certain things, to occupy certain niches. And those persons and things
disappeared forever when General Lee arrived at Appomattox. Oh,
Scarlett, don’t look so stupid! What is there for Ashley Wilkes to do,
now that his home is gone and his plantation taken up for taxes and
fine gentlemen are going twenty for a penny? Can he work with his
head or his hands?” (769-771).

Rhett points out the irony in Mitchell’s nod to Southern tradition, with Ashley Wilkes

as an example of someone clinging to it who looks foolish doing so. While Scarlett’s

vision of a life with Ashley Wilkes in the earliest pages of the novel include living at

his plantation and being cared for, ultimately it is he who lives at her plantation and

accepts her charity. Even the gender-neutral name Ashley alludes to him being
 92

stripped of his claims of manhood. Elizabeth Young notes the use of language to

describe Ashley, in this case by Gerald O’Hara:

“He’s not queer like the Calverts who’d gamble everything they have
on a horse, or the Tarletons who turn out a drunkard or two in every
litter, or the Fontaines who are hot-headed little brutes and after
murdering a man for a fancied slight. That kind of queerness is easy to
understand for sure, and but by the grace of God Gerald O’Hara would
be having all those faults! And I don’t mean that Ashley would run off
with another woman, if you were his wife, or beat you. You’d be
happier if he did, for at least you’d be understanding that. But he’s
queer in other ways, and there’s no understanding him. ….Now, Puss,
tell me true, do you understand his folderol about books and poetry
and music and oil paintings and such foolishness?” (Mitchell 34)

Young adds that the term “queer” had already become associated with homosexuality

by the time Mitchell wrote Gone With the Wind, and could very easily be the allusion

made here. She goes on to add, “the truly feminine figure in Gone With the Wind is

not Scarlett O’Hara but Ashley Wilkes. Ashley may be ‘a young girl’s dream of the

Perfect Knight’ (213), but he is more like a young girl himself, and his gentility and

decorum qualify him far more fully than Scarlett for the role of Southern lady” (252).

Given Mitchell’s aim, it is surprising that Ashley Wilkes, the holdout of the

Southern gentlemen who refuses to compromise tradition to support his family, is

looked upon so unfavorably. The fact that Scarlett, with the help of Rhett, must

support him is an interesting choice by Mitchell. In the South of old, a woman must

never support a man. This makes them both people who have broken the rules of

Southern tradition. Rhett has used the War to make money and does business with

carpetbaggers and Union soldiers, both deplorable actions by Southern standards.

Meanwhile, Ashley has maintained his superiority in not lowering his standards to do

these things, but has also benefited from Scarlett and Rhett’s disregard of Southern
 93

tradition. While at the end of the novel, both Scarlett and Rhett decide that Southern

tradition is best, it is important to note that neither of they, nor Ashley and his family,

would have a home or food if Scarlett and Rhett had not chosen to ignore the rules of

this heralded Southern tradition.

Placing Ashley Wilkes and Rhett Butler side by side is an example of the

complexities in Mitchell’s writing. Rhett is sometimes a hero and sometimes a

deplorable character, as an early blockade runner, supplying the Southerners with

goods they cannot otherwise acquire and later profiting from the War and fraternizing

with carpetbaggers. Yet, Rhett, the scoundrel who betrays the South is shown as

likeable, despite his downfalls. Ashley Wilkes, the Southern gentleman, is, in the

words of Rhett Butler, “pityable” (769). In these two, she presents an interesting take

on the profiteers and carpetbaggers who came South following the war. While they

were considered the biggest scoundrels of the South in the post-war years, Mitchell

also quietly criticizes the Southern holdouts who would rather starve than do business

with any of them. Her message seems to be one of sentimentality, but it negates itself

in the fact that those who clung to Southern tradition are still starving in her novel,

save the few for whom Scarlett provides. Again we see a Mitchell who is justifying,

in this case, both sides of the issue.

Much like many female authors of the time period, Mitchell wrestles with the

idea of womanhood. As with Alcott’s Beth March, similarly feminine Melanie

Wilkes does not survive Gone With the Wind. While mild and kind Melanie and

Scarlett O’Hara are placed side by side for comparison at many intervals in Mitchell’s

work, a repeated comparison of the two is in motherhood, for which Melanie longs.
 94

Meanwhile, Scarlett has little interest in her children, with her son Wade rarely being

an object of notice and Rhett being the more affectionate parent when their daughter,

Bonnie is born. Scarlett says of Wade that she was “annoyed by the child’s presence”

(292) and that “sometimes she actually forgot, for long stretches, that she had a child”

(317). Again, Mitchell blurs the lines between male and females through

motherhood, something for which Scarlett has little time and appears to be more

masculine in her approach. Yet, it is childbirth that ultimately kills gentle Melanie.

Again, we see a traditional feminine woman who does not survive.

Choosing Scarlett O’Hara, the shallow and wealthy child of a plantation

owner as a vehicle for the evolution of women in the Civil War is another interesting

choice for Mitchell. It is possible that the choice was made because through

Scarlett’s priorities, Mitchell illustrates such a drastic change, as she initially laments

over missed parties and the rarity of pretty dresses, yet later fights to support those

whom she loves. Margaret Mitchell uses the callouses on Scarlett’s hands as a

symbol of this, although through Rhett, Margaret Mitchell shames Scarlett for her

willingness to become less ladylike in the face of survival.

“So what have you been doing very nicely at Tara, have you?
Cleared so much money on the cotton you can go visiting. What have
you been doing with your hands – plowing?”
She tried to wrench them away but he held them hard, running
his thumbs over the calluses.
“These are not the hands of a lady,” he said and tossed them in
her lap.” (Mitchell 578-579)

The commentary made by Mitchell is distinctive, but again, it should be noted that

Scarlett’s willingness to get her hands dirty is what saves Tara. Meanwhile the

Wilkes family who are also at Tara accomplish very little there while Scarlett makes
 95

sure that they are fed. If Mitchell’s aim is to shame Scarlett for taking on the qualities

of men, what does it say that she only survives because of it? Moreover, what does it

say that womanly Melanie Wilkes does not survive at all?

What makes these conflicting ideas important is the fact that they illustrate

that Mitchell herself was fighting with these ideas, even years after the War had

ended. There are more similarities between Mitchell and Lillian Smith than there are

differences. They are both offering their sympathy for a history that took place

before them and answer the question “how did this happen?” Both offer justification

and attempt to understand the complexities and societal constraints that led to slavery

and racism rather than simply condemning it and those who favored it. Both also

point out the injustices against the South that so few had dared mention for fear of

sounding sympathetic to the Southern cause at their late point in history. While

Mitchell hardly seems concerned about this, Smith is more apologetic and takes her

plea a step further. In lieu of Mitchell’s nostalgia, Smith urges her readers to use the

past and its lessons moving forward. She pushes them to be better and stronger than

their predecessors who blindly followed societal norms with regards to race without

questioning them and were, too, proven wrong.

Despite the controversial themes, it speaks to the general feeling of the nation

that in 1937 Gone With the Wind was an instant classic and would go on to become a

blockbuster film. Moreover, Mitchell’s novel would hold the title for best selling

paperback novel well into the 1980’s (Gelfant 3). The novel’s popularity in both the

North and the South is surprising, considering the scandalous viewpoints presented by

Mitchell. This is what has made it a source of discussion among critics for decades.
 96

Margaret Mitchell herself admitted to confusion about the book’s popularity.

In an interview with Hershel Brinkner of the New York Post, Mitchell shared:

“Herschel, sometimes, when I have a minute I ponder soberly

upon this book. And ... I can not figure what makes the thing sell so
enormously…
There’s no fine writing… no grandiose thought… no hidden
meanings, no symbolism, nothing sensational…
Reviews and articles come out commending me on having
written such a “powerful document against war” … Lord! I think. I
never intended that! Reviews speak of the symbolism of the
characters… Lord! I never intended that either. Psychiatrists speak of
the “carefully done emotional patterns” … Good Heavens! Can this
be I? People talk and write of the “high moral lesson.” I don’t see
anything very moral in it. I murmur feebly that “it’s just a story”…
just a simple story of some people who went up and some who went
down, those who could take it and those who couldn’t.” (Gelfant 4)

It is possible that the reason for this popularity was exactly the reason that it was

written: it offered an explanation. With the North and South so disconnected during

the war, the majority of information was coming in through a filter of propaganda.

Very little of it was straight from the mouths of those who were impacted by it, and

while diaries and novels would enter the scene in the post-war years, there was still

more to learn. Mitchell’s medium, this heartfelt and emotionally driven narrative,

placed the reader at the scene. While her work is fiction, it is sometimes easy to

forget that Scarlett O’Hara never lived on Peachtree Street nor does the plantation

Tara exist. They feel real, as do the characters, so realistically depicted down to the

emotional detail. The popularity of Mitchell’s work would imply that the North was

just as curious to hear the explanations offered by a Southerner as the Southerners

were in desperate need to share it.

One of the biggest things that Mitchell has been criticized for with regard to

historical accuracy is her idealistic portrayal of slavery. The slaves at Tara are treated
 97

well, and in some cases, are extremely loyal. The O’Haras are equally loyal to them.

While the novel offers no moments of slave abuse, there is one scene that is a cause

for pause if she is attempting to paint slavery in the best light possible. While the

slaves of Tara are treated well, in this high-tension scene, Scarlett is aggressive with

her young slave, Prissy upon catching her in a lie:

“Fo’ Gawd, Miss Scarlett! We’s got ter have a doctah. Ah—
Ah—Miss Scarlett, Ah doan know nuthin ‘bout bringin’ babies. Maw
wouldn’ nebber lemme be ‘round folkses whut was havin’dem.”
All the breath went out of Scarlett’s lungs in one gasp of horror
before rage swept her. Prissy made a lunge past her, bent on flight, but
Scarlett grabbed her.
“You black liar—what do you mean? You’ve been saying you
knew everything about birthing babies. What is the truth? Tell me!”
She shook her until the kinky head rocked drunkenly. (Mitchell 365)

She then goes on to claim that she had “never struck a slave in all her life, but now

she slapped the black cheek with all the force in her tired arm” (366). The question

is, why did Mitchell include this?

It is an interesting addition, with the slow-witted Prissy acting as only a minor

character up until this point. Why include the scene at all if the goal was to paint the

South as blameless? While it could certainly be an accident, the resemblance

between Gone With the Wind’s Prissy seems to actively contradict Stowe’s depictions

of young slave Topsy, also unintelligent and devoid of feminine characteristics.

While Stowe’s Topsy is mistreated for her lack of intellect, Prissy is provided for and

treated well despite the fact that according to Gone With the Wind, she is not at all

useful; moreover, she is a hindrance. The purchase of her is an act of “kindness” (31)

by Gerald O’Hara to keep mother and daughter together, and he notes that John

Wilkes, from whom he purchased Prissy, “was almost giving them away.” Moreover,
 98

Scarlett describes her as “a sly, stupid creature” (31). It seems little accident that the

only example in the entire work of anyone raising a hand to a slave sees Prissy as its

recipient after this disreputable description is offered as an introduction to her

character. She has told a detrimental lie in promising that she knows how to deliver a

baby and has done so many times; it is a lie that could result in the death of Melanie

Wilkes. In this context, coupled with Scarlett’s desperation at her town being

destroyed around her, the fact that she has raised a hand to Prissy is presented as a

justified response of desperation.

It seems important, as well, that Prissy’s momentous slight comes at the risk

of the life of one of the most likable characters in Mitchell’s work. It is not Scarlett

whom Mitchell sets as the victim in this transgression. Where sympathy for Scarlett

is debatable, the blameless and frail Melanie Wilkes is someone for whom the reader

cannot help but feel compassion. In this pivotal moment, the person who may fall

victim to Prissy’s “stupidity” is not Rhett or Scarlett, two main characters of

questionable morals, but the most helpless. Mitchell makes her case for how and why

slave violence may occur. In her estimation, it is not the norm nor is it accepted. It is

the result of a drastic situation, and, moreover, could happen to anyone. While

throughout her entire novel Mitchell depicts a gentler slavery than Stowe’s, in this

scene, Mitchell responds to Stowe’s accusations of slave abuse. Instead of denial that

it might happen, she explains it. It reads like a halfhearted apology. If there were

abuses, it reads, they were probably well deserved.

In any other context, it seems a curious inclusion for a piece of literature so

nostalgic for the days of slavery and so intent on proving Southerners to be kind and
 99

charitable slave owners. This viewpoint is presented at several places. One is the

touching moment where Scarlett offers her father’s watch, a family heirloom, to Pork,

who is the family’s most loyal slave, instead of to her own son. She presents it to him

as thus:

“It belongs to you. What did Wade Hampton ever do for Pa? Did he
look after him when he was sick and feeble? Did he bathe him and
dress him and shave him? Did he stick by him when the Yankees
came? Did he steal for him? Don’t be a fool, Pork. If ever anyone
deserved a watch, you do, and I know Pa would approve. Here.” (722)

Pork responds excitedly, “Fer me, truly, Miss Scarlett?” (722) noting the enormity of

her generous act, barely daring to believe it. Moreover, moments later when Pork

refuses Scarlett’s offer to have it engraved because he is afraid she might sell it if her

financial situation becomes desperate, he responds to her half-hearted threat “You

ought to be beat for that” with a laugh and the response “No’m, you aim’! …. Ah

knows you…” (722), implying that Scarlett would never raise a hand to him.

The resemblance between Mitchell’s loyal Pork and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s

Uncle Tom is not at all surprising if Mitchell intended her work to combat Stowe’s

suggestions about slavery. While Uncle Tom is abused and mistreated despite his

loyalty, Pork is rewarded for it. Given this context, his statement following this

interaction could possibly act as a tagline for the slave and owner relationship

presented by Mitchell. Pork boldly states to her following this exchange, “Ef you

wuz jes’ half as nice ter w’ite folks as you is ter niggers, Ah spec de worl’ would treat

you better” (722). She dismisses it, but it seems foolish to do the same in

understanding the character of Scarlett O’Hara and Mitchell’s design for her and her

novel. Mitchell wanted it known that Scarlett, shrewd as she might be, was gentle
 100

with the slaves of Tara. To depict a gentle slave interaction from kind Melanie

Wilkes would hold no weight. A shrewd and often unkind Scarlett fully aware of her

responsibility to the slaves of Tara and treating them with patience and kindness is a

more powerful picture than someone with a naturally gentle bent. Slave abuse, she

portrayed, is not normal even for the most shrewd of masters. According to Mitchell,

if these abuses happened they were not common or accepted.

Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind might be a “puffball,” as Lillian Smith noted,

but it’s also full of passion, action, and heartache. These things make for a

captivating read, sharing the story of the South during the Civil War as could never be

done with mere descriptions. Mitchell’s epic preached her story through emotional

appeal and honest, even contradictory, depictions of the Southern past. In doing so,

she explained and made her confession about an equally contradictory childhood in

the South.
 101

SUMMARY

The female authors of the Civil War explain the time period in a way that is

important to understanding what the Civil War looked like for the United States. It

goes beyond politics and war strategy and offers something more. They capture the

emotional climate, the spirit of the divided nation. Their writing does not simply

detail what happened, but how it affected people and how it changed them. In doing

so, these women share the Civil War in a way that is not only valuable to a historical

understanding of it, but essential.

Harriet Beecher Stowe is one of the most famous names of the group. Uncle

Tom’s Cabin was an abolitionist work, designed to open the eyes of the indifferent

North to the horrors that were taking place in some parts of the United States south of

the Mason-Dixon line. With political leadership in an official capacity allusive to

her, she instead used her writing to persuade using a more emotional appeal than the

rhetorical writers of the time period. She did so with a work of fiction, an engaging

story featuring a storyline about a mother fighting to save her child. Possibly the

reason that her work saw so much success was because it was a different approach

than most of her predecessors. Her political arguments did not come in the form of

reason, facts, and figures, but from an appeal to the hearts of her readers. She drew

from her own traumatic loss and in doing so, made her characters relatable,
 102

personable, and in many ways intellectual equals to the white population who would

be reading her novel, a trait that had rarely been offered to the African American race.

Harriet Jacobs and Lydia Maria Child also echoed this sentiment. Although

Stowe’s was a work of fiction, Harriet Jacobs shared the intimate and often

humiliating details of her enslavement and sexual harassment at the hands of her

master. While Lydia Maria Child had attempted a much more political novel years

earlier with An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans, her

partnership with Harriet Jacobs posed a stronger argument. An Appeal relied on a

similar emotional plea, but did so in small snapshots. The quick anecdotes were

powerful and spoke of degradation and humiliation brought to slaves. With these

stories Child shares an attention to people and sentiments with Harriet Jacobs, yet

Jacobs’ work seems to be more effective. She does not share a snapshot of her life;

she shares all of it down to the most degrading detail.

This vulnerability from Jacobs, and its innately sexual themes, made the work

a risk, not only to Jacobs herself as she might have been personally ostracized, but

also in risking the credibility of both women as writers and Child as a respected

abolitionist. She did so anyway, with Child declaring in her introduction that the risk

she takes is worth it, “for the sake of my sisters in bondage” (Child, Incidents in the

Life of a Slavegirl 8). In this statement, not only does she draw readers into a sense of

intimacy, preparing them for the material that lay ahead, but also lays the foundation

for this relationship, where the reader might sympathize and consider if the atrocity

was being done to herself, as she calls them her sisters.

 103

Jacobs’ work relies heavily on the idea of womanhood, motherhood, and

femininity to make her point. Slavery, she explains, keeps enslaved women from

experiencing womanhood, denies them motherhood, and denies them the right to their

own sexuality. Simultaneously, it places them at odds with God, but not by their own

choice. In recounting the scandalous details of her relationship with her master and

the white lawyer whom she had hoped would free her and her children, Harriet Jacobs

makes herself vulnerable and invites her reader into the painful and humiliating

details of her world. In doing so, she appeals specifically to white women, offering

the ability to see the world from her perspective in hopes that they might find

compassion for her and other enslaved women. No rhetorical argument about slavery

had accomplished the same feat at this point in history.

This vulnerability is similarly echoed in the diaries of the time period. These

diarists and memoir writers practiced self-rhetoric, the use of writing to obtain self-

understanding. An idea that surfaces the most in the writing of these diarists, amidst

themes of patriotism, religion, and loss, is the idea of womanhood. With their roles

changing as the War requires, along with new demands and understandings, these

women often use their diaries to seek understanding about who they are. While some

never acknowledge the change, like Confederate socialite Mary Chesnut, it is

apparent to her readers that her priorities do change from parties and dresses to

something greater. Others like Sarah Morgan do take note of these changes, as she

finds herself taking on the role of protector of her home in the absence of her brothers

and after the death of her father.

 104

The idea of “duty” is a reoccurring one in these memoirs, especially for Sarah

Morgan and Civil War nurses Phoebe Yates Pember and Louisa May Alcott who

volunteered their time to do so and teenager Tillie Pierce Alleman who did so out of

necessity. These stories of nursing duty are important, not just because these women

were often closer to the battle and offered better insights, but also in offering a

glimpse of women taking on leadership roles. Pember, Matron of Chimborazo

Hospital in Virginia, found herself faced with opposition and a staff who would often

refute her authority based upon her gender. Alcott takes on a more masculine

demeanor in her interaction with wounded soldiers as an act of self-preservation.

Alcott is one of several authors who redefine gender roles, assigning traits to

men and women that contradict societally accepted ones. For instance, Alcott’s

Nurse Periwinkle, the vehicle whom she uses to share her nursing experiences, is

often hardened and unemotional in the difficult and gruesome world of the hospital,

while the male soldiers whom she tends are often described using much more

womanly language. She does this again in Little Women with the relationship

between Jo March and Teddy Lawrence, with Jo being the leader, and Teddy the

follower. Margaret Mitchell would also use this idea in her acclaimed Gone With the

Wind with Scarlett taking on the more manly roles, while her husbands and love

interests are typically described using more feminine language.

Alcott’s Little Women and Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind also both exemplify

the changing Civil War era woman. In both novels, their most frail and womanly

characters by their society’s standards, Beth March and Melanie Wilkes, respectively,

are unable to survive. Both die in a way symbolic to womanhood, with Beth March
 105

catching scarlet fever by sacrificially serving a poor family and Melanie Wilkes dying

as a result of childbirth. Each time, the heroine, who lives on, is portrayed as being

stronger and more resilient, a juxtaposition to these timid womanly characters. These

authors seem to be in an agreement that antebellum womanhood simply cannot

survive in a post-Civil War world. Too much change has taken place for women and

they must adapt.

The discussion of pre-Civil War womanhood offers a contradiction in

Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, a novel intent on looking backwards. Mitchell seems

to be unsure about whether Scarlett has improved as she has embraced the freedoms

that the change in society has offered her as a woman. However, this novel and many

of the other Civil War novels often seem to be at odds with themselves, as they

explore and seek understanding. Like Mitchell, Lillian Smith also addresses the

theme of nostalgia, but does so in a different way. Where Mitchell’s fictional epic

captivated readers with vividly painted descriptions of the fairytale pre-Civil War

South, Lillian Smith disarmed them with her honesty in portraying the South as she

understood it. She shared stories of a confusing Southern childhood with the Civil

War lingering in the recent past and a South still unable to embrace equality. In

Mitchell’s starry-eyed tale, she praises the yesteryear; in Smith’s, she heralds that

same yesteryear as an example of why change is needed.

These themes, lessons, and ideas are not shared through lectures or data, but

rather through heartfelt narratives and emotional appeals to their readers. If politics

were a place for men, these women found another way to make their voices heard.

Their asset was their ability to give the reader something more than facts. They
 106

offered them an open door into the world of the Civil War as it existed in their own

minds; they offered readers a chance to understand it as they themselves did. These

snapshots, moments, and descriptions paint the Civil War.

 107

WORKS CITED

Alcott, Louisa May. Civil War Hospital Sketches. New York: Quill Pen Classics,

1863. eBook.

Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. New York: Sterling Unabridged Classics,

1867. eBook.

Alleman, Tillie Pierce. At Gettysburg: What a Girl Saw and Heard of the Battle. New

York: W. Lake Borland, 1889. Print.

Chesnut, Mary, and C. Vann Woodward (Editor). Mary Chesnut's Civil War. New

Haven: Yale UP, 1993. Print.

Child, Lydia Maria, Ed. Introduction. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by

Herself. by Harriet Ann Jacobs. Boston: Published for the Author, 1861.

eBook.

Child, Lydia Maria Francis. An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans

Called Africans. New York: John S. Taylor, 1836. eBook.

Clinton, Catherine. "An Interview with Catharine Clinton." Penguin Publishing.

Web. 8 Sep 2013.

Conroy, Pat. Introduction. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. New York:

The MacMillan Company, 1936. Print.

Durbam, Frank. “The Reputed Demises of Uncle Tom; Or, the Treatment of the

Negro in Fiction by White Southern Authors in the 1920's.” The Southern

Literary Journal. 2.2 (Spring 1970): 26-50. Web. 11 Sep. 2013.

Fahs, Alice. "The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the
 108

Memory of the War, 1861-1900." Journal of American History. 85.4 (Mar.

1999): 1461-1494. Web. 31 Aug. 2013.

Faust, Drew Gilpin. "Altars of Sacrifice: Confederate Women and the Narratives of

War." Journal of American History. 76.4 (Mar. 1990): 1200-1228. Web.

1 Sep. 2013.

Fetterley, Judith. "’Little Women’: Alcott's Civil War." Feminist Studies. 5.2

(1979): 369-383. Web. 31 Aug. 2013.

Foote, Stephanie. "Resentful "Little Women": Gender and Class Feeling in Louisa

May Alcott." College Literature. 32.1 (Winter 2005): 63-85. Web. 20 Sep.

2013.

Frassinato, William. Introduction. At Gettysburg: What a Girl Saw and Heard of the

Battle. New York: W. Lake Borland, 1889. Print.

Gelfant, Blanche. “’Gone with the Wind’ and the Impossibilities of Fiction."

Southern Literary Journal. 13.1 (Fall 1980): 3-31. Web. 4 Sep. 2013.

Gladney Margaret Rose. Introduction. Killers of the Dream by Lillian Smith.

Reisssue Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994. Print.

Harding Davis, Rebecca, Sharon Harris, Ed., and Robin Cadwallader, Ed.

Rebecca Harding Davis's Stories of the Civil War Era: Selected Writings from

the Borderlands. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010. eBook.

Harper, Judith. Women During the Civil War: An Encyclopedia. New York:

Routledge, 2004. Print.

Harrison, Kimberly. "Rhetorical Rehearsals: The Construction of Ethos in

Confederate Women's Civil War Diaries." Rhetoric Review. 22.3 (2003): 243-
 109

263. Web. 28 Aug. 2013.

Hobson, Fred, Tell About the South: The Southern Rage to Explain. Baton Rouge.

Southern Louisiana P. 1983. Print.

Jacobs, Harriet Ann. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself. Ed.

Lydia Maria Child. Boston: Published for the Author, 1861. eBook.

Martin, Isabella D. Introduction. Mary Chesnut's Civil War: A Diary From Dixie by

Mary Chesnut. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Print.

Mattison, Hiram, Rev. Louisa Picquet the Octoroon: A Tale of Southern Slave Life.

New York: Published By the Author, 1861. Web.

Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With the Wind. New York: The MacMillan Company,

1936. Print.

Morgan, Sarah. The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman. Athens: U of Georgia P.

1991. Print.

Nelson, Michael C. "Writing During Wartime: Gender and Literacy in the American

Civil War." Journal of American Studies. 31.1 (1997): 43-68. Web. 31 Aug.

2013.

Nudelman, Franny. "Harriet Jacobs and the Sentimental Politics of Female

Suffering." ELH. 59.4 (Winter 1992): 939-964. Print.

Sizer, Lyde Cullen. The Political Work of Northern Women Writers and the Civil

War, 1850-1872. Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P, 2000. Print.

Smith, Lillian. Killers of the Dream. Reisssue Edition. New York: W. W. Norton &

Company, 1994. Print.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin. New York: Knopf, 1995. Print.
 110

Washington, Margaret. "’From Motives of Delicacy’: Sexuality and Morality in the

Narratives of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs." Journal of African

American History. 92.1 (Winter 2007): 57-73. Print.

Whites, Leann. "The Civil War Diary of Sarah Morgan. by Sarah Morgan; Charles

East Review." Journal of Southern History. 52.9 (May 1993): 386-388. Web.

21 Sep. 2013.

Yates Pember, Phoebe. A Southern Woman's Story: Life in Confederate Richmond.

Jackson, TN: McCowat-Mercer Press, Inc., 1959. Print.

Yellin, Jean Fagan. "Written by Herself: Harriet Jacobs' Slave Narrative." American

Literature. 53.3 (Nov. 1981): 479-486. Print.

Young, Elizabeth. "A Wound of One's Own: Louisa May Alcott's Civil War Fiction."

American Quarterly. 48.3 (September 1996): 439-474. Web. 26 Aug. 2013.

 111

View publication stats