E-Book Overview
During the Civil War, its devastating aftermath, and the decades following, many southern white women turned to writing as a way to make sense of their experiences. Combining varied historical and literary sources, Sarah Gardner argues that women served as guardians of the collective memory of the war and helped define and reshape southern identity. Gardner considers such well-known authors as Caroline Gordon, Ellen Glasgow, and Margaret Mitchell and also recovers works by lesser-known writers such as Mary Ann Cruse, Mary Noailles Murfree, and Varina Davis. In fiction, biographies, private papers, educational texts, historical writings, and through the work of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, southern white women sought to tell and preserve what they considered to be the truth about the war. But this truth varied according to historical circumstance and the course of the conflict. Only in the aftermath of defeat did a more unified vision of the southern cause emerge. Yet Gardner reveals the existence of a strong community of Confederate women who were conscious of their shared effort to define a new and compelling vision of the southern war experience. In demonstrating the influence of this vision, Gardner highlights the role of the written word in defining a new cultural identity for the postbellum South.
E-Book Content
BLOOD AND IRONY
&
Blood
Irony Southern White Women’s Narratives of the
Civil War, –
The University of North Carolina Press
.
© The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved Designed by Kristina Kachele Set in Minion by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gardner, Sarah E. Blood and irony: Southern white women’s narratives of the Civil War, – / Sarah E. Gardner. p. cm. Based on the author’s doctoral thesis, Emory University. Includes bibliographical references and index. --- (cloth: alk. paper) . Confederate States of America—Historiography. . United States—History—Civil War, –— Historiography. . Southern States—Intellectual life—–
. Group identity—Southern States—
History. . United States—History—Civil War, –—Personal narratives, Confederate. . United States—History—Civil War, –— Literature and the war. . American literature— Women authors—History and criticism.
. Women
and literature—Southern States—History. . Southern States—In literature. in literature. I. Title. . .''—dc
. Group identity
Contents Acknowledgments, ix . Everywoman Her Own Historian, . Pen and Ink Warriors, –, . Countrywomen in Captivity, –, . A View from the Mountain, –, . The Imperative of Historical Inquiry, –, . Righting the Wrongs of History, –, . Moderns Confront the Civil War, –, . Everything That Rises Must Converge, Notes, Bibliography, Index,
Illustrations Loula Kendall Rogers, , Loula Kendall Rogers, ‘‘A Fifteenth Amendment Taking His Crops to Market,’’ ‘‘Glendaire,’’ ‘‘The Negro Quarters at Glendaire,’’ ‘‘ ‘Allow me,’ said Captain Thomas,’’ Mary Noailles Murfree, ‘‘In a massive Elizabethan chair . . . ,’’ General James and Helen Dortch Longstreet, , Ellen Glasgow, ‘‘There was a niche in a small alcove,’’ ‘‘Betty,’’