Blood And Irony

by Gardner, Sarah E.

• ISBN13: 9780807857670
• ISBN10: 080785767X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-08-07
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction. Everywoman Her Own Historian

Pen and Ink Warriors, 1861-1865

Countrywomen in Captivity, 1865-1877

A View from the Mountain, 1877-1895

The Imperative of Historical Inquiry, 1895-1905

Righting the Wrongs of History, 1905-1915

Moderns Confront the Civil War, 1916-1936

Epilogue. Everything That Rises Must Converge

Notes

Bibliography

Index

IllustrationsLoula Kendall Rogers, 1865

Loula Kendall Rogers

Illustration from Chapin's Fitz-Hugh St. Clair

Illustration from Chapin's Fitz-Hugh St. Clair

Illustration from Chapin's Fitz-Hugh St. Clair

Illustration from Williams's

Who's the Patriot?

Mary Noailles Murfree

Illustration from Glasgow's

Deliverance General James and Helen Dortch Longstreet, 1901

Ellen Glasgow Illustration from Glasgow's

Voice of the People Illustration from Glasgow's

The Battle-Ground Illustration from Glasgow's

Deliverance Mary Johnston Illustration from Johnston's

The Long Roll

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.