Civil War Women: American Women Shaped by Conflict in Stories by Alcott, Chopin, Welty and Others - Softcover

Elegant or restrained, proud or self-deprecating, the voices in this collection of 10 stories depicting American Civil War women resound. The various heroines share a common triumph in "having some part to play, however small, in the public world that was largely off-limits to them during peacetime." Two young women, a Southerner and a Northerner, sequestered in a neutral mountain town, must confront their opposing loyalties in "Crowder's Cove" by Constance Fenimore Woolson (a Yankee contemporary of the war). In Elsie Singmaster's (1879-1958) "The Battleground," a grieving widow of Gettysburg finds comfort and honor in Lincoln's address: "Later she read it and learned it and taught it to her children and her children's children." The spirited, strong Patience in "Comrades," by women's rights activist Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (1844-1911), is one of the most memorable protagonists. On Memorial Day 1910, she marches in the parade with her ailing husbandthe last Civil War veteran of their townas she declares: "I've earned the right to." Though black voices are notably absent from the stories (the introduction maintains that black women have published mainly novels on the topic) the volume's lingering image is Delilah, the slave in Eudora Welty's "The Burning." After their house is torched by Northern soldiers, her two spinster mistresses force Delilah to aid in their suicides, yet this heroine's survival is itself a victory over the women, her captors, who would deny her motherhood, dignity and, ultimately, life. The editors previously collaborated on Nightmares in Dixie.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This collection of women writers' stories set during the Civil War is valuable, not as fine literature, but because it conveys the breadth of experience of black and white, Northerner and Southerner sharing a national tragedy. The characters are widows, nurses, childish brides, and heroic protectors, forced out of feminine conventions by a devastating war wrought by men. It is easy to see here how the war served as a wellspring of feminism. The stories share an undercurrent of raw emotion that testifies to the war's impact on the authors themselves, some born long after. The writing is uneven, with the strongest by veteran writers Elizabeth Phelps Ward and Eudora Welty. A useful teaching tool. Laurie Spector Sullivan, Transportation Authority Archives, Boston
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.