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“The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of the War, 1861-1900” by Alice Fahs (Critic)

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Alice Fahs’ “The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of the War., 1861-1900” begins by illuminating how literature and popular culture were more inclusive towards women during the Civil War period. She analyzes this “feminization of the Civil War,” focusing mainly on northern women and their portrayal through literature. Yet, later in the paper, she also follows up postwar when popular views and understandings of the Civil War shifted towards a focus on white men and their place within the Civil War, leaving northern white women almost completely shutout. As I was reading “The Feminized War,” there were some slight issues that I came across.

Fahs begins the paper with a focus on northern women and how popular culture during the time of the Civil War allows for analysis and reflection for how women were viewed during this period. Although she begins to differentiate between the type of woman she is focusing on— by stating that this woman is “white” or that she is “northern,” she does not seem to differentiate between the type of women that are spoken of in terms of their economic place in society. For example, when she writes of the women who must find work after the death of their husbands, would we say the same for women of the lower classes who had no choice but to work outside the home from the very beginning? The use of the term “women” brings to mind inclusivity, but referring to women, when one appears to be speaking of only a certain category of women, can be better understood through added clarity. As I read Fahs’ paper, I felt that more clarity would have strengthened this section.

Within the paper, Fahs makes use of literature during the time of the Civil War in order to better explain how women were portrayed in popular culture. One specific ballad mentioned in the paper is that of John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Barbara Frietchie” (1467). The ballad focuses on the story of a woman who “defied Stonewall Jackson” (1467). But as I looked over the footnote, Fahs explains how Whittier “initially steadfastly asserted the veracity of the story upon which his ballad was based, but after the war he backpedaled” (1467). I feel that more explanation of this example would have strengthened the paper, especially when Fahs writes about the changes in women’s representation in various forms of literature after the war had ended.

Alice Fahs’ “The Feminized Civil War” provides the reader with a better understanding of how Civil War literature and popular culture in particular both helped to “feminize the Civil War” and to—postwar—brush over the memory of women and their place within society during the war. While my view that clarity in certain areas could help to strengthen the paper and to also answer possible questions left unanswered, Fahs’ paper continues to shed light on an important topic that many scholars have chosen to ignore.

– Pamela Ann Kelly

The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of War, 1861-1900 by Alice Fahs

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“The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of War, 1861-1900” by Alice Fahs

This enlightening article highlights the role of women and gender as presented through Northern literature during and after the Civil War. Alice Fahs begins with the traditional narrative that women had no place in war and knew nothing about it. An anonymous woman who wrote to a Union paper believed otherwise. According to Fahs, women were actively involved in “wartime concerns.” Fahs discusses the importance of feminized literature that stressed “the importance of women’s contributions to the war effort, but increasingly it argued that women’s homefront suffering were equal to, or even greater than, those of men in battle” (Fahs 1462).

An important part of the wartime effort, the female side of the war was presented through “stories, essays, poems, articles, novels, broadsides, and cartoons” (Fahs 1462). This provided women with an active role in the Civil War narrative. Harper’s Weekly, one of the most popular Civil War era magazines, and continuing into the twentieth century, featured over sixty percent feminized stories from 1862-1864 (1463).

I found Fahs’s mention that in the years following the Civil War, the strong female presence and perspective seen during the war dissipated, as the “memory” and narrative of the war story shifted to the male perspective to be one of the most interesting parts of the article, and is something that I had not previously thought of. Now knowing the significant body of work published about women in the war effort is an important part of the Civil War that disappeared from American minds in the late nineteenth century. Fahs says that it then began to be “increasingly redefined as a man’s only war” (1464).

The author makes a strong connection between women supporting men enlisting in the war and the idea of “revolutionary mothers”, recalling the iconography of Betsy Ross and the few other colonial women referenced in popular culture (1465). This interesting analysis makes a strong case for the romanticism of a woman’s “duty” to husband, brother, family, and country. Popular songs and poems were created and widely distributed, all using women’s perspectives, all for the cause. One example is the story of Barbara Frietchie who heroically asks that Confederate soldiers kill her before they harm the Union flag (1469). Though many were supportive of the war effort (in the North), women’s emotions are an integral part of feminized literature. “In feminized war literature women’s emotions, especially their tears, were often portrayed as giving appropriate value to men’s actions” (1466). While it is not mentioned directly, this might be an interesting piece of propaganda to support the war effort.

A very different feminized narrative of the Civil War is war romances, which appeared plentiful in number in numerous publications. At the same time, loss and suffering play a key role in the Civil War with the staggering numbers of deaths and casualties. Winslow Homer’s words push the notion of “women’s words—represented as deeper than those of men—were at the emotional center of the nation” (1476).

The demise of the legacy of feminized literature during the Civil War came about during a change in tone with as Fahs says, “the rise of literary fiction”, therefore these perhaps exaggerated and outdone stories were laughed out of popularity by a more masculine aesthetic of realism, “explicitly disavowing earlier sentimental and domestic norms” (1489).

It is important to note that this article focuses on the northern women’s perspective on the war, and does not largely consider the perspectives of southern white women or slaves. Additionally, Fahs does not go in great depth into what women’s stories of the war. I would’ve liked to see a few more examples.  Despite this, I am the advocate for this essay, and I do believe that Alice Fahs examination into feminized literature of the Civil War to be thorough and thoughtful. It provides an interesting context to a heavily studied era in American History, although other than the origins of modern medicine—and the assistance of female nurses, and the southern belle narrative of Gone With the Wind. The former is getting more attention with a new PBS show Mercy Street. Putting that aside, the role of women, near the battlefield, and at home, had a tremendous impact on the Civil War through popular literature at the time, a lens, and the significance of it that has been all but forgotten in the collective American memory, Alice Fahs does a fantastic job of bringing it back to life.

– William Kowalik