
The Political Work of Northern Women Writers and the Civil War, 1850-1872
Lyde Cullen Sizer
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 06/2003
Pages: 368
Subject: History, Literary Criticism
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9.78E+12
eBook ISBN: 9780807860984
DESCRIPTION
Among the authors discussed are Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sara Willis Parton (Fanny Fern), Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Mary Abigail Dodge (Gail Hamilton), Louisa May Alcott, Rebecca Harding Davis, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Although direct political or partisan power was denied to women, these writers actively participated in discussions of national issues through their sentimental novels, short stories, essays, poetry, and letters to the editor.
Sizer pays close attention to how these mostly middle-class women attempted to create a "rhetoric of unity," giving common purpose to women despite differences in class, race, and politics. This theme of unity was ultimately deployed to establish a white middle-class standard of womanhood, meant to exclude as well as include.
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