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.