In a study that will radically shift our understanding of Civil War
literature, Elizabeth Young shows that American women writers have been
profoundly influenced by the Civil War and that, in turn, their works
have contributed powerfully to conceptions of the war and its aftermath.
Offering fascinating reassessments of works by white writers such as
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, and Margaret Mitchell and
African-American writers including Elizabeth Keckley, Frances Harper,
and Margaret Walker, Young also highlights crucial but lesser-known
texts such as the memoirs of women who masqueraded as soldiers. In each
case she explores the interdependence of gender with issues of race,
sexuality, region, and nation.
Combining literary analysis, cultural history, and feminist theory,
Disarming the Nation argues that the Civil War functioned in women's
writings to connect female bodies with the body politic. Women writers
used the idea of civil war as a metaphor to represent struggles between
and within women--including struggles against the cultural prescriptions
of civility. At the same time, these writers also reimagined the nation
itself, foregrounding women in their visions of America at war and in
peace. In a substantial afterword, Young shows how contemporary black
and white women--including those who crossdress in Civil War
reenactments--continue to reshape the meanings of the war in ways
startlingly similar to their nineteenth-century counterparts.
Learned, witty, and accessible, Disarming the Nation provides fresh
and compelling perspectives on the Civil War, women's writing, and the
many unresolved civil wars within American culture today.
