5 minute read
Gender Matters: Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Making of the New South—Me
aegis 2007
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 256 pp. Megan Hatfield
In her book Gender Matters: Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Making of the New South, LeeAnn Whites examines the role that gender played in the events of the South in the 19 th century. Her thesis is quite simple: gender mattered. While this seems like a simple and obvious assertion, she is actually arguing against traditional scholarship in that area of study which has essentially held that gender was not important in the South because issues of race and class were privileged above one’s gender status. This rendered gender “invisible” on the level of the individual, and therefore, had no real or significant impact on that society. Whites points out that while that is in part true, scholars have defined gender too narrowly by restricting it to the ideological and individual level. Instead, she explains that gender needs to be understood as a relational matter between men and their dependent women; thus, tying gender to the larger workings of the social structure. With this definition, it is possible to examine the events of the 19 th century South in a new light revealing that not only did gender matter in shaping those events, but it actually played a central role in them. Basically, she is saying that by not understanding the role that gender played in the social structure of the South, historians are not able to fully understand the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the making of the New South. The book is a compilation of essays written by Whites. She divides the book into two parts: the first part focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the second part focuses on the making of the New South. In the first four essays Whites argues that the Civil War “turned the household inside out, laid bare to public view and public significance the role of gender in the social order” (6). She shows that the Civil War was fought by the men in the South in order to preserve their standing in the social order as the heads of their households which rested on their ability to keep slaves and their women dependent. However, the war itself destabilized the structure of the household offering all of the dependents the opportunity and necessity to enter the public realm and to become socially visible. Typically, it seems like a wonderful opportunity—finally Southern women could achieve some independence, but in reality, Whites argues that that was far from what they wanted. Independence was at odds with traditional conceptions of femininity. Significantly, while women were taking charge on the home front, Southern men were experiencing a major crisis in gender as their role as the head of the household —their masculinity itself was deteriorating as the war was lost. By losing the war, the Southern white man lost his position in society since he was no longer the master of slaves, and less able to protect his wife. The final two essays in the first part specifically examine the role gender played in Reconstruction focusing on how the South attempted to “turn back the clock” by having gender return back in invisibility. Whites shows how the Southern white women simply wanted to reconstruct Southern white manhood and return to the time when women were protected by men and confined to the household. To do this, the Southern white women formed associations that were dedicated to memorializing the men who fought in the war.
The second part of book examines the role of industrialization in the making of the New South. Whites argues that Southerners were dedicated to preserving the social hierarchies that persisted before the Civil War and Reconstruction. This meant that not only were blacks supposed to stay at the bottom of the social hierarchy, but also, that women were supposed to be socially invisible. While both white women and white men saw this as the desired ideal, the effects of industrialization threatened to undermine this social order more permanently. In the first two essays of this part, Whites studies the rise of the textile industry and it’s affect on the household. She shows that the textile mills primarily employed and exploited the labor of women and children. Meanwhile, men were not doing their fair share of work and only perpetuating the problems of the working class by participating in a capitalist market system that worked against their interests. As a result, this virtually inverted the household structure as women were the workers and unable to maintain the household properly, while men were unable to protect their wives. The final three essays of the book investigate the politics and views of Rebecca Latimer Felton. Felton was one of the most prominent advocates of women’s rights in the late 19 th century and she was also strongly committed to preserving the racial and social hierarchies that existed before the war. In essence, Felton perfectly illustrates Whites’ point that gender mattered in the events of the South because Felton recognized that gender was used as a systemic social construct and that gender played a significant role in the major events of their time. In summation, LeeAnn Whites is successful in showing that gender did indeed matter in the 19 th century South. By understanding gender as a relational matter that impacted the social structure she has contributed a new viewpoint and method of investigation to the area of gender studies in that time. Although I recognize the validity of her work and the strength each individual essay, I did not like the way the book was structured. The nature of the book as a compilation of essays means that each essay is able to stand on its own apart from the book and have its own argument. As a result, the last four chapters or essays felt like they repeated much of the same information because they dealt with the same person, Rebecca Latimer Felton. Additionally, the essay structure meant that she relied heavily on case studies. Most of the first part was centered on case studies from St. Louis, Missouri—an area she specifically chose to study because of its particular situation as a border state and thus, a heavily contested area during the Civil War. While this certainly makes it interesting to study, the uniqueness of those circumstances makes it difficult to discern if her conclusions are applicable to the South more generally. In general, the essay structure just made it difficult to follow her overarching argument, but the benefit of this structure is that this book can be used specifically for an individual essay, or it can be read as an entire book. Overall, it was a well written, interesting, and significant contribution to the field of gender studies and social history that I would recommend to anyone interested in 19 th century American history and/or gender issues in that era.
