Gospel Values: The Girl in

Gospel Values: The Girl in Blue The Girl in Blue is a tale of a young girl living during the Civil War era who dreams of becoming an empowered, strong woman. Refusing to betray her desire to live an adventurous life, Sarah Louisa Wheelock disguises herself as a boy named Neddy Compton rather than submit to her father's demand that she enter a loveless marriage with a much older man.

In her attempt to become like the heroine of one of her beloved novels, Sarah decides to join the Union army and fight for freedom -- her own freedom and the emancipation of African-Americans (Rinaldi 2). Sarah is immediately accepted into the army after she disguises herself as a boy. Sarah can shoot and ride well as most of the men. She first works as a nurse for the Union army, tending the sick. As well as showing strength, Sarah also exhibits the ability to heal.

She is not too proud to obey her order to go begging for food and supplies for the ailing men (Rinaldi 51). As the gospel instructs, Sarah is willing to submit and be humble as she relies upon the bounty of the earth and other people's generosity. Sarah knows when she must fight hard and resist, but also when she must ask for help. Although Sarah is not honest about her status as a woman, she lies as an act of self-preservation. She is not a fundamentally dishonest character.

Sarah resides in a mendacious world, the world of war, but she acts as genuinely as she possibly can, given the limits of her circumstances. She always retains her fundamental sense of humanity. For example, Sarah is horrified at first when she kills her first Rebel soldier, but the words of the freed slaves convince her of the righteousness of her cause (Rinaldi 80).

It is true Sarah does join the army at first in a somewhat self-serving way, but even after she is discovered she continues to serve her country, acting as a secret agent in the service of the Pinkerton Agency. Sarah takes on the guise of a maid in the home of a suspected Confederate spy named Rose Greenhow.

Ironically, the discovery that Sarah is a female leads to a far more dangerous assignment than what she pursued as a disguised boy -- working as a spy means that she could be killed at any moment. Sarah's feelings about the enemy vacillate between the guilt she feels for the Confederate soldier she killed -- she wonders about the family waiting for him at home -- and personal identification with the freed slaves.

Her feeling of kinship with African-Americans is particularly acute, given how badly Sarah was treated at home by her father, and the downtrodden condition of her mother. Through her compassion towards her enemy, Sarah demonstrates the gospel virtue of loving one's enemy, but still remaining true to one's moral center. She does not abandon the Union cause, but can still acknowledge the humanity of individuals deemed her enemy (Rinaldi 96).

And she is able to identify with all human beings, regardless of their race, and see her humanity reflected in their eyes. In her spirit of self-sacrifice Sarah also comes to embody the Christian virtue of putting others before herself, and acting as a servant of moral virtue. She would even be willing to turn in a man she loves, when she suspects him of being a spy. She places the good of others, in this case the slaves' desires to free, ahead of her own needs.

After enduring the war, at the end of the novel, Sarah returns home to seek a kind of peace with her family. She discovers that her father.