Women of the South During the Civil War

Women of the South During the Civil War

Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. (New York: Vintage Books, 1997).

Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War is a book about women in the South during the Civil War. The broader issue of this book is how women can empower themselves even in the face of hardship and - although the word is strong - the oppressions that society puts on them.

The preface to Faust's book contains a quote which Faust attributes to her mother:

I am sure that the origins of this book lie somewhere in that youthful experience, and in the continued confrontations with my mother, until the very eve of her death, when I was 19, about the requirements of what she usually called femininity. It's a man's world, sweetie, and the sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be.'"

Faust chooses to write the book from the perspective of the slave-owning women, the title The Mothers of Invention refers to the Confederate white women of slaveholding families. The book really tells the tale of their experiences during the civil war, and how they got through it and what they learned along the way.

As years passed with no end to war in sight, emotional and material deprivation took their inescapable psychological toll. A rising sense of personal desperation... prompted women to reconsider the most fundamental assumptions about their world...they had begun inevitably to think about themselves" (234).

Faust's main point in writing the book is to show modern women a part of their history which until ten years ago was really discounted. In a sense Faust is a trail blazer because her book is one of the first to say that looking at the trials and tribulations of women of the South in civil war times is an important way to show another part of women's history.

According to Faust, three out of every four white men were sent to war and the black men were left to do the work on the plantations. When the war started and the women were left on their own, they first had to choose if they would stay at their plantations or if they would move in with family. The management of the home and their lives became a more key issue for them than ever before - providing food for themselves and the slaves, economic certainty and so forth. Through the story of Lizzie Neblett we see one woman's frustration with these tasks - she describes her 11 slaves and all the problems she has with them, her anger at her husband and how she doesn't want to be pregnant again, how she must ask a neighbor for help to 'manage' her slaves and how her life as a 'lady' really is turned upside down when her husband leaves for the war.

Women...displayed their new self-absorption and self-interest in a growing reluctance to continue to yield their loved ones to the Confederate army... As Mary Bell of North Carolina bluntly proclaimed to Alfred in July 1862, 'I think you have done your share in this war' (240 -1)

In one part of the book we see a photograph of a woman named Sarah Hughes, whose plantation was taken over when her slaves ran away to freedom. Though wealthy, she ended up with nothing at all.

Gertrude Thomas saw the conflict of loyalties and its resolution clearly. 'Am I willing to give my husband to gain Atlanta for the Confederacy? No, No, No, a thousand times No!'" (242)

Faust has done a great deal of research in order to write the book. She is a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, her specialty history of the South, undergraduate courses on war and the American experience. She has spent several years traveling and gathering information and stories and research for her book. Her end notes show how much is left for the average reader to learn, if you are willing to delve into archives and follow Faust's leads.