The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of the War, 1861-1900

TitleThe Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of the War, 1861-1900
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication1999
AuthorsFahs, Alice
JournalThe Journal of American History
Volume85
Issue4
Pagination1461-1494
Date Published03/1999
Abstract

Inspired by works that identify popular cultural forms as complex expressions of ideology and those that examine women's Civil War experiences, this article argues that popular culture was an important location for representing and exploring the gendered implications of the war. To make this argument, it draws upon nine major popular periodicals that encompass a wide spectrum of Northern wartime publishing. They include two national illustrated weeklies (Harpers Weekly and Frank Leslies Illustrated Newspaper); three general-interest family magazines (the Atlantic Monthly, Harpers New Monthly Magazine, and the Continental Monthly); one of the "cheap" story papers that featured weekly fiction (the Flag of Our Union); a religious journal (the Independent); and two women's magazines (Petersons and Arthurs Home Magazine.) Together, they provide a constellation of cultural positions from high to low in the Northern literary marketplace, emphasizing the wide distribution of the feminized literary war.

URLhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2568268
Entry by GWC Assistants / Work by GWC Assistants : 
AK

Type of Literature:

Time Period:

Countries: