With The Weaker Sex in War, Kristen Brill shows how white women's wartime experiences shaped Confederate political culture-and the ways in which Confederate political culture shaped their wartime experiences. These white women had become passionate supporters of independence to advance the cause of Southern nationalism and were used by Confederate leadership to advance the cause. These women, drawn from the middle and planter class, played an active, deliberate role in the effort. They became knowing and keen participants in shaping and circulating a gendered nationalist narrative, as both actors for and symbols of the Confederate cause. Through their performance of patriotic devotion, these women helped make gender central to the formation of Confederate national identity, to an extent previously unreckoned with by scholars of the Civil War era.In this important and original work, Brill weaves together individual women's voices in the private sphere, collective organizations in civic society, and political ideology and policy in the political arena. A signal contribution to an increasingly rich vein of historiography, The Weaker Sex in War provides a definitive take on white women and political culture in the Confederacy.
Kristen Brill is Lecturer in American History at Keele University (UK) and the editor of The Diary of a Civil War Bride: Lucy Wood Butler of Virginia
A short book with a big argument. Kristen Brill wants to know how women, specifically 'middle- and planter-class white Southern women' (5), shaped Confederate political culture and thereby explore the essential relationship between gender and Confederate nationalism. . . The book deals with both actual and symbolic women, and the role (or complicity) of the former in the construction of the latter.-- "Journal of the Civil War Era" Brill's book opens a new conversation on women and war [and] provides an intersectional analysis of gender, race, class, and region during one of the most pivotal times in United States history.-- "Journal of Southern History" The Weaker Sex in War makes a welcome and valuable contribution to our understanding of the gendered nature of Confederate nationalism. Through the stories of middle-class and planter women, Kristen Brill explores how nationalism proved a two-way street-both shaped by and projected onto Confederate women. She reminds us that these women were more than just devoted wives or daughters; they were powerful symbols of the short-lived Confederate nation. --Caroline E. Janney, University of Virginia, author of Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee's Army after Appomattox Brill admirably roots Southern women's power not only in the domesticworld of the household, but also demonstrates how ably they transferred that power into the political world around them... She artfully explains how Southern white women could transcend their traditional household roles without sacrificing those roles -- "Civil War Book Review"
