Customer Reviews

Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War

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Starting with the haunting faces of the young women who are pictured on the cover, to the many illustrations through out, we learn of the thoughts and activities that occupied the daily lives of the women of the Confederacy. This book is filled with wonderful diary excerpts, parts of letters and interesting photographs. Through these means we are given an insightful look at the way Southern women lived during the most tragic of times, our American Civil War.

I've read a great deal about this particular era, but learned so much from this book. For instance, I had no idea that many men wanted their wives to accompany them off to war. Some of these women did just that and lamented about leaving their children behind with relatives. One young woman said that her husband was "ordering me to Mississippi" in the summer of 1862, and how brokenhearted she was because she feared that her baby would forget her while she was away.

Another interesting fact was that numerous ladies wrote personal letters to President Jefferson Davis and requested that their husbands or sons be sent home because they were needed by their families. Other ladies wrote directly to their husbands and clearly told them they had given enough effort to the war, and it was time to come home.

Some of the other information that is discussed is how women were often forced to move in with relatives and how their days were filled with unfamiliar work. They also were required, with very little experience, to manage their slave labor and operate plantations or farms. Some women seemed to enjoy the challenge, and for others the burden was too much.

The blockade of goods going to the South was another problem to deal with because so many of the items of necessity were manufactured in the North. One of the reasons that the hoop skirt went out of fashion was because a vast amount of material was needed to cover a hoop. Cloth was so scarse that the ladies were making it themselves, and there was little to spare for elaborate clothing. Even the hoops were no longer obtainable after they wore out. Working hard and making do became the way to survive and these women became the mothers of invention.

Drew Gilpin Faust has done an enormous amount of research in compiling all of this information and I believe that it was a labor of love and she is to be commended. I will admit that at times I thought her writing style was a little stiff, and I sometimes resented the conclusions that she made. I thought that the material spoke for itself and needed very little explanation. These are minor criticisms because she has put together a unique and wonderful book.

I believe this book will stand the test of time, and be read for many years to come.I chose it to be read by my book group and it generated a lively discussion and we all felt we benefited by reading it.

In "Mothers of Invention," Drew Gilpin Faust explores the ways in which the Civil War transformed traditional gender roles among middle- and upper-class southern women. Gilpin theorizes that Confederate women certainly were aware of the effect that government policies had on their lives-even if the leaders, at times, were not-and that women's views conscription, home defense, economic production and slavery influenced and, ultimately, undermined their support for the war.

Her key point seems to be that the war overturned the "social contract" in which elite women accepted subordination and dependence for male protection and privilege. Although men were off protecting their homes in the abstract sense, women were left to deal with the day-to-day realities of food shortages and an invading army occupying their homes.

Narrowing exceptions to the draft, the military's refusals to grant furloughs in times of great family need, and government policies regarding food requisitions especially galled women. Faust puts a particularly interesting gender perspective on the draft exemption for those owning 20+ slaves. Normally, this exemption is viewed solely in class terms: "Rich man's war, poor man's fight." Faust, however, brings attention to the fear that white women experienced being left alone to manage large slave populations without a man's help. Women feared murder and uprisings from a slave population that was growing increasingly rebellious. The priority ultimately given to equitably treating draft-age white men and the burden of managing slaves led to a decline in women's support for the slave system and for the Confederacy, she argues.

In addition to slave management, Faust explores other ways in which the war caused elite white women to step into traditional male roles. From the very beginning, secession and the war led to much greater involvement by women in the public sphere. Although politics had been considered the province of men, secession was a topic that no one could stop discussing-women included. The banding together of women to support the war effort also proved a new experience for southern women. Unlike their northern sisters, southern women typically had not been involved in social organizations before the war.

Faust's book includes a fascinating discussion about attitudes toward the refugee experience. In particular, she notes that becoming a refugee was the civilian equivalent of buying a substitute for the draft. A refugee, the term implied, had the money and connections to make a planned departure from home-often to protect property. In support of this view, she cites the diary of Mary Lee of Winchester, who disdained the term refugee in favor of "displaced person" to describe those fleeing with little in the face of the enemy.

"Mothers of Invention" contains one of the most interesting analyses of the hoop skirt that I have seen. Faust notes that the trend for full skirts, ultimately supported by hoops, coincided with the Victorian ideals of domesticity and women's separate sphere. The caged crinoline or hoop offered women a portable enclosed private space and the wide skirts symbolized a circle in which women were protected. In an era where upper-class women's sexuality was repressed, the style also hid and reformed female anatomy. The conspicuous consumption of fabric and the difficulty performing physical labor in these skirts made a class statement as well.

"Mothers of Invention" provides a good overview of the different ways that the war affected southern women's lives, including changes within the household, relations between husbands and wives, paid employment outside the home, the likelihood that young women would remain single due to the deaths of so many young men, religious views on the war, increased educational opportunities for women, dealing with Yankee men, etc. Her accessible writing style and use of interesting quotes and numerous pictures make this a relatively quick read. The book is well-organized with subheadings that make locating important points quite easy.

For those interested in exploring the southern woman's war experience, this book would be a good starting point for gaining some good general knowledge. Readers should keep in mind, however, that Faust is focusing on elite and middle-class women, and that the experiences and attitudes she describes do not reflect the lives of lower-class women.

The subject matter is hard to find a book on, much less a good read, thus this book is a rarity, and it is very very well done.

It's a very trustworthy read with no opinionated ego trips and an amazing amount of information. Drew Faust is the queen of primary sources. Everything you read by her is straight from an original. She truly does her research, then puts it in a form that is a delightful and captivating read. I found "Mother of Invention" to not only be incredibly informative (you'll learn quite a bit in one sentence) but and outstanding book that I vied to pick up even more than a novel.

There's something incredibly satisfying in reading a research book and actually really remembering it because you liked it.

A wonderful book about women during the Civil War. This book focuses only on women of the slaveholding South, those women who were brought up to be dependent on their men, women unused to hard physical work, and how the war affected them. The author tracks the growth of these women, their evolution from fragile "ladies" to capable, independent women, and how their men, and society in general, were forced to accept women's new roles as thinkers, writers, nurses, teachers, in short, as women with brains! The book includes many excerpts from letters and diaries that show the fear and reluctance of most women to move from their established and secure roles of wife, mother, helpmeet, domestic decoration, and social director, to those of head of household, provider, and scrounger for the basic necessities of life during times of shortages. Faust also examines how women viewed the war from its beginning (cheering as their noble heroes marched away to combat) through the long years apart from their men ("come home, we need you"). Every chapter was interesting, and she covered topics as diverse as women who dressed up as men and enlisted, and how tough it was to get married after the war, due to the shortages of eligible males. A really interesting book, I highly recommend it.

Historically, Southern women have been type-case as fragile, codependent, incapable, overgrown children. Growing up in the South, it was always difficult to find role models from local history, or in the mass media.

"Mothers of Invention" shows us otherwise. It was amazing and inspiring to read about the struggles and revelations of these women. It touched me deeply, to think about the courage and strength it took for a previously sheltered woman to learn to take on more responsibility in a society that told her that her place was at home.

This book shows Southern women as gutsy and brave, a little like Scarlett O'Hara's spirit when she vowed, "I'll never be hungry again!"

The first thing to know when you pick up this book, is that first, it deals basically only with diaries and letters, and that probably only a woman interested in the history of women would be interested. The entire book is very...well, womanly. I did enjoy what I learned about Southern women (and believe me, it is ONLY slaveholding woman, as the title suggests), but I couldn't help but ask why Faust did not ever mention anybody over the age of about 30. If they don't have any records of any diaries of older women, she should have said so, because I was wondering about it the entire time. Basically it only covers how women felt about their husbands being gone (wanting protection, resorting to writing as comfort, scared about slave uprisings, etc) but hardly anything was said about SONS being gone. Where were they? And only a little bit more was said about fathers being gone. Over all, I did learn about women during the Civil War from the South, but only a very small portion of them. I would probably only recommend this book as an asset to research about women in the 19th century, or to anyone who wonders what else was going on in the country apart from the war.

I had the option of reading this book for a advanced history class, and I am very glad I did. Faust takes the most hidden people in the slave holding south, women, and brings them to life. With rich text flowing beside diary entrys I was highly amazed at the ability of women to overcome anything that is put in their path. And to become, through neccessity, the mothers of invention.

Reading this book, I got the impression that the author buys into the impression most people have of pre-war Southern women - the vapid Southern belle who basically did nothing until the war began, then suddenly she had to run the plantation. Not true! If one reads diaries and letters of the period, the daily running of the home was left to the women - managing the slaves (if the family owned any). Women handled a good deal more of the marketing and financial running of farms, especially, than is generally believed. Perhaps women weren't involved in politics, but the backbone of southern life was the home and that was the woman's province. Women proved their capability before and during the war by managing the homefront. As for refugees - the tales told by thousands of women who were forced to flee their homes are far in excess of the numbers suggested by the author. The worst atrocity of the war - the hundreds of women captured by the Union in Roswell, Georgia - is ignored. The author also suggests that support for the war by southern women waned as it went on, another questionable fact in light of the many diaries of the period and the tremendous outpouring of grief at the surrender. Most women couldn't bear to record the end of the Confederacy in their diaries and surviving letters are filled with bitterness. Still, this book is an excellent researcher. Also recommend Juanita Leisch's books on "Civil War Civilians" and "Who Wore What" although her fashion research should be taken with a grain of salt as it is theory only based on a sampling of period photos.

Mothers of Invention is a book by Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust (historian), who was appointed President of Harvard University in February 2007. This book is an excellent adjunct to any college level class on the Civil War period. Faust researched the letters, diaries and journals of 500 elite southern white women, to determine the impact of the Civil War on them and their families. Her research shows how they were affected by the war, as well as how they impacted the attitudes of their men, particularly the soldiers. It also discusses the positive and negative aspects of how they affected the Confederate States of America.

You should read this book both for its new contributions to the history of the Civil War, as well as the unique revelations. Even though most Confederate women were supportive of the Civil War when it started, this book shows that pre-war elites had been placed on so high a pedestal that they were totally unprepared to do even routine things, such as cooking and sewing. When the slave masters and overseers left the plantation for the battlefield, the elites were abandoned to run large plantations, utilizing slaves who were, at best, apathetic towards their leadership, and at worst, openly rebellious. As the war continued, the situation of the women worsened because of deaths, food and clothing shortages, inflation, runaway and recalitrant slaves, and Yankee incursions into the South. After four years of war, the elite women came to hate the war as much as the soldiers who fought and died in large numbers.

Once you read this outstanding book, you will understand how poorly prepared the South was to fight a Civil War that lasted more than a year. You will understand why elite southern white women grew to hate this war, that changed the lives of women forever. Women learned that they were capable of doing jobs from which they had previously been excluded. The only problem with this book is that makes you want to do even more research into related issues.

Though there is much that is interesting in the book, Mothers of Invention, some of the author's conclusions, especially that Southern women of slaveholding families lost much of their support for Southern Independence, does not seem to have been borne out by other studies. I was privileged to have met a number of ladies when I was young, who had lived during the struggle for Southern Independence. None of them expressed the feelings or the conclusions drawn by the author of this book. Sherman wrote that he did not think the war would end unless the Southern women were all killed. They, he said, were worse rebels than their husbands, and they kept their husbands and sons in the Confederate Army and fighting. Many others, both North and South, agreed with him. it is true that towards the end of the war, when it was obvious that the South had lost, there were many who began to express a desire for the now obviously hopeless war for independence to end. They rarely seem to have accepted defeat easily, however. None of the ladies from that time whom I met, nor that older members of my family had known, expressed any feeling except regret that the war for independence was lost. Some did say that if the Union soldiers had treated them better, defeat would have been easier to accept. However, I heard no criticism of secession, of the Southern men, or of the war. The only real criticisms by Southern women that I heard or have read, other than in this book, are criticisms of the behavior of the Union army in the South.