The US Civil War and its Aftermath in Historical Quaker Romances: Hailing White Heroines as Builders and Healers of the Nation

Abstract

This chapter discusses a selection of historical Quaker romances by American authors such as Mary Ellis, Lyn Cote and Anna Schmidt, set against different military conflicts, in particular the American Civil War. The chapter argues that the novels bear witness to America's conflictual relationship with its own history of war, race and gender abuse, and the country's contradictory impulses to reject and promote social change. Thus, although the Quaker protagonists typically endorse progressive attitudes, defending pacifism and social justice, they simultaneously display more problematic and ambivalent attitudes when it comes to racial issues. In presenting these heroines as rescuers and saviours of “Indians” or Blacks, the novels marginalise these characters and deny their own active struggles against oppression; in neatly closing the wounds of the Civil War via romantic formulae uniting the female Quaker protagonists to military heroes, the novels prematurely block critical reflection on the effects of the war.