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.By pub-lishing the soldiers ads, the editors introduced them to womenand created a buffer between the two parties that lessened thevulgarity that a face-to-face introduction would have produced.Desperate for communication with the opposite sex, soldiers andwomen improvised during a wartime situation that allowed neitherthe time nor the opportunity to follow all the rules of etiquette.Byusing the editors as a third party, and by meeting on the middleground provided in the Want ads, however, they maintained atleast a semblance of respectability.Second, the ads present a new perspective on the women wholived during the Civil War and after.Women who participated inplacing and answering ads most probably did not consider them-selves to be anything but respectable. A minority of women, suchas Favorite, may have had less virtuous motives than simply findinga true friend or mate, but, overall, the women who placed ads didso with the confidence that they were doing nothing wrong.Whetherwomen composed these advertisements or answered requests inorder to pass dreary days, to express their patriotism, to meetprospective mates, or even to have a wicked adventure, their partic-ipation suggests that they were more aggressive than modern con-ceptions of the true woman construct implies.Moreover, theirparticipation in the correspondence craze and Okker s argument thatwomen carried on a dialogue between editors and readers broadensour understanding of women s seemingly bold actions during the war.Women may have been stretching the gender boundaries, or, asOkker suggests, they may have been operating well within theirprovince of influence.The ads, therefore, establish a less restricted Richard.qxd 8/29/2003 1:28 PM Page 168168 BUSY HANDSview of Victorian women, one that shows them acting more assertive-ly in their relations with men.60Third, and most important perhaps, these ads allowed the soldiersto avoid sinking irreparably into the military world.Volunteers placedand answered ads because they yearned for the middle-class valuesthey left behind in their communities.They respected the family andthe responsibilities of the home, viewing them as benefits of man-hood.The ads show that the soldiers were receptive to the domesticimages the aid societies were sending them and that the familymodel was important enough to them that they sought it on theirown.The ads requesting the companionship of a kind friend and aloving heart or gentlemen equally endowed express the ideal of acompanionate marriage.Advertisers obviously meant to catch some-one s eye, so some ads appear a bit boastful.But the men advertisingfor ladies of a good reputation and unblemished characters or thewomen wishing for intelligent and affectionate men listed traitsthey honestly looked for in prospective mates.Through the ads, sol-diers were reaching out for the images of morality and propriety thatfemales had been projecting throughout the war in their work in theaid societies.61M.Debray and Monte Cristo most assuredly did not understandthe ramifications of their actions when they placed their ad in theChicago Tribune on April 27, 1863.The correspondence craze theirad sparked sent a message to the people of that era and ours that menand women will not be contained by conditions or by society s restric-tions when it comes to courting.The war that caused these two sol-diers to be in Nashville, Tennessee, kept them from the handsomeand respectable ladies of the North.By 1863, they were willing touse correspondence to aid them in their search for fun, love, or mat-rimony. Like M.Debray and Monte Cristo, many Northernerssought and found innovative methods to replace social structuresdestroyed by the exigencies of war.NOTES1.M.Debray and Monte Cristo, Wanted Correspondence, ChicagoTribune, April 27, 1863; Chicago Tribune, January 9, 1865. Richard.qxd 8/29/2003 1:28 PM Page 169CORRESPONDENCE ADS 1692.Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of theUnion (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1952), 153.3.Timothy Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and theCommercialization of Sex, 1790 1920 (New York: W.W.Norton, 1992), 102,114.4.Soldiers ads continued to appear through the duration of the war, butthe high mark was reached in August 1863 with eighty-six ads and 138advertisers for the month.See the Chicago Tribune, April to August 1863.5.Jan Lewis, Motherhood and the Construction of the Male Citizen inthe United States, 1750 1850, in Constructions of the Self, edited byGeorge Levine (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 148.6.Bob Wilson, Frank White, Charley Lang, and Harry Case, WantedCorrespondence, Chicago Tribune, January 28, 1865; Sergeant A., Matrimonial, New York Herald, February 12, 1864; Karen Lystra,Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 122 24.Onnineteenth-century feminine ideals, see Barbara Welter, DimityConvictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens:Ohio University Press, 1976); Nancy Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: Woman s Sphere in New England, 1780 1835 (New Haven, Conn.: YaleUniversity Press, 1977); Carl N.Degler, At Odds: Women and the Family inAmerica from the Revolution to the Present (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1980); Mary P.Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family inOneida County, New York, 1790 1865 (New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1981); Barbara Leslie Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: Women,Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century America (Middletown,Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1981).7.Degler, At Odds, 6 8; How to Behave: A Pocket Manual of RepublicanEtiquette, and Guide to Correct Personal Habits (New York: Fowler andWells, 1856), 15, 42, 48, 81.8.John F.Kasson, Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990), 43, 53, 60, 258;Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830 1870 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale UniversityPress, 1982), 193.9 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.By pub-lishing the soldiers ads, the editors introduced them to womenand created a buffer between the two parties that lessened thevulgarity that a face-to-face introduction would have produced.Desperate for communication with the opposite sex, soldiers andwomen improvised during a wartime situation that allowed neitherthe time nor the opportunity to follow all the rules of etiquette.Byusing the editors as a third party, and by meeting on the middleground provided in the Want ads, however, they maintained atleast a semblance of respectability.Second, the ads present a new perspective on the women wholived during the Civil War and after.Women who participated inplacing and answering ads most probably did not consider them-selves to be anything but respectable. A minority of women, suchas Favorite, may have had less virtuous motives than simply findinga true friend or mate, but, overall, the women who placed ads didso with the confidence that they were doing nothing wrong.Whetherwomen composed these advertisements or answered requests inorder to pass dreary days, to express their patriotism, to meetprospective mates, or even to have a wicked adventure, their partic-ipation suggests that they were more aggressive than modern con-ceptions of the true woman construct implies.Moreover, theirparticipation in the correspondence craze and Okker s argument thatwomen carried on a dialogue between editors and readers broadensour understanding of women s seemingly bold actions during the war.Women may have been stretching the gender boundaries, or, asOkker suggests, they may have been operating well within theirprovince of influence.The ads, therefore, establish a less restricted Richard.qxd 8/29/2003 1:28 PM Page 168168 BUSY HANDSview of Victorian women, one that shows them acting more assertive-ly in their relations with men.60Third, and most important perhaps, these ads allowed the soldiersto avoid sinking irreparably into the military world.Volunteers placedand answered ads because they yearned for the middle-class valuesthey left behind in their communities.They respected the family andthe responsibilities of the home, viewing them as benefits of man-hood.The ads show that the soldiers were receptive to the domesticimages the aid societies were sending them and that the familymodel was important enough to them that they sought it on theirown.The ads requesting the companionship of a kind friend and aloving heart or gentlemen equally endowed express the ideal of acompanionate marriage.Advertisers obviously meant to catch some-one s eye, so some ads appear a bit boastful.But the men advertisingfor ladies of a good reputation and unblemished characters or thewomen wishing for intelligent and affectionate men listed traitsthey honestly looked for in prospective mates.Through the ads, sol-diers were reaching out for the images of morality and propriety thatfemales had been projecting throughout the war in their work in theaid societies.61M.Debray and Monte Cristo most assuredly did not understandthe ramifications of their actions when they placed their ad in theChicago Tribune on April 27, 1863.The correspondence craze theirad sparked sent a message to the people of that era and ours that menand women will not be contained by conditions or by society s restric-tions when it comes to courting.The war that caused these two sol-diers to be in Nashville, Tennessee, kept them from the handsomeand respectable ladies of the North.By 1863, they were willing touse correspondence to aid them in their search for fun, love, or mat-rimony. Like M.Debray and Monte Cristo, many Northernerssought and found innovative methods to replace social structuresdestroyed by the exigencies of war.NOTES1.M.Debray and Monte Cristo, Wanted Correspondence, ChicagoTribune, April 27, 1863; Chicago Tribune, January 9, 1865. Richard.qxd 8/29/2003 1:28 PM Page 169CORRESPONDENCE ADS 1692.Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of theUnion (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1952), 153.3.Timothy Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and theCommercialization of Sex, 1790 1920 (New York: W.W.Norton, 1992), 102,114.4.Soldiers ads continued to appear through the duration of the war, butthe high mark was reached in August 1863 with eighty-six ads and 138advertisers for the month.See the Chicago Tribune, April to August 1863.5.Jan Lewis, Motherhood and the Construction of the Male Citizen inthe United States, 1750 1850, in Constructions of the Self, edited byGeorge Levine (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 148.6.Bob Wilson, Frank White, Charley Lang, and Harry Case, WantedCorrespondence, Chicago Tribune, January 28, 1865; Sergeant A., Matrimonial, New York Herald, February 12, 1864; Karen Lystra,Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 122 24.Onnineteenth-century feminine ideals, see Barbara Welter, DimityConvictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens:Ohio University Press, 1976); Nancy Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: Woman s Sphere in New England, 1780 1835 (New Haven, Conn.: YaleUniversity Press, 1977); Carl N.Degler, At Odds: Women and the Family inAmerica from the Revolution to the Present (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1980); Mary P.Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family inOneida County, New York, 1790 1865 (New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1981); Barbara Leslie Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: Women,Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century America (Middletown,Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1981).7.Degler, At Odds, 6 8; How to Behave: A Pocket Manual of RepublicanEtiquette, and Guide to Correct Personal Habits (New York: Fowler andWells, 1856), 15, 42, 48, 81.8.John F.Kasson, Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990), 43, 53, 60, 258;Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830 1870 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale UniversityPress, 1982), 193.9 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]