• Reorienting “Lost” Time: Reading Godey’s Lady’s Book in the American Civil War
• Charlotte Hand (bio)

Since Frank Luther Mott disparaged Godey’s Lady’s Book, the most influential women’s magazine of the American antebellum period, for being “absolutely untouched by the great conflict” that was the American Civil War, scholars have often claimed that the publication was apolitical during the sectional crisis.¹ Susan Belasco, for one, argues that Sarah Hale, Godey’s editor from 1837 to 1877, “made no reference to the Civil War throughout the years of the conflict.”² Scholars who have acknowledged the political impulse of Godey’s during the sectional tensions nonetheless suggest that the magazine only responded indirectly to them, never actually addressing partisan politics. Joseph Michael Sommers claims that in the years before the Civil War. Hale “appropriated seemingly innocuous sentimental modes and devices already present in the magazine” to rally her female readers against the secession of the southern states from the Republic.³ Despite recognizing Hale’s obvious call for national unity in her promotion of Thanksgiving in Godey’s, Patricia Okker writes off this effort for political peace as “idealistic and naïve.”⁴ It should be noted, too, that neither of these scholars examined Godey’s political effort during the Civil War. Yet the studies of Sommers and Okker demonstrate that Godey’s was very much concerned with the sectional tensions. It is high time, then, to re-examine Mott’s influential claim.

These scholars’ dismissal of Godey’s participation in the partisan politics of the Civil War, whether as a refusal or as an oblique and thus politically ineffectual campaign, may be traced to two intersecting critical inclinations. First, an understanding of the Civil War as a battle between Union and Confederate forces over ideological differences and, eventually, slavery. Second, a rigid interpretation of the ideology of separate spheres as a spatial phenomenon. A predominant framework in criticism of nineteenth-century American literature during the mid-1960s, the ideology of separate spheres, [End Page 172] which determined that the proper roles of women and men were within the private and public domains respectively, has retained a spatial focus despite extensive revisions since. The metaphor of the separate spheres has also continued to occupy discussions on the ideology’s counterpart, the Cult of True Womanhood, an idealized image of the wife and mother as a domestic Madonna, and which set the social, aesthetic and political terms for the definition and performance of white middle-class womanhood. Indeed, modern scholars who have argued that the reality of white middle-class American women was vastly different from these ideologies that they themselves subscribed to—that the private sphere of white middle-class womanhood often converged with the public realm—relied on a spatial conception of these ideologies to demonstrate their claim.⁵ The spatial focus of their critique of these gender ideologies has led scholars to overlook Godey’s political attempt to ease sectional tensions. According to these strands of scholarship, Godey’s had refused to let its female readers venture into the male sphere of partisan politics and war—in other words, to keep the respective spheres of men and women separate, Godey’s had remained spatially removed from the Civil War. The current trajectory of nineteenth-century American studies does little to promote a re-examination of this assessment. Rightly recognizing that issues of race, sexuality, class, religion and other variables complicate the paradigm of the separate spheres, scholars of American studies have sought to move beyond a binary understanding of nineteenth-century America, rendering the ideology of separate spheres and True Womanhood obsolete concepts in the process. Consequently, publications like Godey’s that appear to promote the rigid gender demarcation of nineteenth-century American society that were aimed at white middle-class and elite women have garnered little critical interest from modern scholars. Yet Godey’s popularity demonstrates that the concept of separate spheres was influential in nineteenth-century middle-class society, even if it did not effectively condition gendered behaviors. It seems premature, then, to disregard these gender ideologies. As this essay will show, revisiting these ideologies sheds light on a critical battle that...

• 重新定位“迷失”的时间：在美国内战中阅读戈迪女士的书
• 夏洛特·汉德（生物）

自从弗兰克·路德·莫特 (Frank Luther Mott) 贬低美国战前时期最有影响力的女性杂志《戈迪的女士之书》( Godey's Lady's Book )，称其“完全没有受到美国内战之大冲突的影响”，学者们经常声称该出版物在部门危机期间与政治无关. ¹苏珊·贝拉斯科（Susan Belasco）认为， 1837 年至 1877 年间戈迪的编辑莎拉·黑尔“在整个冲突期间没有提及内战”。^2承认戈迪的政治冲动的学者尽管如此，在地区紧张局势期间，这表明该杂志只是间接回应他们，从未真正解决党派政治问题。约瑟夫·迈克尔·索默斯在内战前几年声称这一点。黑尔“挪用了杂志中已经出现的看似无害的情感模式和手段”，以团结她的女性读者反对南部各州脱离共和国。^{3尽管承认黑尔在宣传}戈迪的感恩节时明确呼吁民族团结，但帕特里夏·奥克（Patricia Okker）将这种政治和平的努力描述为“理想主义和天真”。⁴还应该指出的是，这些学者都没有研究过戈迪的内战期间的政治努力。然而，Sommers 和 Okker 的研究表明，Godey's非常关注部门间的紧张关系。那么，现在是重新审视莫特有影响力的主张的时候了。

这些学者对戈迪参与内战的党派政治的不屑一顾，无论是作为拒绝还是作为一种间接的因此在政治上无效的运动，都可以追溯到两个交叉的批评倾向。首先，将内战理解为联盟和同盟军之间关于意识形态差异以及最终奴隶制的战斗。其次，将分离领域的意识形态严格解释为一种空间现象。1960 年代中期批评 19 世纪美国文学的主要框架，即不同领域的意识形态，[完第 172 页]它确定了女性和男性的适当角色分别在私人和公共领域内，尽管此后进行了广泛的修改，但仍保留了空间焦点。分离领域的隐喻也继续占据意识形态的对应物，真正的女性崇拜，一个理想化的妻子和母亲作为家庭麦当娜的形象的讨论，并为定义和定义设定了社会、美学和政治术语。白人中产阶级女性的表现。事实上，现代学者认为美国中产阶级白人女性的现实与她们自己认同的这些意识形态大不相同——白人中产阶级女性的私人领域经常与公共领域融合——依赖于空间这些意识形态的概念来证明他们的主张。⁵他们批评这些性别意识形态的空间焦点导致学者们忽视了戈迪缓解部门紧张局势的政治尝试。根据这些学术线索，戈迪拒绝让女性读者冒险进入党派政治和战争的男性领域——换句话说，为了保持男性和女性各自的领域分开，戈迪的在空间上仍然远离内战。19 世纪美国研究的当前轨迹并没有促进对这一评估的重新审视。美国研究学者正确地认识到种族、性取向、阶级、宗教和其他变量的问题使分离领域的范式复杂化，试图超越对 19 世纪美国的二元理解，呈现分离领域的意识形态和真正的女性身份过程中的过时概念。因此，像戈迪这样的出版物似乎促进了 19 世纪美国社会针对白人中产阶级和精英女性的严格的性别划分，但几乎没有引起现代学者的批判性兴趣。然而戈迪的受欢迎程度表明，独立领域的概念在 19 世纪的中产阶级社会中具有影响力，即使它没有有效地限制性别行为。那么，忽视这些性别意识形态似乎为时过早。正如本文将展示的那样，重新审视这些意识形态可以揭示一场关键的战斗......