This second of two volumes continues the exploration of the history of Virginia women through the lives of exemplary and remarkable individuals. Seventeen essays written by established and emerging scholars recover the stories and voices of a diverse group of women, from the transition from slavery to freedom in the period following the Civil War through the struggle to secure rights for gay and lesbian women in the late twentieth century. Placing their subjects in their larger historical contexts, the authors show how the experiences of Virginia women varied by race, class, age, and marital status, and also across both space and time.
Some essays examine the lives of well-known women—such as Ellen Glasgow and Patsy Cline—from a new perspective. Others introduce readers to historical figures who are less familiar: freedmen schoolteacher Caroline Putnam; reformer Orra Gray Langhorne; Sadie Heath Cabaniss, the founder of professional nursing in Virginia; and Marie Kimball, an early preservationist. Essays on cotton textile workers in the late nineteenth century and home demonstration agents in the early twentieth examine women’s collective experiences in these important areas. Altogether, the essays in this collection offer readers an engaging and personal window into the experiences of women in the Old Dominion.
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CAROLINE E. JANNEY is John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War and director of the Nau Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause; Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation; Petersburg to Appomattox: The End of the War in Virginia; and Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox.