To suffer in silence: Confederate widows' grieving processes after the Civil War

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  • March 22, 2019
Creator
  • Mays, Ashley Michelle
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
Abstract
  • The destruction of the Civil War created thousands of widows in the former Confederacy. With such large-scale loss, both Southern communities and, most importantly, the widows themselves, navigated a complex grieving process that balanced community and individual needs. By studying how Confederate widows grieved, we can better understand the psychological impact of the war on southern society. In the aftermath of death, social networks and religious communities encouraged widows to follow a short, public grieving process that did not emphasize one individual's suffering over another and did not question their faith in God. Widows absorbed these messages, but reshaped them to develop their own prolonged, private grieving process in order to confront their emotions, gradually minimized their identity as a wife, and increasingly accepted the loss of their husband. During this process, widows created a new conception of their self-identity, which shaped their actions during Reconstruction.
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  • In Copyright
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  • Glatthaar, Joseph
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  • Open access
Date uploaded
  • October 11, 2010

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