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Sep. 24th, 2015 03:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI have some conflicted feelings about Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War as history book -- it does a thing where it really wants you to feel like you're reading narrative fiction, so she has a habit of interspersing her actual historical-record scenes with novelistic statements like 'Rose sat across from Adams, surmising his thoughts,' and it doesn't FOOTNOTE things, and then you go to the back and it finally tells you what the sources are for, like, everything on page four, and everything on page five, and so on. And by then it is too late! I wanted to know where Karen Abbott got her source for that thing she stated the woman was feeling while I was reading the page, not once I hit the end and had forgotten everything I was like "??? REALLY? But ... how do you know?" about. I mean, it's quite well-researched overall, and for the most part I believe most of what she's saying, but sometimes she draws analytical conclusions in which I would like SEVERAL more 'perhapses.'
(I also wish that she had set off/distanced her quotes a little more, especially when in dialect, especially when quotes in dialect come from, i.e., a wealthy Southern woman reporting her conversations with her slaves, because there were some cringeworthy moments.)
However, that said, she does achieve her goal, because as pure entertainment, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy is GOLD. Romance! Spyjinks! Secret ciphers! Undercover agents!
Obviously my favorite story was Actual Crossdressing Drama Heroine Emma Edmonds, oh my God, I've never read about anybody whose life aligns so exactly with every single trope of romantic cross-dressing fiction. Like, I could picture exactly where to put the long flashbacks set to sad pop music. AND the kdrama wrist-grabs.
OK, so Emma Edmonds:
- runs away from home as a teenager to escape an UNWANTED ARRANGED MARRIAGE
- becomes a salesman and buys a fancy carriage and becomes QUITE A LADIES' MAN
- joins the army, along with a buddy of hers who has only known her as flash Bible salesman Frank Thompson and therefore can vouch that she is indeed QUITE THE LADIES' MAN
- meets, and falls for, a hot idealistic doctor named Jerome Robbins (no relation, presumably)
- who conveniently kept a diary so he could record sentiments like "[Frank] is an assistant in the hospital and I think well able to win and repair the hearts of those around him [...] A mystery seems to be connected with him. Hard to name."
- 'something WEIRD is definitely UP with my STRANGELY LOVABLE BRO ... but WHAT??'
- "I arose greatly refreshed after a good sound sleep on a couch with my friend Frank Thompson" YEP
- anyway then Emma decides to tell her love interest her real name and identity and he goes off and writes angrily in his journal about how he learned that in FRIENDS we may be DECEIVED, like basically that one scene in Coffee Prince, but decides not to expose her secret
- presumably awkwardness abounds because Emma transfers away to a different unit
- where she becomes a courier and SPY
- and engages in REVERSE CROSSDRESSING, 'isn't it convenient how I can DISGUISE myself as a woman to cross enemy lines and gain information! >.>'
- there's probably like four episodes here that are full of adventure and angsty romantic flashbacks FYI
- anyway then a desperate retreat is ordered and Emma volunteers to warn all the doctors and patients to flee
- and gallops desperately from hospital to hospital looking for Jerome Robbins
- but he NOBLY REFUSES to leave his patients and she has to keep on message-bearing
- and then he is captured by the enemy, and survives, but they start corresponding again
- and then a legit LOVE QUADRANGLE springs up, becauseJerome has a girlfriend back home, and meanwhile she has SAVED THE LIFE of a hot secondary love interest on the battlefield
- and then the secondary love interest becomes her tentmate and everything apparently gets very Sungkyunkwan Scandal for a while
- and Jerome's writing sulkily in his diary about how "others are receiving the devotion of one from whom we only claim friendship's attention," and "others are not void of the finer sensibilities of the human heart >:( >:( >:("
- anyway then Emma gets sick with MALARIA (for like the third time) and decides she would rather desert than be exposed, so she sneaks out half-dead in the middle of the night
- and after she's gone Jerome and Secondary Love Interest get in an ACTUAL FIGHT about her that exposes her identity to everyone else
- but it's too late to matter, she's back to living as a woman and becomes a nurse, and she and Jerome go back to exchanging wistful correspondences about What Might Have Been Though They Never Meet Again In This Life
- anyway then she goes to college and gets married and takes over an orphanage and a whole bunch of other stuff, and then ten years later she decides that she deserves a pension like everyone else, gets all her old army buddies to rally around her, knocks her desertion off the record, and becomes the first-ever woman to be recognized and financially compensated as a veteran in the U.S. Army THE END
My second-favorite was Mary Jane Bowser, former slave and undercover agent in Jefferson Davis' house, reading all his letters and passing information onto the Union through her old boss Elizabeth Van Lew, and getting completely away with it because nobody knows she's literate!
Mary Jane Bowser is not actually one of the four main women written about -- Elizabeth Van Lew is -- but I feel she really should have been. To be fair to Karen Abbott, when we saw her speak last week, she said that if Mary Jane Bowser's diary had not been destroyed in the 1940s (ARCHIVAL TRAGEDY) then significantly more of the book would have been about her, but I don't know how much I want to let Abbott entirely off the hook for framing the narrative so significantly around white women, or at least not without pointing out that it's not like it's an accident that most of the primary sources that allow for the kind of work she's doing were written by white people. But that comes straight back to the historiography questions I was complaining about above, so.
Anyway, Elizabeth Van Lew, abolitionist, quiet spinster lady and mastermind of the Richmond spy ring, is also extremely interesting. And apparently much more effective than her Confederate counterpart, Rose O'Neal Greenhowe, who did a lot of very elaborate spying with ciphers and Morse Code and seducing high-ranking Union officials, but was arrested extremely early on in the war and spent much of the rest of the war in prison, which is rather satisfying given her ragingly racist and pro-slavery sentiments.
The last of the four women that Abbott writes about is Confederate spy Belle Boyd, a teenager whom Abbott at least characterizes as very consciously creating herself into a dramatic heroine. What's most interesting about Belle Boyd, to me, is the sort of freedom in which she operates -- like, there's lots of galloping around solo on horseback carrying messages and wielding weaponry and flirting with everybody she comes across in a way that I would probably view as moderately unrealistic if I came across it in a YA novel. But apparently not! I think? Come on, Karen Abbott, FOOTNOTES!
(I also wish that she had set off/distanced her quotes a little more, especially when in dialect, especially when quotes in dialect come from, i.e., a wealthy Southern woman reporting her conversations with her slaves, because there were some cringeworthy moments.)
However, that said, she does achieve her goal, because as pure entertainment, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy is GOLD. Romance! Spyjinks! Secret ciphers! Undercover agents!
Obviously my favorite story was Actual Crossdressing Drama Heroine Emma Edmonds, oh my God, I've never read about anybody whose life aligns so exactly with every single trope of romantic cross-dressing fiction. Like, I could picture exactly where to put the long flashbacks set to sad pop music. AND the kdrama wrist-grabs.
OK, so Emma Edmonds:
- runs away from home as a teenager to escape an UNWANTED ARRANGED MARRIAGE
- becomes a salesman and buys a fancy carriage and becomes QUITE A LADIES' MAN
- joins the army, along with a buddy of hers who has only known her as flash Bible salesman Frank Thompson and therefore can vouch that she is indeed QUITE THE LADIES' MAN
- meets, and falls for, a hot idealistic doctor named Jerome Robbins (no relation, presumably)
- who conveniently kept a diary so he could record sentiments like "[Frank] is an assistant in the hospital and I think well able to win and repair the hearts of those around him [...] A mystery seems to be connected with him. Hard to name."
- 'something WEIRD is definitely UP with my STRANGELY LOVABLE BRO ... but WHAT??'
- "I arose greatly refreshed after a good sound sleep on a couch with my friend Frank Thompson" YEP
- anyway then Emma decides to tell her love interest her real name and identity and he goes off and writes angrily in his journal about how he learned that in FRIENDS we may be DECEIVED, like basically that one scene in Coffee Prince, but decides not to expose her secret
- presumably awkwardness abounds because Emma transfers away to a different unit
- where she becomes a courier and SPY
- and engages in REVERSE CROSSDRESSING, 'isn't it convenient how I can DISGUISE myself as a woman to cross enemy lines and gain information! >.>'
- there's probably like four episodes here that are full of adventure and angsty romantic flashbacks FYI
- anyway then a desperate retreat is ordered and Emma volunteers to warn all the doctors and patients to flee
- and gallops desperately from hospital to hospital looking for Jerome Robbins
- but he NOBLY REFUSES to leave his patients and she has to keep on message-bearing
- and then he is captured by the enemy, and survives, but they start corresponding again
- and then a legit LOVE QUADRANGLE springs up, becauseJerome has a girlfriend back home, and meanwhile she has SAVED THE LIFE of a hot secondary love interest on the battlefield
- and then the secondary love interest becomes her tentmate and everything apparently gets very Sungkyunkwan Scandal for a while
- and Jerome's writing sulkily in his diary about how "others are receiving the devotion of one from whom we only claim friendship's attention," and "others are not void of the finer sensibilities of the human heart >:( >:( >:("
- anyway then Emma gets sick with MALARIA (for like the third time) and decides she would rather desert than be exposed, so she sneaks out half-dead in the middle of the night
- and after she's gone Jerome and Secondary Love Interest get in an ACTUAL FIGHT about her that exposes her identity to everyone else
- but it's too late to matter, she's back to living as a woman and becomes a nurse, and she and Jerome go back to exchanging wistful correspondences about What Might Have Been Though They Never Meet Again In This Life
- anyway then she goes to college and gets married and takes over an orphanage and a whole bunch of other stuff, and then ten years later she decides that she deserves a pension like everyone else, gets all her old army buddies to rally around her, knocks her desertion off the record, and becomes the first-ever woman to be recognized and financially compensated as a veteran in the U.S. Army THE END
My second-favorite was Mary Jane Bowser, former slave and undercover agent in Jefferson Davis' house, reading all his letters and passing information onto the Union through her old boss Elizabeth Van Lew, and getting completely away with it because nobody knows she's literate!
Mary Jane Bowser is not actually one of the four main women written about -- Elizabeth Van Lew is -- but I feel she really should have been. To be fair to Karen Abbott, when we saw her speak last week, she said that if Mary Jane Bowser's diary had not been destroyed in the 1940s (ARCHIVAL TRAGEDY) then significantly more of the book would have been about her, but I don't know how much I want to let Abbott entirely off the hook for framing the narrative so significantly around white women, or at least not without pointing out that it's not like it's an accident that most of the primary sources that allow for the kind of work she's doing were written by white people. But that comes straight back to the historiography questions I was complaining about above, so.
Anyway, Elizabeth Van Lew, abolitionist, quiet spinster lady and mastermind of the Richmond spy ring, is also extremely interesting. And apparently much more effective than her Confederate counterpart, Rose O'Neal Greenhowe, who did a lot of very elaborate spying with ciphers and Morse Code and seducing high-ranking Union officials, but was arrested extremely early on in the war and spent much of the rest of the war in prison, which is rather satisfying given her ragingly racist and pro-slavery sentiments.
The last of the four women that Abbott writes about is Confederate spy Belle Boyd, a teenager whom Abbott at least characterizes as very consciously creating herself into a dramatic heroine. What's most interesting about Belle Boyd, to me, is the sort of freedom in which she operates -- like, there's lots of galloping around solo on horseback carrying messages and wielding weaponry and flirting with everybody she comes across in a way that I would probably view as moderately unrealistic if I came across it in a YA novel. But apparently not! I think? Come on, Karen Abbott, FOOTNOTES!
no subject
Date: 2015-09-24 09:08 pm (UTC)OH MY GOD WHERE IS THE MOVIE.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-25 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-26 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-24 10:42 pm (UTC)Also I think Mary Jane Bowser got a book written about her? Like a fiction book. Must locate.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-26 04:33 pm (UTC)Emma Edmonds wrote her memoirs which I clearly need to hunt down at some point. Sadly, I don't think Elizabeth Van Lew did, though her diary is in an archive (I think.)
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Date: 2015-09-24 11:12 pm (UTC)The sheer amount of information and people connected to Van Lew was amazing and also clear that she was a hub but not the center as they were all doing their thing. I loved that so much, how sometimes the spies didn't know the spies. And that's fascinating to know why we didn't know more about Mary Jane, I agree, I wanted to read more about her.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-26 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-25 03:55 am (UTC)I'm not sure I wanted that to happen.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-26 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-26 02:33 am (UTC)I can't believe they haven't made a Disney movie about Emma Edmonds. THE ENTIRE MOVIE HAS ALREADY WRITTEN ITSELF?
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Date: 2015-09-26 04:44 pm (UTC)