Women Writers and Journalists in the Nineteenth-Century South by Jonathan Daniel Wells (review)

Historians of women’s history work tirelessly to recover and recontextualize women’s experiences and contributions to society. Focusing on periodicals authored, edited, and read by southern women, Jonathan Daniel Wells stresses that previously neglected data about women’s publications reveal valuable insights into the lives and ideologies of nineteenth-century southerners. Although many periodicals were short-lived, hundreds of newspapers and magazines were founded in response to technological advances and increased demand. Wells argues that further analysis of women’s journalistic efforts is necessary to reveal how southern publications helped lay a foundation for women’s public political action.

Women Writers and Journalists in the Nineteenth-Century South is structured by two main arguments. First, women’s involvement in publishing significantly contributed to the southern movement for women’s rights. Second, acts of publication negate gendered public/private sphere divisions that regulated women to private domestic spaces. Perhaps the most significant contribution of this volume is the presentation of quantitative data from extensive archival research that reveals trends in the quantity and content of southern women’s publications. Wells chronicles the founding of southern periodicals; popular article themes; author frequency; and business information including circulation, revenue, and demise. This data suggests several waves of demand for women’s periodicals, including a dramatic increase in professional and amateur publications directed toward women after 1820, followed by a second spike in publications after the Civil War, and increased opportunities for African American female journalists near the turn of the twentieth century.

Wells draws a connection between nineteenth-century women’s education and periodical culture that he believes responsible for an increased acceptance of female authors. Poetry and letters were acceptable feminine acts, but as schools prepared women to be mother-teachers, women’s writing reflected increased knowledge of traditionally masculine topics, such as philosophy, science, and mathematics. Wells posits that educational advancements fueled women’s interest in journalism and politics and inspired some to enter public professions. The elevated status of women’s writing in the nineteenth-century opened opportunities for women as contributors, editors, and amateur publishers. According to Wells, if journalism prompted women’s participation in the public political process, then publications are equally important as the club movement in promoting gender equality and women’s rights. Data presented in the book supports his theory and opens new questions for future research.

The argument that women’s publications complicate widely accepted ideas about nineteenth-century gender roles is a compelling one repeated throughout the book. But statements suggesting fallacies of public/private and northern/southern cultural divisions are less developed. Wells suggests that historians exaggerate differences in regional and gendered spaces in antebellum and postbellum periods. He supports this claim by presenting northern and southern publications that articulate a similar gender ideology, stereotyping men as strong, aggressive, and intellectually superior in comparison to women, who are delicate and emotional. Wells claims this public/private split accurately describes how nineteenth-century Americans understood gender, but current scholars must recognize that women’s lives did not entirely conform to this ideal. Women’s publications are offered as proof of this fallacy.

The appeal of this argument is that it offers an alternative to the passive southern woman trope. Wells supports his thesis by focusing on political articles in women’s magazines while bypassing period poetry and prose that he found overly sentimental for modern readers. His claim that women were intellectually, politically, and publically ambitious paints an appealing image of strong Victorian women and potentially empowers a population of nineteenth-century journalists whose publications have not received scholarly attention. The weakness of his argument is that female journalists were relatively few in number, and their careers short-lived. This is evidenced by the frequency of article reprints and the short lifespan of so many magazines. But more importantly, women’s journalistic efforts were consumed almost entirely by women...