Sex Wars: A Novel of the Turbulent Post-Civil War Period (review)

Marge Piercy's sixteenth novel demonstrates that history, like spurts of ardent feminism, eventually repeats itself. During the novel's post-Civil War time period, women scramble to find jobs that will pay living wages, and then attempt to balance work with home and volunteerism. Christian evangelists join with Congress enacting laws to control women's reproductive rights. The 1872 presidential election is swayed by crooked politicians who eliminate valid Southern votes and the election falls to the state of Florida to decide the outcome. Mix all of this with a fair amount of corporate greed and corruption leading to a major economic depression. Sound familiar?

Sex Wars is set primarily in New York City during the years 1868–1873, and includes two epilogues that encompass the years 1902 and 1915–1916. Piercy packs a plethora of events, characters, and causes into this work of historical fiction, focusing on women's rights and gender roles that are in the process of flux and transformation as the novel progresses.

Sex Wars is narrated through the voices of four primary characters: Victoria Woodhull, stockbroker, free love proponent, spiritualist, and the first woman to run for the U.S. Presidency in 1872; Freydeh Levin, a fictitious Jewish immigrant who tenaciously rises from poverty by manufacturing condoms in her kitchen; and suffragist and abolitionist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The fourth character, presented in opposition to these determined, outspoken women, is Christian zealot Anthony Comstock who, encouraged by the YMCA, believes he is answering a religious call to rid America of abortionists, birth control, and pornography. He also becomes involved in the National Reform Association that endeavors to make Christianity the official religion of the United States. Comstock, a perfectly evil feminist nemesis, has a narrow view of a woman's place, which is firmly set in the home with the man in total control. For example, Comstock is proud of his daughter because she was, "never forward, meek and mild and gentle as a female should be." Comstock has no patience for worldly women, especially those who enjoy sexual pleasures and attempt to control pregnancy and childbirth.

Piercy expertly weaves her diverse characters' lives together in a rather unique narrative structure. The novel beings in 1868 and twelve chapters alternate among Woodhull, Levin, Stanton, and Comstock. Then Piercy provides background information on all four characters in a section named "Previously," which introduces Levin's life in 1862, Stanton in 1847, Comstock in 1854, and Woodhull in 1852. The next section flashes forward to "present day" 1869 and the switching between characters continues. Piercy often ends a chapter with a character facing a dilemma, which snares the reader's interest until that character appears again several chapters later.

As expected, the four characters' lives eventually connect. Woodhull joins Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in the quest for women's suffrage and becomes a favored speaker at equal rights conventions. Comstock convinces the judicial system to send both Levin and Woodhull to prison; Levin for manufacturing condoms and Woodhull for publishing true but defamatory articles about Henry Ward Beecher in her weekly journal. She is consequently imprisoned for sending this "obscene" material through the mail. Woodhull and Levin briefly meet in prison.

The peripheral characters in Sex Wars are a "Who's Who" of the movers and shakers of the period. Financier Cornelius Vanderbilt, Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, abortionist Madame Restell, anti-slavery suffragist Lucretia Mott, and newspaper publisher Theodore Tilton and his wife, Lib, are included. Woodhull and her sister are confidants of Vanderbilt for a time, and are involved in women's suffrage with Stanton, Mott, Lib Tilton, and Anthony. Levin sells her product to Restell. In the epilogue, birth control activist Margaret Sanger and socialist feminist Emma Goldman are briefly referenced.

As in most of Piercy's novels, her focus is on women struggling in a male-dominated sphere. Piercy's manipulation of narrative is heavy-handed at times because in addition...