“Do you want to throw yourself into the jaws of death. … you obstinate, ungovernable piece of marble!”: Self-Sacrifice as Self-Affirmation in Augusta Jane Evans’s Macaria; or, Altars of Sacrifice

AZELINA FLINT University of East Anglia “Do you want to throw yourself into the jaws of death. . . . you obstinate, ungovernable piece of marble!”: Self-Sacrifice as Self-Affirmation in Augusta Jane Evans’s Macaria; or, Altars of Sacrifice AUGUSTA JANE EVANS’S MACARIA IS PREMISED UPON A CENTRAL PARADOX. Although written in defense of the Confederacy, the novel simultaneously contests one its most fundamental values: the subordination of women to paternal authority. First published in 1864, before the end of the Civil War, by Confederate publishers West & Johnston, the book was dedicated to “the army of the Southern Confederacy” (frontispiece). However, Evans composed the novel while working as a nurse in Camp Beulah (Riepma 100)—a role that had been widely considered to be improperly masculine for the southern woman (Faust, “Altars” 1215-16). Macaria’s defense of the Confederacy requires Confederate women to transform society through their superior moral values. Faust notes that at the outbreak of the Civil War, the passive role of women, who were required to transform Confederate soldiers from “vagabonds” into “gentlemen of honor,” became increasingly unsatisfying for women (1204). Faust examines the life writing of many southern women who expressed frustration at their inability to contribute directly to the war effort and claims that many turned to writing, volunteer work, and relief associations as a direct consequence of this frustration (1204-06). The lack of a defined social role led women to reconceive suffering and loss as their contribution to the battlefield. Bell Irvin Wiley claims that the journals of many southern women link their experience of suffering to the work of Divine Providence, which they believed would ultimately finds its apotheosis in a Confederate victory (156). Evans’s Macaria 458 Azelina Flint supports this view, but transforms emotional sacrifice into an active rather than a passive role. Macaria’s heroines, Irene Huntingdon and Electra Grey, relinquish self-fulfillment as a sacrificial offering for the good of the Confederacy. Both women send their loved ones to war: Irene encourages her father, Leonard Huntingdon, to enlist (301), and both support Colonel Russell Aubrey (Electra’s cousin and Irene’s lover) in his decision to pursue active service (329, 362). Irene likens herself to the mythological figure of “Macaria” who redeemed Athens by “self-immolation” as a human “sacrifice upon the altar of the gods” (329). Electra labors over a painting titled “Modern Macaria” at the novel’s close, which she claims is the “first offering of Southern Art” (409). However, despite Electra’s and Irene’s commitments to self-sacrifice as a means of preserving the Confederacy, both heroines attempt to broaden the social responsibilities of women by creating a new school of Southern Art. Irene provides the patronage for this proposed school, claiming that a female “Renaissance” supported by “the planters of the Confederacy” will emancipate the masses from their “gross utilitarianism” (409, 410). Irene hopes to preserve the agrarian social framework of the South, while compensating for its mercenary values and lack of culture by cultivating an appreciation for the arts. Electra supports this goal by attempting to create a Southern School of Design where “the useful, the practical,andthebeautiful are not opposed” (357), allowing art to become “popularized” and “thrown open to the masses” (410). The cultural elevation of the white southern masses is portrayed as a way of civilizing the slaveholding system. But in empowering women to lead a revolutionary movement of art and aesthetics, Evans unwittingly undermines the very ideology of self-sacrifice that the novel promotes. Critics such as Riepma speculate that the contradiction between Evans’sideologyofself-sacrificeandhervisionoffeminineself-assertion reflect the pressure that she was under from men to relinquish her own ambitions (108). However, this reading does not engage with the conceptual contradictions that were at the heart Evans’s personal identity. Brenda Ayres has defined Evans’s social and political views as inherently dualistic. While Evans opposed female suffrage, she freely advised both political and military leaders throughout the Civil War (4-5). She also actively pursued publication in the North, despite her commitment to the Confederate cause (Homestead 669). Indeed, the 459 “Do you want to throw yourself into the jaws of death” New York Derby...