Many used gender stereotypes to their advantage, gathering information about troop positions and movements from unsuspecting officers and soldiers and passing that intelligence on to the other side.Ī small group of intrepid women in the North and South went even further to challenge the cult of domesticity and the cultural norms of the 19 th century. Spies in Hoop Skirtsĭuring the Civil War, women on both sides of the conflict also participated in the world of espionage. Their service forever altered the course of American nursing and ushered in a new era of professionalism in the field. Like the female nurses seen in Mercy Street, these women came from the North and South, from different walks of life, and had varying levels of experience. Under her guidance, nursing care in the army greatly improved.īy the end of the war, between 5000-10,000 women had volunteered as nurses. She also set a number of strict and sometimes autocratic rules for her nurses. In 1861, she was appointed Superintendent of Female Nurses in the Union Army.ĭix fought for adequate resources for her nurses, butted heads with military officials and doctors, and ignored orders – earning her the nickname “Dragon Dix”. Dix had no formal medical training but was a proven social reformer with excellent organizational skills. Women like Dorothea Dix, portrayed in Mercy Street by Cherry Jones, spearheaded this wave. Countless other women joined aid societies, sewed uniforms, and raised money for the war effort. For example, with their brothers, fathers, and husbands away at war, women in the North and South ran farms and plantations, and oversaw family businesses. The war presented women with new responsibilities and duties typically considered outside the accepted norms of the time. However, the Civil War brought a number of challenges to the separate spheres model and subsequently the cult of true womanhood. Men, on the other hand, handled the world of politics, commerce, and law – the public sphere.
Women held dominion over the home and children, or the private sphere. The cult of true womanhood was part of the separate spheres philosophy. This philosophy divided the world into two different spheres of influence for men and women – public and private.
The “cult of true womanhood,” also called the “ cult of domesticity”, was an ideology developed during the early 19 th century that tied a woman’s virtue to piety, submissiveness, and domesticity.