While existing scholarship on the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) reveals the immense influence the organization wielded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I assert that their legacy has had a broader and more insidious reach than previously believed. Through close analysis of two foundational romance novelists’ works published during the rapid escalation of the genre’s popularity, I contend that the rhetoric of the UDC shaped generations of Southerners as demonstrated through repetitions and parallels of the Lost Cause ideology found in UDC publications and sponsored materials within romance novels written by white Southern women who came of age at the height of the Daughters’ power. To foreground this, in Part One I provide historical background on the UDC, its ideology, and the Lost Cause, paying particular attention to their written works. In Part Two, I contextualize the romance novel and its history, demonstrating that its popularity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries did not merely appear from thin air; instead, romance novels have a rich history that is intertwined with and provides windows into the historical moments within which they were produced. Finally, with the historical and contextual foundations laid, I dedicate Part Three to performing literary analysis of Kathleen Woodiwiss’s Ashes in the Wind (1979) and Jennifer Blake’s Southern Rapture (1981), carefully dissecting each novel for evidence of Lost Cause rhetoric as originating from and promoted by the Daughters. In doing so, I argue that the evidence of the UDC’s influence in shaping collective memory extends far beyond that of memorials and into seemingly unrelated literature that was and continues to be read by millions of readers.
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In a discussion with my thesis advisor, Dr. Kenneth Price, he relayed a suggestion from Dr. Wendy Katz who suggested researching the influence of UDC members like Mildred Rutherford on twentieth century historical romance novels written by Southern authors who grew up reading Lost Cause rhetoric. As an avid reader of romances and member of the BookTok community, this immediately made me recall the 2023 discourse that circulated on TikTok regarding British romance author Tillie Cole’s 2019 novel Darkness Embraced. In this since pulled novel, the heir to the Texas Ku Klux Klan falls in love with the daughter of a Mexican cartel boss. This romanticization of the KKK aligned with what I found in Cox’s text regarding the work of some UDC members. With Dr. Katz’s suggestions and the 2023 discourse, it felt like we hit on something vastly exciting. Often deemed too low-brow to warrant serious academic scholarship, this genre of literature remains mostly unscrutinized. (3)
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while the racist ideas that abound throughout their writings are not original creations from the Daughters, their ardent efforts and sprawling influence ensured that entire generations received this messaging. Yet, this indoctrination did not stop there. It seeped into fiction and nonfiction, strengthening a particular narrative. A romantic South was built and propelled through reconciliation romances, which will be explored further in Part Two. Then came Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. While Mitchell herself was not a member of the UDC, she enjoyed their vigorous promotion; the Daughters even presented her with a citation for distinguished service in 1940 for her novel. Gone with the Wind was and is, undoubtedly, one of the most famous pieces of literature to promote the Lost Cause, and scholarship on this text abounds; however, the work that preceded her, with white Southern women and Daughters writing their own fiction and nonfiction stories, made romanticizing the South an over 50-year tradition by the time Mitchell published Scarlett O’Hara’s tale in 1936. While this novel’s characterization as a romance novel is debated, it is a prelude of what was to come in the 1970s and 1980s during the boom of the romance industry and the historical romances that drove it. (24)
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unlike Woodiwiss who stated that she “‘never set out to give anyone a ‘message,’” with her novels, Blake, who has written dozens of novels set in Louisiana and markets Rapture as part of her “Louisiana History” series, writes in a statement eerily similar to those by Rutherford, that, “Many people are familiar with New Orleans, but have little idea of what life is like in the remainder of the state. I have a strong need to correct this deficiency by saying, ‘Come, let me show you how we live, or how we used to live’” (qtd. in Rourke; “FAQ”).
Unfortunately, what she “shows” reflects just how pervasive the UDC and their Lost Cause campaign was and how deeply it had been entrenched throughout the South. (42)
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I analyze below two of these works – Woodiwiss’s Ashes in the Wind and Blake’s Southern Rapture – by focusing on Lost Cause topics emphasized by the UDC. These topics are: the romanticization of the South; representations of the War through characterizations of its soldiers and the reasons for the conflict; the relationships between the main couples as related to reconciliation romance themes; depictions of the formerly enslaved and the gens de couleur libres; and perceptions of Southern belles, carpetbaggers, scalawags, and the Knights of White Camelia. While I methodically compare and contrast these two novels, it is important to note that while some of these topics and tropes are apparent in Southern Rapture, they will be missing from Ashes in the Wind. (44)
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We recall Mildred Rutherford’s claim about the enslaved in The Wrongs of History Righted: “In all the history of the world no peasantry was ever better cared for, more contented or happier” (17). Never mind that, in actuality, on the farms and plantations across Louisiana enslaved individuals were poorly provided for, legally prevented from learning to read or write, and regularly subjected to horrific conditions and violence, including starvation, “beatings, burnings, rape, and bodily mutilation; public humiliation; confinement in stocks, pillories, plantation dungeons, leg shackles, and iron neck collars; and family separation” (Sacher). While the UDC, Woodiwiss, Blake, and other Lost Cause writers would dispute foundational facts about slavery—at times their novels seem designed to buttress implausible ideas about the past— the documentation of the brutality of slavery is extensive and is provided through memoirs from formerly enslaved persons, diaries from plantation owners and overseers, and photographic evidence. (60)
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In Woodiwiss’s novel, the emancipated slaves who do not remain with their former owners immediately turn to delinquency. However, in making Saul Alaina’s constant rescuer, especially from her attempted rapist, Woodiwiss does something interesting that goes against Lost Cause racism. [...] On the surface, for Woodiwiss to make Saul not only Alaina’s protector, but also the protector of her sexual virtue, seems to go against these persistent, racist characterizations; however, Saul is still positioned as in submission to Alaina. This positioning further elucidates the two roles that Black people are allowed to fill within this racist rhetoric – either they are hypersexual animals, or they are subservient to whites. (63-64)
Here's the abstract:
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