Download or read book Gendered Strife & Confusion written by Laura F. Edwards and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the gendered dimension of political conflicts, Laura Edwards links transformations in private and public life in the era following the Civil War. Ideas about men's and women's roles within households shaped the ways groups of southerners--elite and poor, whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans--envisioned the public arena and their own places in it. By using those on the margins to define the center, Edwards demonstrates that Reconstruction was a complicated process of conflict and negotiation that lasted long beyond 1877 and involved all southerners and every aspect of life.