By Elizabeth A. Topping
When we think of people with physical disabilities during the Civil War period, we tend to bring to mind images of soldiers. Surgeons performed a staggering number of amputations during four years of hostilities.
But soldiers were not the only people who endured the physical pain and mental scarring of the loss of a limb.
The young lady in this portrait may have been born without her arm. Or she may have lost it to a congenital malformation or disease, or she may have received an industrial accident, her sleeve caught in machinery. In the 19th century, the most common treatment for severe limb injury was amputation.
A single woman who had lost a body part faced a seemingly impossible position. Physical appearance was of great importance regardless of class. Impairment obstructed a woman’s pathway to marriage, the accepted course to social and financial security. She would have likely faced significant pressure from family and friends to use a prosthesis to camouflage her disability in the hopes of attracting a future husband. Also, she had to use caution not to deceive potential suitors if she used an artificial limb to pass as undiminished, as an unfortunate exposure would inevitably result in scandal.
Her disfigurement could have crushed her spirit, her shame making her unfit to compete within fashionable society since she no longer conformed to the beautiful, physically complete, feminine ideal. Instead, she embraced who she was and not what the social order wanted her to be: a two-armed girl.
Elizabeth A. Topping has been a reenactor and living historian for more than 25 years. Her collection and research work focuses on the social and material history of the Civil War years. Her initial study centered on the subject of prostitution, which ultimately led to research on abortion, birth control and childbirth, female job opportunities and working conditions, medical treatment for poor and insane women, class and sex restrictions imposed on 19th-century females, the roles actresses played in society, and the parts women played in aiding the war efforts. Elizabeth enjoys sharing her expertise and artifacts for use in television programs, museums, magazines, conferences and roundtables.
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