Synopses & Reviews
This impressively researched book tells the important but little-known story of elite southern white women's successful quest for a measure of self-reliance and independence between antebellum strictures and the restored patriarchy of Jim Crow. Profusely illustrated with the experiences of fascinating women in Virginia and North Carolina, it presents a compelling new chapter in the history of American women and of the South. As were many ideas, notions, of the ideal woman were in flux after the Civil War. While poverty added a harder edge to the search for a good marriage among some "southern belles, " other privileged white women forged identities that challenged the belle model altogether. Their private and public writings from the 1870s and 1880s suggest a widespread ethic of autonomy. Women developed new domestic skills, owned and transmitted property, worked for pay, and even pursued long-term careers. Many found a voice in a plethora of new voluntary organizations, and some southern women attained national celebrity in the literary world. During the 1890s, however, virulent racism and pressures to re-create a mythic South made these unprecedented attitudes and achievements socially untenable, and women were caught between the revived image of the southern belle and the emerging emancipated woman. Informed by myriad primary documents, Jane Turner Censer immerses us in the world of postwar southern women as they rethought and rebuilt themselves, their families, and their region during a brief but important period of relative freedom.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [281]-297) and index.