Synopses & Reviews
In this engaging study, Christine Jacobson Carter uncovers the fruitful and interesting lives of single women--and the attitudes toward them--in the bustling urban centers of nineteenth-century Savannah and Charleston.
Carter's focus is on educated, financially secure white women who joined in the culture's celebration of domesticity even though they had not married. Making effective use of contemporary fiction, advice literature, diaries, and letters to, from, and about single women, Carter shows that such women valued independence and female friendships and were in turn valued for family and community service. She also explores their attitudes toward personal fulfillment, the relationships that sustained (and sometimes tormented) them, and the impact of the Civil War as well as the southern and urban aspects of their public and private identities.
Review
"Carter's study fills an important void. She is undoubtedly right that the South's single women found fulfillment in service to their society and families. But surely too, in being put to such good uses, they often felt sadly and sorely used."--Journal of the Early Republic
Synopsis
The engaging lives that single women led in spite of (or perhaps because of) their "spinsterhood"
Synopsis
Christine Carter examines the lives of antebellum and Civil War southern women who never married, uncovering the fruitful and interesting lives of single women--and the attitudes toward them--in the bustling urban centers of nineteenth-century Savannah and Charleston.
About the Author
Christine Jacobson Carter is a visiting assistant professor of history at Emory University. She is the editor of The Diary of Dolly Lunt Burge, 1848-1879.