The Plantation Mistress (1982)

by Catherine Clinton

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This study of the much-mythologized Southern belle offers a serious look at the lives of white women and their harsh and restricted place in the slave society before the Civil War. Drawing on the diaries, letters, and memoirs of hundreds of planter wives and daughters, the author sets before us the daily life of the plantation mistress and her ambiguous intermediary position in the hierarchy between slave and master.… (more)

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Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (mrstreme)
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Tara Revisited: Women, War, & the Plantation Legend by Catherine Clinton (mrstreme)

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#456 in our old book database. Not rated.

villemezbrown | Aug 29, 2023 |

An interesting view of the strength of women in the south. (

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susan3 | Oct 26, 2012 |

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1982

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American South

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Epigraph

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are no so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

--George Eliot, Middlemarch

Dedication

This book is dedicated to
Claudene Clinton
Bobbie Simms
Barbara Levy Uhlmann
with appreciation
for their love,
and inspiration,
which made this volume possible.

First words

The pageantry of days gone by – chivalrous cavaliers and belles in hoop skirts – lives in memory for many Southerners. [Preface]

In 1620 ninety maids landed in Virginia, a gift from the proprietors to the colony.

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English

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This study of the much-mythologized Southern belle offers a serious look at the lives of white women and their harsh and restricted place in the slave society before the Civil War. Drawing on the diaries, letters, and memoirs of hundreds of planter wives and daughters, the author sets before us the daily life of the plantation mistress and her ambiguous intermediary position in the hierarchy between slave and master.

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