The Plantation Mistress: Woman's World in the Old South
by Catherine Clinton
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Description
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.Tags
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An interesting view of the strength of women in the south.
#456 in our old book database. Not rated.
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Author Information
33+ Works 3,013 Members
Catherine Clinton is the author of Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom and Fanny Kemble's Civil Wars. Educated at Harvard, Sussex, and Princeton, She is a member of the advisory committee to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, and holds a chair in U.S. history at Queen's University Belfast.
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Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1982
- Important places
- American South
- 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 h... (show all)alf 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. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Despite our projections, all our debates, our countless investigations, we have still to transcend the legacy of slavery. We continue enthralled, surrounded by monsters and masks, condemned perhaps not to repeat history but certainly to rewrite it.
- Original language
- English
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, History, General Nonfiction, Sexuality and Gender Studies
- DDC/MDS
- 305.420975 — Society, Government, and Culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social group - Age, Gender, Ethnicity Women Social role and status of women Standard subdivisions History, geographic treatment, biography North America
- LCC
- HQ1438 .A13 .C58 — Social sciences The family. Marriage, Women and Sexuality The Family. Marriage. Women Women. Feminism
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 362
- Popularity
- 86,583
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.68)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 3
