The Confederate Belle

The Confederate Belle
Author: Giselle Roberts
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 0826263585

"While historians have examined the struggles and challenges that confronted the Southern plantation mistress during the American Civil War, until now no one has considered the ways in which the conflict shaped the lives of elite young women, otherwise known as belles. In The Confederate Belle, Giselle Roberts uses diaries, letters, and memoirs to uncover the unique wartime experiences of young ladies in Mississippi and Louisiana. In the plantation culture of the antebellum South, belles enhanced their family's status through their appearance and accomplishments and, later, by marrying well." "During the American Civil War, a new patriotic womanhood superseded the antebellum feminine ideal. It demanded that Confederate women sacrifice everything for their beloved cause, including their men, homes, fine dresses, and social occasions, to ensure the establishment of a new nation and the preservation of elite ideas about race, class, and gender. As menfolk answered the call to arms, southern matrons had to redefine their roles as mistresses and wives. Southern belles faced a different, yet equally daunting task. After being prepared for a delightful "bellehood," young ladies were forced to reassess their traditional rite of passage into womanhood, to compromise their understanding of femininity at a pivotal time in their lives. They found themselves caught between antebellum traditions of honor and of gentility, a binary patriotic feminine ideal and wartime reality."--BOOK JACKET. Book jacket.

Growing Up Jim Crow

Growing Up Jim Crow
Author: Jennifer Lynn Ritterhouse
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2006
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 080783016X

Sheds new light on the racial etiquette of the South after the Civil War, examining what factors contributed to the unwritten rules of individual behavior for both white and black children. Simultaneous.

Scarlett's Sisters

Scarlett's Sisters
Author: Anya Jabour
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2009-11-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807887641

Scarlett's Sisters explores the meaning of nineteenth-century southern womanhood from the vantage point of the celebrated fictional character's flesh-and-blood counterparts: young, elite, white women. Anya Jabour demonstrates that southern girls and young women faced a major turning point when the Civil War forced them to assume new roles and responsibilities as independent women. Examining the lives of more than 300 girls and women between ages fifteen and twenty-five, Jabour traces the socialization of southern white ladies from early adolescence through young adulthood. Amidst the upheaval of the Civil War, Jabour shows, elite young women, once reluctant to challenge white supremacy and male dominance, became more rebellious. They adopted the ideology of Confederate independence in shaping a new model of southern womanhood that eschewed dependence on slave labor and male guidance. By tracing the lives of young white women in a society in flux, Jabour reveals how the South's old social order was maintained and a new one created as southern girls and young women learned, questioned, and ultimately changed what it meant to be a southern lady.

Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices

Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices
Author: Rebecca Sharpless
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2005-10-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807876135

Rural women comprised the largest part of the adult population of Texas until 1940 and in the American South until 1960. On the cotton farms of Central Texas, women's labor was essential. In addition to working untold hours in the fields, women shouldered most family responsibilities: keeping house, sewing clothing, cultivating and cooking food, and bearing and raising children. But despite their contributions to the southern agricultural economy, rural women's stories have remained largely untold. Using oral history interviews and written memoirs, Rebecca Sharpless weaves a moving account of women's lives on Texas cotton farms. She examines how women from varying ethnic backgrounds--German, Czech, African American, Mexican, and Anglo-American--coped with difficult circumstances. The food they cooked, the houses they kept, the ways in which they balanced field work with housework, all yield insights into the twentieth-century South. And though rural women's lives were filled with routines, many of which were undone almost as soon as they were done, each of their actions was laden with importance, says Sharpless, for the welfare of a woman's entire family depended heavily upon her efforts.

Ladies and Gentlemen on Display

Ladies and Gentlemen on Display
Author: Charlene M. Boyer Lewis
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780813920801

Written as a dissertation in history at the U. of Virginia, this study recreates the societal mores displayed at summer resorts at Virginia Springs from 1790-1860, as this was recorded in the letters and other archives of families who sojourned there. Lewis (history, Widener U.) suggests that her history provides a new insight into plantation society by recording responses to unusual events and lack of routine. She supplements the account with some analysis of the sources for the romantic and idealistic views of this culture. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Cultivating a New South

Cultivating a New South
Author: Monica Maria Tetzlaff
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2002
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781570034534

During her life she labored to educate South Carolina's African Americans, fought for women's equal participation in politics, and eventually took a role in the Socialist Party of America.".

Mississippi Women

Mississippi Women
Author: Martha H. Swain
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2010-02-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 082033393X

Some of the women are well known, others were prominent in their time but have since faded into obscurity, and a few have never received the attention they deserve."--BOOK JACKET.

Remembering Dixie

Remembering Dixie
Author: Susan T. Falck
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2019-08-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496824431

Nearly seventy years after the Civil War, Natchez, Mississippi, sold itself to Depression-era tourists as a place “Where the Old South Still Lives.” Tourists flocked to view the town’s decaying antebellum mansions, hoopskirted hostesses, and a pageant saturated in sentimental Lost Cause imagery. In Remembering Dixie: The Battle to Control Historical Memory in Natchez, Mississippi, 1865–1941, Susan T. Falck analyzes how the highly biased, white historical memories of what had been a wealthy southern hub originated from the experiences and hardships of the Civil War. These collective narratives eventually culminated in a heritage tourism enterprise still in business today. Additionally, the book includes new research on the African American community’s robust efforts to build historical tradition, most notably, the ways in which African Americans in Natchez worked to create a distinctive postemancipation identity that challenged the dominant white structure. Using a wide range of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sources—many of which have never been fully mined before—Falck reveals the ways in which black and white Natchezians of all classes, male and female, embraced, reinterpreted, and contested Lost Cause ideology. These memory-making struggles resulted in emotional, internecine conflicts that shaped the cultural character of the community and impacted the national understanding of the Old South and the Confederacy as popular culture. Natchez remains relevant today as a microcosm for our nation’s modern-day struggles with Lost Cause ideology, Confederate monuments, racism, and white supremacy. Falck reveals how this remarkable story played out in one important southern community over several generations in vivid detail and richly illustrated analysis.