Elizabeth Anne Payne (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031731
- eISBN:
- 9781617031748
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031731.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
Anne Firor Scott’s The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830–1930 stirred a keen interest among historians in both the approach and message of her book. Using women’s diaries, letters, and ...
More
Anne Firor Scott’s The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830–1930 stirred a keen interest among historians in both the approach and message of her book. Using women’s diaries, letters, and other personal documents, Scott brought to life southern women as wives and mothers, as members of their communities and churches, and as sometimes sassy but rarely passive agents. She brilliantly demonstrated that the familiar dichotomies of the personal versus the public, the private versus the civic, which had dominated traditional scholarship about men, could not be made to fit women’s lives. In doing so, Scott helped to open up vast terrains of women’s experiences for historical scholarship. This book, based on papers presented at the University of Mississippi’s annual Chancellor Porter L. Fortune Symposium in Southern History, brings together chapters by scholars at the forefront of contemporary scholarship on American women’s history. Each regards The Southern Lady as having shaped her historical perspective and inspired her choice of topics in important ways. These chapters demonstrate that the power of imagination and scholarly courage manifested in Scott’s and other early American women historians’ work has blossomed into a gracious plentitude.Less
Anne Firor Scott’s The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830–1930 stirred a keen interest among historians in both the approach and message of her book. Using women’s diaries, letters, and other personal documents, Scott brought to life southern women as wives and mothers, as members of their communities and churches, and as sometimes sassy but rarely passive agents. She brilliantly demonstrated that the familiar dichotomies of the personal versus the public, the private versus the civic, which had dominated traditional scholarship about men, could not be made to fit women’s lives. In doing so, Scott helped to open up vast terrains of women’s experiences for historical scholarship. This book, based on papers presented at the University of Mississippi’s annual Chancellor Porter L. Fortune Symposium in Southern History, brings together chapters by scholars at the forefront of contemporary scholarship on American women’s history. Each regards The Southern Lady as having shaped her historical perspective and inspired her choice of topics in important ways. These chapters demonstrate that the power of imagination and scholarly courage manifested in Scott’s and other early American women historians’ work has blossomed into a gracious plentitude.
Laura F. Edwards
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031731
- eISBN:
- 9781617031748
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031731.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter argues that southern women participated more actively in the slave South’s public culture than we have realized and that those experiences are crucial in understanding changes in women’s ...
More
This chapter argues that southern women participated more actively in the slave South’s public culture than we have realized and that those experiences are crucial in understanding changes in women’s roles after the Civil War. The chapter tells the story of women—not just plantation mistresses but also enslaved women, free black women, and white women of poor to modest means—who were constrained, but not immobilized, by the patriarchal order. These women were crucial in creating and regulating social relationships and customary norms that were central in governing the public order in the antebellum period.Less
This chapter argues that southern women participated more actively in the slave South’s public culture than we have realized and that those experiences are crucial in understanding changes in women’s roles after the Civil War. The chapter tells the story of women—not just plantation mistresses but also enslaved women, free black women, and white women of poor to modest means—who were constrained, but not immobilized, by the patriarchal order. These women were crucial in creating and regulating social relationships and customary norms that were central in governing the public order in the antebellum period.
