What do you think?
Rate this book
Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South
In this richly detailed and imaginatively researched study, Victoria Bynum investigates "unruly" women in central North Carolina before and during the Civil War. Analyzing the complex and interrelated impact of gender, race, class, and region on the lives of black and white women, she shows how their diverse experiences and behavior reflected and influenced the changing social order and political economy of the state and region. Her work expands our knowledge of black and white women by studying them outside the plantation setting.
Bynum searched local and state court records, public documents, and manuscript collections to locate and document the lives of these otherwise ordinary, obscure women. Some appeared in court as abused, sometimes abusive, wives, as victims and sometimes perpetrators of violent assaults, or as participants in ilicit, interracial relationships. During the Civil War, women freqently were cited for theft, trespassing, or rioting, usually in an effort to gain goods made scarce by war. Some women were charged with harboring evaders or deserters of the Confederacy, an act that reflected their conviction that the Confederacy was destroying them.
These politically powerless unruly women threatened to disrupt the underlying social structure of the Old South, which depended on the services and cooperation of all women. Bynum examines the effects of women's social and sexual behavior on the dominant society and shows the ways in which power flowed between private and public spheres. Whether wives or unmarried, enslaved or free, women were active agents of the society's ordering and dissolution.
Bynum searched local and state court records, public documents, and manuscript collections to locate and document the lives of these otherwise ordinary, obscure women. Some appeared in court as abused, sometimes abusive, wives, as victims and sometimes perpetrators of violent assaults, or as participants in ilicit, interracial relationships. During the Civil War, women freqently were cited for theft, trespassing, or rioting, usually in an effort to gain goods made scarce by war. Some women were charged with harboring evaders or deserters of the Confederacy, an act that reflected their conviction that the Confederacy was destroying them.
These politically powerless unruly women threatened to disrupt the underlying social structure of the Old South, which depended on the services and cooperation of all women. Bynum examines the effects of women's social and sexual behavior on the dominant society and shows the ways in which power flowed between private and public spheres. Whether wives or unmarried, enslaved or free, women were active agents of the society's ordering and dissolution.
250 pages, Paperback
First published May 18, 1992
8 people are currently reading
278 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 11, 2019
So surreal to read some of my ancestors' names in this insightful study on how women were treated in the antebellum South, specifically through the lens of race and class. This book is about 'deviant' women–those who behaved outside the restrictive norms of the South: sexual activity outside marriage or across color lines; the pursuit of power and justice in marriages (particularly regarding domestic abuse and property rights); individual and collective resistance to classist and racist legal policies and protest against the targeting of impoverished citizens and people of color by the Confederacy during the Civil War. While this was a revelatory read in many respects, I found its greatest value to be in its detailed footnotes and lengthy list of resources that I'm eager to explore further.
August 18, 2017
Don't let the title put you off this book. It sounds dry and academic, but this is a very entertaining and informative book about the 19th century (mostly) bad girls of North Carolina, where court records were plentiful and well-maintained to show that our great-grandmothers were likely not as prim and well-behaved as our parents might like us to believe.
July 30, 2020
In an interesting twist, I've now had the pleasure of reading this excellent book which came out during my undergraduate college years. I'd heard the book mentioned and discussed multiple times in those years as a history major and while undertaking a masters in US history. Yet, while I'd read excerpts, this was my first time through the entire book.
In short, the book is both more and less than I had expected.
The primary problem with the book, in my judgment, is that the scope of the study does not match up with the breath of the title. Professor Bynum focused upon four different counties in North Carolina which she argues contain the elements making up the broader pre-Civil War American South. Such an assertion stands out as a significant overstatement. I am a proponent of these sort of localized and comparative historical studies, but the sample should not be billed as representing the entire Old South. That does not mean her conclusions are unfounded, but I would have reflected this more modest (even if impressive) scope of the study in the title.
Dr. Bynum researched and wrote this book after studies of American slavery in the 1960s and 1970s and as women's history was still an emerging field. That her argument would have been rather fresh and bold at that time is something a person writing, as I am, with a good knowledge of the scholarship in these areas through 2020, must keep in mind. Thus, we should duly note the degree to which her arguments have been picked up my later books and articles.
This book focuses on 3 types of southern women who broke with convention: (1) those "women who publicly complained about misbehaving husbands or other male household members whom they accused of abusing male prerogatives of power"; (2) "those who defined the rules of society be engaging in forbidden social and sexual behavior:' and (3) "women who implicitly defied the authority of the Confederate state during the Civil War." (p. 1). She accomplishes her task though the seemingly now trite lens of race, class, and gender.
In short, each type of woman - whether white or black, free or enslaved - broken with societal conventions Bynum fairly labels as being supported by the male hierarch of the antebellum south. This plays out through divorce cases based on abuse, abandonments, sexual relations outside of the marriage bond, as well as though various legal systems where the state government punished women who strayed from their expected roles.
This included prosecution for fornication, adultery, illegitimate births, running brothels and disorderly houses catering to an interracial clientele, and forced apprenticeship of illegitimate children. Notably, this would have included children born to white women who had free black men as their husbands and free black women whose husband were enslaved African American men, as neither type of marriage was legally recognized.
Finally, she traces the storyline into the inner civil war inside North Carolina and other southern states. North Carolina had the highest rate of desertion of any Confederate state, and the wives, mothers, and daughters of these men often supported them with food, rioted for fair prices at grain mills, and otherwise defied North Carolina's succeeded state government.
As I noted before, Bynum's book sets out a type of analysis with which later books on related topics have in large part seemed to agree. Yet, her book is worthwhile and useful reading for any student of the American south prior to the Civil War.
In short, the book is both more and less than I had expected.
The primary problem with the book, in my judgment, is that the scope of the study does not match up with the breath of the title. Professor Bynum focused upon four different counties in North Carolina which she argues contain the elements making up the broader pre-Civil War American South. Such an assertion stands out as a significant overstatement. I am a proponent of these sort of localized and comparative historical studies, but the sample should not be billed as representing the entire Old South. That does not mean her conclusions are unfounded, but I would have reflected this more modest (even if impressive) scope of the study in the title.
Dr. Bynum researched and wrote this book after studies of American slavery in the 1960s and 1970s and as women's history was still an emerging field. That her argument would have been rather fresh and bold at that time is something a person writing, as I am, with a good knowledge of the scholarship in these areas through 2020, must keep in mind. Thus, we should duly note the degree to which her arguments have been picked up my later books and articles.
This book focuses on 3 types of southern women who broke with convention: (1) those "women who publicly complained about misbehaving husbands or other male household members whom they accused of abusing male prerogatives of power"; (2) "those who defined the rules of society be engaging in forbidden social and sexual behavior:' and (3) "women who implicitly defied the authority of the Confederate state during the Civil War." (p. 1). She accomplishes her task though the seemingly now trite lens of race, class, and gender.
In short, each type of woman - whether white or black, free or enslaved - broken with societal conventions Bynum fairly labels as being supported by the male hierarch of the antebellum south. This plays out through divorce cases based on abuse, abandonments, sexual relations outside of the marriage bond, as well as though various legal systems where the state government punished women who strayed from their expected roles.
This included prosecution for fornication, adultery, illegitimate births, running brothels and disorderly houses catering to an interracial clientele, and forced apprenticeship of illegitimate children. Notably, this would have included children born to white women who had free black men as their husbands and free black women whose husband were enslaved African American men, as neither type of marriage was legally recognized.
Finally, she traces the storyline into the inner civil war inside North Carolina and other southern states. North Carolina had the highest rate of desertion of any Confederate state, and the wives, mothers, and daughters of these men often supported them with food, rioted for fair prices at grain mills, and otherwise defied North Carolina's succeeded state government.
As I noted before, Bynum's book sets out a type of analysis with which later books on related topics have in large part seemed to agree. Yet, her book is worthwhile and useful reading for any student of the American south prior to the Civil War.
December 21, 2023
This book will always have a place on my research shelf. It is informative and I highly recommend reading it. It is also a reminder of the struggles women have endured to perceiver throughout history. Thanks to patriarchy, greed and the male ego feeling small some women still endure these same struggles even in the year 2023. The words written in this book are a reminder that we should all teach our daughters to be strong, independent, seek education whenever possible and stand up for what is right no matter what. We need to teach our sons to embrace the gifts that women of all walks of life hold deep within. We need to look at who in our government is enticing our votes and vote accordingly so we retain all we have gained because of the women who have suffered on our behalf. Equality, respect and honor are precious we must always remember to hold our heads high.
May 4, 2018
The particulars have changed, but we are basically fighting the same battles.
March 29, 2020
Informative book about sexual and social control in North Carolina in the 1860s. Very interesting.
June 23, 2024
Really wonderful study of how women transgressed and the societal response aimed at preserving the hierarchy.
April 28, 2011
text for Jeff and Jack Am Hist (Hist 5XX?)
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews