Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household

by Thavolia Glymph

This book views the plantation household as a site of production where competing visions of gender were wielded as weapons in class struggles between black and white women. Mistresses were powerful beings in the hierarchy of slavery rather than powerless victims of the same patriarchal system responsible for the oppression of the enslaved. Glymph challenges popular depictions of plantation mistresses as "friends" and "allies" of slaves and sheds light on the political importance of ostensible private struggles, and on the political agendas at work in framing the domestic as private and household relations as personal.

Recommended by the Association of Black Women Historians.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, Civil War, American History, African American, Social Justice

296 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2003

About the author

Thavolia Glymph is an associate professor of history and African and African American studies at Duke University where she teaches courses on slavery, the U.S. South, emancipation, Reconstruction, and African American women’s history. She is the author of Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household (2008) and a coeditor of two volumes of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867 (Ser. 1, Vols. 1 and 3, 1985 and 1990), a part of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project.

(from http://www.oah.org/lectures/lecturers...)

Reviews

[Ai Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a really incredible exploration of enslaved women and their relationship to white women enslavers; Glymph just bulldozes the hell out of all historiography that tries to claim white women enslavers were somehow more sympathetic or not as deeply entwined in slavery, and also manages to explore this deeply fascinating moment where slavery is falling away and waged labor is beginning to take its place, and what that means for each of the actors involved--how Black women were actually more capable than white women at negotiating wages, etc., because they had a sense of what work looked like per day than white women did. Just super fascinating, really accessible, and didn't feel repetitive. Strongly, strongly recommend.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historian Thavolia Glymph disabuses us of all of those stereotypes of the quiet, demure plantation mistress of the antebellum and Civil war era. Gone With the Wind, this ain't. Instead, through painstaking research, she paints a picture of women who, like their husbands in the fields, ruled their slaves with violence and threats - even murder. It's not a pretty picture. What's much more appealing is the later chapters when the slave women have been freed, and now perform some of the same services, but for pay - and often on their own terms. These are images that the standard popular histories don't give us. It's a fascinating book.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book from the Less Stupid Civil War Reading Group -- and probably my favorite. Mostly because it covered an area that I knew the least about -- the day-to-day lives of women -- both slaveholder and slave -- in the South -- before, during, and after the Civil War. Richly documented and compiled from mostly first-hand sources -- it is filled with diary accounts of white women bitching about their slaves, then complaining about having to do without them, or starting to fear them during the war, then grappling with the new realities of having to do business with them after the war. There are slave narratives, too -- some written at the time, some recollected decades after, of beatings, of ill-treatment at the hands of the wives (not just the husbands) in slave-owning households, stories of running off, of setting up households after the war and fighting for their dignity.

I have spent hours discussing this book and could go on and on about it -- but I want to mention two things in particular. First -- I appreciated Glymph's insistence on slave women's "recalcitrance" as explicit political resistance to the system of slavery, and how that shaped post-war race relations. Second -- that the ideal of domesticity that Southern white women were held to was one that was impossible -- and (this is me reading in, here) how that is something that has always been true -- and an effective way to control women.

Finally, this book had me thinking about the psychology of power -- that put in an unjustifiable situation -- the power to beat, kill, remove children and families from slaves -- the brain will work hard to invent justifications so that it can continue thinking of itself as a good person. Perhaps even a righteous, beleaguered one. Maybe even the real victim here! And whether it is possible to structure society in a way that will encourage the perpetuation of justice, rather than injustice.

A sometimes difficult, but rich and rewarding read. I am grateful for the discovery.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a really interesting book, I had quite a good time going through it considering it was assigned material for class. It is an academic and analytic book, so it tends to get into theory and use obnoxious academic-speak, which can get a little tiresome. And while Glymph's analysis was interesting and, I think, well-supported by her arguments, I do wish there had been more focus on the primary sources and less of her interpretation. The actual words of the black and white women were SO interesting; I wish there had been more of their stories.

Anyways, I enjoyed the book, but it's academic and analytic enough that I wouldn't recommend it for pleasure reading unless you have a serious interest in the subject.

[Mary Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glymph makes a convincing argument about the political nature of plantation households in the US South before and after the Civil War. In her narrative women are not solely figures of the "private sphere," removed from the political contexts of the worlds around them. Slave holding women were as much agents of violence as their husbands were. As mistresses and freedwomen negotiated emancipation and the transition from master-slave relations to employer-employee relations, they transformed the plantation household into a contentious battleground over political rights. I would absolutely recommend this book.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to say that I really enjoyed reading this book, but enjoyed isn't quite the right word for it. It's an academic book about a heavy subject, and it could be difficult to read about the ways black women were treated and ways in which white women thought about black women. At the same time, I really valued how Glymph analyzed interracial relationships in the antebellum and post-war South, and hearing the voices and stories of women who lived in that era, white and black alike, was chillingly informative.

I was supposed to read this for my senior history seminar in college, but other things got in the way that semester and this whole book fell by the wayside. I kept it around because I had a feeling that I'd really enjoy it once I got around to it, and I'm glad I got to read this at my leisure in my new, post-college life.

[EJ Daniels · Rating 2 out of 5]

With a provocative thesis supported by little evidence, Dr. Thavolia Glymph's efforts to both reshape standard theories about women during the antebellum period & the War Between the States while also exploring racial power dynamics in private spheres do little to convince. Her obviously agenda-driven arguments rely over-much on a paucity of primary research, and too much of the already small book is taken up rehashing gender theory and secondary works which obscure, rather than illuminate, evidence from the periods in question. That being said, Glymph does bring up some interesting sources which do merit further examination on their own merits and not as part of Glymph's risible theories.

I cannot recommend this book, and would instead point those interested in the subject to Within the Plantation Household by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

[Chris Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a disturbing book, but very well researched and written. Southern belles weren't quite as belle like as they'd like to have us believe, it seems. And the enslaved were not so passive in their resistance antebellum and postbellum, either. This book puts slaveholders and slaves in a whole new light.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Really challenges the historiography and confronts a lot of myths about antebellum and postbellum South and white plantation women.

[Tim Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grad seminar week 6—great for thinking about historiography, historical empathy, and white women’s violence against enslaved people. I hope my students value this book as much as I do!

[Marcia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was published in 2008 so it represents recent scholarship on the relationship between the mistress of the plantation and the household slaves. I personally found the writing style very difficult to follow. The book is an important source of data and bibliographical information but the narrative seems a bit incoherent. It would appear that Southern mistresses were unprepared to manage a household and were sadistically mean. Their household slaves were also scantily clothed. It would also appear that household slaves did as little as possible and as incompetently as possible. While all true, it doesn't explain how so much was accomplished by the system in 250 years. The plantations were built and prospered to the extent that their sugar and cotton were largely responsible for the western world's wealth. The labor was slave and all labor has to be managed so there was competence of sorts on both sides.
This book is quite clear on the fear that penetrated the plantation household on the part of the slave and on the part of the mistress and her relations. Both were at the mercy of the men of the household. The slave had no personal agency and the mistress was surrounded by people who had every reason to be hostile.
This book is important for the scholarship. I wish it were a more coherently written narrative. It's important that the world of slavery become an important part of our national narrative...our feminist history.

[Noa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well supported research that celebrates the grit of the black American woman through slavery and the transition to free-women. Follows through interviews and the journals of the mistresses who tried to own them. The book follows evidence and that evidence pushes against old tropes and narratives surrounding the southern bells and the plantations.
Leads in well to the kind of systematic issues we continue to have as a nation regarding race and power.

[Janice Covert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know that Southern historians distorted our national vision of the “Old South” to be pretty much like Gone With the Wind. There were few if any happy slaves and kind mistresses and masters. Women’s roles in history have been largely ignored and this book addresses both black and white women. This book made me think about issues that I had never before considered and contributed greatly to my understanding of both past and present.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was on a list of essential reading by Ta-Henisi Coates, about how plantation mistresses treated their slaves and how the relationship flipped after the war when plantation owners had no money or workers and the former slaves had labor to sell and money to spend. Took me a year to get through it and I’m glad I read it, but there was a lot of repetition as the same point was driven home by referencing several sources. Must have been someone’s dissertation, some pages were half footnotes.

[Angela Juline · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had written a long review...but then my computer crashed.

Basically, I felt like I was reading a well researched dissertation, but without a lot of deep analysis. I truly had to work to read it - not because it was heavy, but because it was so random at times. I consider it a victory to have finished.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent study of women on both sides of slavey in the south. Works hard to dispel the myths of the kind, sympathetic plantation master. The footnotes/bibliography are amazing to mine for new reads as well.

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

The theme of this book was interesting and thought-provoking, but the writing is really... scholarly, I guess. It took me a long time to read, but was worth the effort.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lays some of the blame traditionally heaped only on white men onto white women as well (that is, the support and continuation of slavery).

[andré crombie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The torching and destruction of planter homes was sometimes but not always random violence. One stated goal was to make them uninhabitable, to prevent mistresses from ever returning and occupying them. As one mistress made her way back to her plantation, a slave woman she had trusted sent word that she should keep moving. With the defeat of the Confederacy in sight in late March 1865, slaves at Cherry Grove plantation in South Carolina begged Union soldiers to burn the great house to keep their mistress, Catherine Marion Palmer, from returning. Louisa, the slave of a Georgia state legislator, wanted Sherman's troops to burn her master's newly built home, explaining, “It ought to be burned,” because it was linked to “so much devilment…whipping niggers most to death to make ‘em work to pay for it.” The burning continued for months after the war ended. At Richfield plantation in South Carolina, former slaves torched the big house in January 1866 after being ordered off the plantation for refusing to sign contracts.

In the making of freedom, the destruction of slavery and the destruction of planter homes were of a piece. “The burning, slashing and punishment,” writes Charles Royster, “were inseparable from the freedom – a single memory.” Slaves linked the two explicitly. Savilla Burrell remembered claiming her freedom when the Yankees arrived and “burnt de big house, stables, barns, [and] gin house.” Sherman's Georgia and South Carolina campaigns helped to forge this single memory. An ex-slave who followed Sherman's troops into Atlanta from a nearby Georgia plantation described the burning of Atlanta as a “grand sight.” The “people of the South needed some such a dose as that – they needed to learn that war is a serious thing – no boys play at all, nor fooling. And Sherman seemed to be the man for that kind of teaching,” another ex-slave explained. At Newberry, South Carolina, as rumors of the Emancipation Proclamation circulated in 1863, it “did not affect us,” a former slave recalled. “We work on, til Sherman come and burn and slash his way through the state in de spring of 1865. I just reckon I member dat freedom to de end of my life.” They then gathered at his grandmother's cabin to hear her speak the words that they were indeed free.”

Notes: Rooted in contemporary voices, this book blows away the historiographic fog of the “kind plantation mistress,” firmly establishes southern domestic spaces as public arenas of political and economic action, and articulates the agency of millions of black women who were less freed than took their own freedom. “…another mistress wrote in a seeming state of shock: ‘The negroes are worse than free, they say they are free.’”

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thavolia Glymph’s book is ground breaking for its fresh analysis of the plantation household. She challenges the existing historiography that can exist only under certain presumptions: that the plantation household was private, rather than public and political; that white women held no power and thus were subjected to the same oppressive authority of white men, just as black women; and that this subjugation led to a camaraderie between black and white women—that issues of gender trumped the divisions of race and class.

Glymph combats these assumptions with a fresh analysis of existing evidence. The plantation home was never private, not really. It was first and foremost a site of production that depended on the exploitation of and violence towards black women. To use her words, once the veil of privacy has been removed, one can see clearly the public and political realities of the plantation home.

Glymph begins this story in the antebellum period and moves through the civil war and postbellum period, documenting the transformation of the household & what those changes meant for white women and black women alike as both sought to redefine southern womanhood.

This book is an excellent read as it adds a fresh perspective to existing scholarship on this topic. Glymph draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources to demonstrate her arguments. Highly recommend to anyone interested in this era of history, or who is particularly interested in exploring the intersections of race and gender in the American south.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book for anyone wishing to examine the history of slaveholding from the perspective of the economy of the household, which is often neglected in favor of the history of the economy of field work. It reveals a truth that belies the "Southern belle" as fragile and helpless. Women had the responsibility of managing entire households of the people (mostly women and their female children) who were enslaved by them. They were no kinder than the overseers or their husbands. One of the aspects of this book that I appreciated is that it is written like a text book, with citations in regards to the information put forth. Much of that is from the letters and journals of the white women who held the power, so to speak.
When the power shifts begins during the Civil War when husbands left to fight and the women were left alone surrounded by their slaves. It reveals the sense of superiority that is shattered after Emancipation is signed and the former slave economy still needs the labor and so now have to negotiate terms of payment with the same people who once took orders and could not walk away.
I think my favorite part of the book was in revealing that no matter how much history tries to rewrite the white women who held slaves as better than their male counterparts, it was untrue. And getting the perspective of the women involved is enlightening. A very ugly part of our history to be sure, but worth reading for the insight.

[sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5 stars. for obvious reasons

for anyone who has an interest in the plantation economy and gender relations of the 19th century united states, this is a must read. no questions asked. the questions it raises (and answers it provides) about the nature of power, gender, and race and the way those three things were profoundly intertwined in antebellum society are impeccably researched, highly insightful, and incredibly original. this is a seminal work in scholarship (though elizabeth fox-genovese is the historian who got the ball rolling in terms of reevaluating the role of white women inside the plantation household) and explores the relationship between women and violence that was for far too long neglected in historiography that just got sooooooooooo many things wrong about (*cough* the plantation mistress by catherine clinton *cough*) the ways in which these women behaved/and or were allegedly oppressed. spoiler alert: they weren't

i guess i'm just feeling profoundly grateful to have this book for research, it's become my reference for literally everything in this freaking paper i'm churning out right now (i'm at 7,000 words i just want the sweet release of the submission email) but nonetheless its a good read and the bibliography/footnotes are saving me right now, especially the chapter on the transitory period to postbellum labor relations.

READ IT IF YOU WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WOMEN AND SLAVERY.

[Amber E · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent exploration of the social and power dynamics of the plantation household during the antebellum period and its aftermath. The book unpacks lives of enslaved Black women and their unique forms of resistance within the domestic sphere. Glymph argues that was mistresses interpreted as their slaves “impudence” and “laziness” was actually a form of labor resistance. It also taps into a voluminous assortment of primary source documents—letters, diaries and even Senate testimony— to demonstrate plantation mistresses’ understanding of the labor trends in their households. It’s important to note that mistresses often rejected the notion of their kitchens, bedrooms and barns as a work site. Rather, they saw themselves as the domestic head of “one family—black and white”. Plantation mistresses were ladies, not bosses. The book really challenges the historiography of antebellum and post-Civil War Southern white womanhood to illustrate how the contours of being a lady were directly impacted by the relationships with the enslaved black women in their midst.

[sydney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish Goodreads would let you do half stars, because I really rate this book at a 3.5/5. Glymph argued the transformation of the plantation household quite well. Equal parts thrilling and boring. A lot of her chapters could have been more concise; some of it felt like how I write, a college student trying to reach a page/word count and making the writing too dense with repeated, restated sentences and academic jargon.

[DM · Rating 5 out of 5]

Completely brilliant; re-situates the household as crucial political site by showing the brutality of white woman slaveholders and the myriad of ways black women emancipated themselves from slavery both materially (demanding wages/leaving) and symbolically. Feminist rejoinder to some of the weapons of the weak analysis - doesn’t cite Ranajit Guha but has similar analysis on symbols, insurrectionary power etc. horrible to see so many parallels to present day discourse and politics.

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Violence permeated the plantation household, where the control and management of slaves required white women's active participation and authorized the exercise of brute or sadistic force. Mistresses became expert in the use of psychological and physical violence and, from their perch in the household, influenced the construction of antebellum slave society in its gender and racial dimensions."

[Beth]

Suggested reading in Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America

[Wendy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is unbelievably boring. Could not finish.

[Elly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to come!

[Rick Boyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterful study.