The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics 1830-1930

by Anne Firor Scott

The first part of Anne Scott's unique study reveals the wide gap between the image of the Lady in the antebellum South and the harsh reality of a life which demanded tremendous strength and responsibility on the part of women. Using contemporary diaries and letters, the author shows how southern women of the planter class felt about their lives, and how many of them longed for emancipation from the limitations of the plantation system, even to the point of supporting the abolition of slavery.

The second part of the book describes the post-Civil War conditions which created new professional and political opportunities for women, and shows how they used unlikely organizations - missionary societies, clubs, and the WTCU - to advance their own development. Maintaining the outward appearance of perfect ladies, these women arrived on the political scene wearing hats and white gloves, minding their manners, and, as often as not, relying upon respectable ancestry to camouflage their radicalism.

This book is the first study of its kind. A survey based on a careful combing of manuscript sources as well as contemporary printed materials, it points the way to more detailed studies of the actual process by which women's emancipation has progressed.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

247 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Anne Firor Scott, a pioneer historian of American women, was W. K. Boyd Professor Emerita of History at Duke University. Scott joined Duke's history department in 1961 on a visiting appointment. Nineteen years later she was named William K. Boyd Professor of History and appointed chair of the department. Professor Scott was the first woman to chair the Duke history department, and was also the first professor at Duke to include women's scholarship in her teaching and research. She was educated in her home state at the University of Georgia, as well as at Northwestern University and Radcliffe College. In addition to her tenure at Duke, she taught at Haverford College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I happened to be reading A Room with a View concurrently with this book and this passage from it could just as easily apply to the situation of the upperclass 19th century American southern woman:

It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But if she rushed into the fray herself she would be first censured, then despised, and finally ignored. Poems had been written to illustrate this point.

The Civil War helped push southern women "into the fray." Wives ran farms, plantations, and businesses while their husbands were away fighting. After the war was over, so many men had died that widows had to learn to do things on their own. Suffrage was a natural ambition for women who discovered new capabilities in themselves, at the same time that educational opportunities were opening up for females and finding employment was often a financial necessity.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book presented a good overview of very specific regional evolution of feminist politics. It covered an amazing amount of history and story in a short time, while citing a broad range of sources that give the reader further avenues of exploration. It tends to focus on women who had the privilege to live up to the image of the Southern Lady, assuming the reader understands that they were the group who had access to such an aspiration. And it definitely paints a too-rosy picture of relationships between black and white women both during antebellum times and post. On the other hand, it celebrates the often overlooked support many Southern women had for the abolitionist movement and later for civil rights. The book is a great historical foundation and it covers a much deserving topic.

[Maddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for comps

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for uni. Definitely important for it's time, but rather outdated now.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

For my thesis - Last read of the year!!