Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Southern Women in the Civil War Era [Hardcover]

Laura F. Edwards (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 25, 2000

"Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore" is a dramatic history of the South in the years leading up to and following the Civil War: a history that focuses on the women, black and white, rich and poor, who made up the fabric of southern life before the war and remade themselves and their world after it. Positing the household as the central institution of southern society, Edwards delineates the inseparable links between domestic relations and civil and political rights in ways that highlight women's active political role throughout the nineteenth century. She draws on diaries, letters, newspaper accounts, government records, legal documents, court proceedings, and other primary sources to explore the experiences and actions of individual women in the changing South, demonstrating how family, kin, personal reputation, and social context all merged with gender, race, and class to shape what particular women could do in particular circumstances. Meet Harriet Jacobs, the escaped slave who hid in a tiny, unheated attic on her master's property for seven years until she could free her children and herself. Marion Singleton Deveaux Converse, the southern belle who leaped out a second-story window to escape her second husband's "discipline" and received temporary shelter from her slaves. Sarah Guttery, a white, poor, unwed mother of two, whose hard work and clean living earned her community's respect despite her youthful transgressions. Aunt Lucy, who led her fellow slaves in taking over her master's abandoned plantation and declared herself the new mistress. Through vivid portraits of these and other slaves, free blacks, common whites, and the white elite, Edwards shows how women's domestic situations determined their lives before the war and their responses to secession and armed conflict. She also documents how women of various classes entered into the process of rebuilding, asserting new rights and exploring new roles after the war.An ideal basic text on society in the Civil War era, "Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore" demonstrates how women on every step of the social ladder worked actively throughout the period to shape southern society in ways that fulfilled their hopes for the future. They used the resources at their disposal to fashion their own positive identities, to create the social bonds that sustained them in difficult times, and to express powerful social critiques that helped them make sense of their lives.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A highly original work by a talented scholar. Pinpointing the intersection of political and social history, the effects of public policy on people's daily lives, Edwards presents a fresh and welcome approach to explaining historical change. Her work has important implications beyond the internecine struggles of Reconstruction-era Granville County." -- John David Smith, Atlanta History "Writing with admirable clarity and economy ...[Edwards] has given us a book designed to incorporate the lives of southern women into a Civil War-era lecture course... Rather than hewing to any romantic notion of southern sisterhood, Edwards concentrates on revealing the differences among southern women -- of race and class, of ideology, of social mores -- and the conflicts such differences generated." -- Jane Dailey, Journal of American History "Edwards has written a new Civil War history, dominated not by causes, battles, and generals and politicians, but by the home front... [Edwards] makes the vital claim that African American and poorer white southerners played as great a role in creating the New South as did the elite of the planter classes... Any future histories approaching this field would surely suffer by ignoring Edwards' groundbreaking work." -- Sarah Gleeson-White, Australasian Journal of American Studies "This elegantly written and thoughtfully constructed work introduces readers to a range of themes and tensions in the family history and wider social history of the mid-nineteenth-century South... The book succeeds resoundingly in interweaving a variety of life stories with the larger history of the sectional crisis... A highly readable, thoroughly researched, and reasonably nuanced account." -- Bruce Collins, The Historian "The first major work to synthesize the voluminous literature on southern women during the Civil War era." -- Blain Roberts, Southern Historian "Offers a sophisticated analysis of the relationship between public and private, family and society, and the household and the state... An excellent introduction to southern women's history. Those in search of a basic text on southern women's history or of a work on women's experiences to include in a course on Civil War and Reconstruction need look no further than this well-crafted volume." -- Any Jabour, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society "A well-written, basic narrative of the Civil War South from the female perspective, which offers a stimulating and accessible introduction to a thriving area of historical research and debate." -- S-M Grant, The Americas ADVANCE PRAISE -"This is a lively and compelling portrait of southern women during a time of tremendous upheaval. In clear and vivid prose, Laura Edwards demonstrates how these women -- young and old, rich and poor, white and black -- used the resources at their command to become actors, not simply victims, in the unfolding historical drama of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Edwards helps not only to restore women to their proper place in history but also to alter the way in which we think about this crucial period in our nation's past." -- Peter Bardaglio, author of Reconstructing the Household: Families, Sex, and the Law in the Nineteenth-Century South "Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore is an unusual and invaluable book that offers our first synthesis of a vibrant new literature on southern women. Laura Edwards is at the forefront of efforts to broaden the meaning of politics, link the so-called private with the public sphere, and challenge the assumption that southern women remained politically passive-and thus historically uninteresting-until they belatedly followed their northern sisters into the twentieth-century women's movement." -- Jacquelyn Hall, author of Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (May 25, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252025687
• ISBN-13: 978-0252025686
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,913,817 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read, January 16, 2010

By 

Ali Kat (Louisiana) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore: SOUTHERN WOMEN IN THE CIVIL WAR ERA (Women in American History) (Paperback)

Dr. Edwards' book covers the experience of the three main categories of Southern women before, during and after the Civil War. Particularly impressive is her work on poor white women because they are the most difficult to research. Rich white women left diaries and the Freedman's Bureau left a great deal of documentation on former slave women. Poor white women had not the time, education and materials to write, nor the interest of any organization, much less a government bureaucracy. Not only is this book excellent for the information and analyses it contains, but also for the smooth writing style that moves easily through the material. Dr. Edwards uses the stories of individuals to relate larger trends, again making it more fun to read. I absolutely recommend this book for anyone interested in the subject matter.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book, January 19, 2012

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Grace (Western NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore: SOUTHERN WOMEN IN THE CIVIL WAR ERA (Women in American History) (Paperback)

This book describes what life in the South was like for white and black women, before, during, and after the Civil War. Taken from true accounts (diaries, court documents, letters and other sources), it's well documented and describes not only what happened to these women, but how they felt about their lives and changing circumstances. It's very well written and I couldn't put it down.

I'm disappointed to see there are so many reviews for the fiction book "The Help", and so few for this book, which is actual history regarding race relations.