Documenting the difficult class relations between women slaveholders and slave women, this study shows how class and race as well as gender shaped women's experiences and determined their identities. Drawing upon massive research in diaries, letters, memoirs, and oral histories, the author argues that the lives of antebellum southern women, enslaved and free, differed fundamentally from those of northern women and that it is not possible to understand antebellum southern women by applying models derived from New England sources.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
In her rich and rewarding book, Fox-Genovese challenges many of the conventions about women's history, which has been largely extrapolated from the experiences of northeastern women. Southern womenblack and whitewere southerners, bound by a rural world built on human bondage and race and dominated by men. These women were not passive or victims, but resourceful and resistant. Still, Fox-Genovese rejects the now fashionable view that planters' wives harbored antislavery or feminist sentiments. She places slave women at the center of opposition to slavery. Fox-Genovese has given black and white Southern women voices. Eloquent and powerful; for university and public libraries.Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"Asks us to put aside simple generalizations and explore the complicated world that masters and slaves built together on their terms, not ours. . . . Fox-Genovese provides a rich analysis . . . without losing her critical eye or her amazing capacity for empathy. Like no other historian before or since."
— Civil War Times
[A] well-written and thoroughly researched social history.
— Civil War Times
[A] well-written and thoroughly researched social history.
New Yorker
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese . . . . succeeds brilliantly.
Mechal Sobel, New York Times Book Review
Virtually every sentence stimulates and every page challenges. . . . A vivid, extensive chonicle of Southern women's daily existence .
Publisher's Weekly
An ambitious book . . . . Elizabeth Fox-Genovese elevates American women's history to a new level of sophistication.
Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton University
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scholarly and Enlightening,
By
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This review is from: Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Gender and American Culture) (Paperback)
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese has produced a very scholarly and enlightening examination of women of the old South. In vivid detailed with painstaking research, she presents the daily lives of women, black and white, within the plantation household. Though written from an academic perspective, the author has succeeded in presenting her research in an entertaining and even captivating narrative style. For those looking for the behind the scenes lifestyle of unknown women of the South, this is the one book of choice.Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of "Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction." He has also authored "Soul Physicians," "Spiritual Friends," and the forthcoming "Sacred Friendships: Listening to the Voices of Women Soul Care-Givers and Spiritual Directors."
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scholarly but never stuffy,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Gender and American Culture) (Paperback)
An absolutely excellent study of of the relationship between slave-owner and the enslaved. The book struck me a college-level treatise but is easily read and enjoyable even for the casual reader. Tremendous details of both black and white lives in the pre-Civil War era. Highly recommend to anyone interested in life in the south during that period.
9 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Reads like a a history text,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Gender and American Culture) (Paperback)
The book appears to be comprehensive, but it is written in a pedantic and boring way, very much like so many history books I had to read in school. That made it difficult to retain my interest. Don't get me wrong; I love to read, but I'm not a scholar, researching to write about the plantation life, but just an ordinary person who found the title interesting, so was curious enough to buy it. For me it was a mistake. I won't send it back, because the effort would just add to my aggravation, but I wouldn't buy it again and do not recommend it for anyone who's not doing research.
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
The temptation is strong to write the history of southern women from the discrete stories of Sarah Gayle and of the thousands who were both very much like her and, simultaneously, very much like no other women. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
many slaveholding women, yeoman women, most slaveholding women, southern gender conventions, white slaveholding women, antebellum southern households, slaveholding woman, southern slave society, slaveholding men, slaveholding households, young slave women, title tentative, negro clothes, northern bride, northern households, many slave women, southern social relations, southern yeomanry, other slave women, yeoman households, free black women, northern women, southern women, slave community, black slave women Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Mary Chesnut, South Carolina, Sarah Gayle, Eliza Clitherall, Meta Morris Grimball, Kate Carney, North Carolina, Susan Davis Hutchinson, James Chesnut, New England, West African, Mary Henderson, New Orleans, Mary Jeffreys Bethell, Martha Jackson, Anna Matilda Page King, Anna Matilda King, Gertrude Clanton, Elizabeth Meriwether, Elizabeth Ruffin, New York, Mary Boykin Chesnut, Fannie Bumpas, Fannie Kemble, Fannie Page Hume New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
The temptation is strong to write the history of southern women from the discrete stories of Sarah Gayle and of the thousands who were both very much like her and, simultaneously, very much like no other women. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
many slaveholding women, yeoman women, most slaveholding women, southern gender conventions, white slaveholding women, antebellum southern households, slaveholding woman, southern slave society, slaveholding men, slaveholding households, young slave women, title tentative, negro clothes, northern bride, northern households, many slave women, southern social relations, southern yeomanry, other slave women, yeoman households, free black women, northern women, southern women, slave community, black slave women Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Mary Chesnut, South Carolina, Sarah Gayle, Eliza Clitherall, Meta Morris Grimball, Kate Carney, North Carolina, Susan Davis Hutchinson, James Chesnut, New England, West African, Mary Henderson, New Orleans, Mary Jeffreys Bethell, Martha Jackson, Anna Matilda Page King, Anna Matilda King, Gertrude Clanton, Elizabeth Meriwether, Elizabeth Ruffin, New York, Mary Boykin Chesnut, Fannie Bumpas, Fannie Kemble, Fannie Page Hume New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 339
books:
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100
books
cite this book:
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- Children of Pride: Many Mansions by Robert Manson Myers on 8 pages
- Women and Slavery in Africa by Claire C. Robertson on 7 pages
- The Black Woman Cross-Culturally by Filomina Chioma Steady on 6 pages
- The Web of Southern Social Relations: Women, Family, and Education by Walter J. Fraser on 5 pages
- Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change by Nancy J. Hafkin on 4 pages
See all 339 books this book cites
- We Mean to Be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Gender & American Culture) by Elizabeth Varon on 5 pages
- Black Tie, White Tie: Chronicle of an American Family 1739-1940 on 4 pages
- A Family Venture: Men and Women on the Southern Frontier by Joan E. Cashin in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Southern History Across the Color Line by Nell Irvin Painter in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Race, Work, and Desire in American Literature, 1860-1930 (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture) by Michele Birnbaum in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
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