Beyond Image and Convention: Explorations in Southern Women's History

Abstract

Beyond Image and Convention: Explorations in Southern Women's History. Edited by Janet L. Coryell, Martha H. Swain, Sandra G. Treadway, and E. H. Turner. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998. Pp. 224. Editor's introduction, about the authors and editors, index. $37.50, cloth; $16.95, paper.) This volume explores realms of southern women's history that reach beyond the image of the Southern Lady and the behavioral standards traditionally expected of southern women. The nine essays are the product of the Third Southern Conference on Women's History held in 1994 at Rice University and span the late seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. The editors selected them for publication to demonstrate that southern women have historically defied convention, to show the broadening of notions of what constitutes history, and to highlight the sources that historians are mining for these purposes. The first essay in the collection, by Kirsten Fischer, discusses the politics of white women's sexual misconduct in the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century South. Fischer argues this misconduct, whether an intentional display of resistance to sexual and social mores or a symbolic challenge to them, represented defiance of a patriarchal society grounded in female submission. Anya Jabour's essay examines the female power structure in well-to-do southern white urban households in the early 1800s. She describes a hierarchical order, composed of the wife and, in descending order of authority, the housekeeper, other free white domestic servants, free blacks, and slaves. The housekeeper, who was frequently the only white domestic, was expected to perform many household tasks and to mediate between mistress and slave. Housekeepers, concerned about autonomy and status in the household, often found means to test and challenge the authority of the mistress. Cynthia Lynn Lyerly's contribution deals with white women, white gender ideology, and Methodism between 1770 and 1810. Methodism in the late 1700s was commonly thought to produce bizarre and unacceptable behavior leading men to discourage female family members from associating with it. By attempting to isolate Methodism, critics wished to minimize the threat Methodist women presented to mainstream society. Through a series of transformations in the nineteenth century, however, Methodism became respectable and opposition to the church and criticism of women in the church declined. The author argues that these changes removed a vehicle of expression for white southern women and limited their path to moral authority in public life. Norma Taylor Mitchell addresses experiences of a Virginia slave named Hannah and her family. She concentrates on opportunities Hannah and the other slaves used to test the boundaries of slavery, to prepare themselves for freedom and to achieve substantial control within the big house. Guided by Hannah, the slaves transformed their domestic world into a strong setting of slave culture and power, achieving a significant degree of autonomy. They then drew on these experiences when freedom came. …