Though many have enjoyed Mary Boykin Chesnut's witty and insightful observations of southern life in Civil War diary, few are familiar with two unpublished novels, Two Years, or The Way We Lived Then and The Captain and the Colonel, written between the end of the war and 1881, when she abandoned the novels to start major revision of diary. Fewer still find the novels worthwhile. Even their only editor, Elizabeth Muhlenfeld, admits reading one of Chesnut's novels is a confusing experience: fine, clearly realized passages are interspersed with sections are hopelessly jumbled (183). Ill formed offspring they are, these novels deserve attention, particularly from anyone interested in Chesnut's view of nineteenth century female experience. Several critics have ardently debated Chesnut's feminism, or lack thereof, evident in diary, but none has brought unpublished novels into the conversation. This is curious omission, as both novels deal with young women experiencing courtship and marriage, and one I hope to correct here. Chesnut's Two Years, or The Way We Lived Then concerns itself with woman's beginning, education. A strongly autobiographical account of girl's training in domestic womanhood, this novel provokes re-evaluation of dominant cultural model for woman and the myth of creation. (1) Two Years reveals the making of domestic woman cannot achieved by domestic woman alone. The domestic woman and loving form of discipline need the secret support of very different kind of woman wielding very different kind of discipline. Ruth Yeazell argues the phase of young woman's life which began when `nature ... pronounced her' and ends, presumably, when someone has pronounced elicited society's utmost anxiety (44). Yeazell's comment perfectly summarizes the crisis impels Two Years's heroine, Helen Newtown, into an intense course of female education. Despite bitter protestations against leaving Charleston boarding school, Helen's parents compel to accompany them to their property in remotest Mississippi. Though mother initially cites convenience and economy as the motives for Helen's removal, during their long journey westward she eventually reveals the real reason: the discovery of Helen's sexual maturity. An old friend informed Mr. Newtown, Helen's father, Helen frequently visited the Howard family and with the son Sydney Howard always the same procession home by way of the battery. Moon light walks and all that (489). Presented with Helen's new mooniness, Mr. Newtown changes his mind about leaving Helen in Charleston while the rest of the family travels; now she is apparently marriageable he deem[s] it expedient to have under [her mother's] eye (490). Mr. Newtown's anxious response to Helen's moonlight walks is not so much rejection of Helen's suitor--for he later on grants the young man permission to propose to Helen in two years--as it is an estimation of his daughter's inability to navigate this critical period successfully. For the nineteenth-century woman, courtship was the ultimate or tiger dilemma--or, rather, be lady or you will eaten by tiger dilemma. Only lady, woman well versed in domestic virtues, could safely pass from to married and enter the married state as more than chattel. As Armstrong shows, conduct manuals and their corollary literature insisted since the late seventeenth century the domestic woman was made for marriage (19) and represented better choice for man of rank than partner of his own station, likely to haughty Dame with all Quality Airs about her (72). Furthermore, domestic virtues not only attracted better class of suitor but also provided basis for attaining some power in the union. The respect for domestic values encouraged the suitor to court would also move the husband to grant authority over the domestic realm. …