Beyond the Household: Women's Place in the Early South, 1700–1835 - Hardcover

Kierner, Cynthia A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080143453X ISBN 13: 9780801434532

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Much has been written about the "southern lady," that pervasive and enduring icon of antebellum regional identity. But how did the lady get on her pedestal―and were the lives of white southern women always so different from those of their northern contemporaries? In her ambitious new book, Cynthia A. Kierner charts the evolution of the lives of white southern women through the colonial, revolutionary, and early republican eras. Using the lady on her pedestal as the end―rather than the beginning―of her story, she shows how gentility, republican political ideals, and evangelical religion successively altered southern gender ideals and thereby forced women to reshape their public roles. Kierner concludes that southern women continually renegotiated their access to the public sphere―and that even the emergence of the frail and submissive lady as icon did not obliterate women's public role.

Kierner draws on a strong overall command of early American and women's history and adds to it research in letters, diaries, newspapers, secular and religious periodicals, travelers' accounts, etiquette manuals, and cookery books. Focusing on the issues of work, education, and access to the public sphere, she explores the evolution of southern gender ideals in an important transitional era. Specifically, she asks what kinds of changes occurred in women's relation to the public sphere from 1700 to 1835. In answering this major question, she makes important links and comparisons, across both time and region, and creates a chronology of social and intellectual change that addresses many key questions in the history of women, the South, and early America.

About this title

About the Author

Cynthia A. Kierner is Professor of History at George Mason University. She is the author of Traders and Gentlefolk: The Livingstons of New York, 1675–1790, also from Cornell; Scandal at Bizarre: Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson's America; Revolutionary America; and Southern Women in Revolution, 1776–1800: Personal and Political Narratives.

Reviews

Cynthia A. Kierner debunks the myth of the delicate flower of Southern womanhood in Beyond the Household: Women's Place in the Early South, 1700-1835. From the earliest settlements onward, Southern women worked hard and long to provide the underpinnings of life in a new land. Examining the influence of slavery, religion and the dominance of the ideals of republican politics and of gentility, Kierner shows how these women were kept in their place for more than a hundred years. 22 b&w photos. (Cornell Univ., $49.95 304p ISBN 0-8014-3453-X; paper $17.95 -8462-6; Nov.)
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080143453X
• ISBN 13: 9780801434532
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320