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.
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