Why read The Plantation Mistress?

Book cover of The Plantation Mistress: Woman's World in the Old South

Book description

This pioneering study of the much-mythologized Southern belle offers the first serious look at the lives of white women and their harsh and restricted place in the slave society before the Civil War. Drawing on the diaries, letters, and memoirs of hundreds of planter wives and daughters, Clinton sets before…

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Plantation Mistress as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Lori Benton

Author

Another in-depth examination of the topic, this book focuses on the fifty-five years following the Revolutionary War, exploring the swift and sweeping changes in American society during this early Federal period and how they influenced the daily lives of planters’ wives. Clinton drew on hundreds of memoirs, diaries, and women’s letters to explore the issue of gender in antebellum Southern culture. This book makes a good follow up to Spruill’s work on the lives of Southern colonial era women.

From Lori's list on life in the Antebellum South.