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Woman's World In The Old South Analysis

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Plantation Mistress: Woman’s World in the Old South by Catherin Clinton takes a stab at deflating the common myth that women in the south were “chivalrous cavaliers and belles in hoop skirts” (xi). The majority of literature focused on plantation life is placed on the planters themselves, Clinton wants to redirect that focus to the women on the plantations. Her work is centered on the women of higher status, those living on plantations with twenty or more slaves, and their experiences. Clinton makes the argument that Southern white women experienced an oppression parallel to that of the slave class because of the patriarchal system. It is a far stretch to compare the lives of white women to the suffering endured by the slave class. White women may not have had an elite status in the patriarchal system, however, they did have options as to what they would do in their lives. On the contrary, slaves were given no alternatives to choose from. While there is no doubt that women of all classes experienced oppression by the patriarchal system, Clinton reaches too far when making her comparison to the lives of slaves. …show more content…

She describes how the women were seen as economic commodities. There were brought to the New World and married off to the existing men without a choice. After their marriage, they were bound to their positions as wives as well as managers of the household. Rigorous housework and management of the slaves were daily tasks for Southern white women. Clinton even makes the speculation that women living on smaller farms lived an easier life because there were fewer slaves. These women were often displaced, because their husbands’ strong desire to travel, and had to live dismal lives on the frontier. Women’s lives were very closely tied to their homes and families, while men were more inclined to the business world and often left their families alone when

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In the book Ar’n’t I a women the author, Deborah Gray White, explains how the life was for the slave women in the Southern plantations. She reveals to us how the slave women had to deal with difficulties of racism as well as dealing with sexism. Slave women in these plantations assumed roles within the family as well as the community; these roles were completely different to the roles given to a traditional white female. Deborah Gray White shows us how black women had a different experience from the black men and the struggle they had to maintain their sense of womanhood against all odds, resist sexual oppression, and keep their families together. In the book the author describes two different types of women, “Jezebel” and “Mammy” they

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• 1. HOW DID PATTERNS OF FAMILY LIFE AND ATTITUDES’ TOWARD WOMEN DIFFER IN THE NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN COLONIES? In the southern colonies, women were greatly degraded; men were superior. Women were not able to work in the fields, etc., all of what they could do was to be a wife and maintain the home.

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As a result, the economy in the North began to flourish and develop, allowing women to establish some degree of a role within the economy and earn wages. In particular, “women exchanged work and produce, employing each other’s skills and easing their own burdens in the process” (Norton 605). Contrastingly, this integration of women’s work in the economy did not exist as prominently in the South where cash crops (tobacco and sugar cane) were the main source of income (DuBois, 88). Due to the amount of manual labor that is necessary to maintain the production of these crops, slavery became the foundation of the Southern economy, and “enslaved Africans were employed in a modern, commercial, globally oriented form of production (Dubois, 90)”. Subsequently, women in the South did not have a large role in the economy compared to women in the North; rather than contributing economically, elite southern women were responsible for the raising of their children and the maintenance of the property.

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In a plantation, a woman was less likely to be involved in the actual work, and on most plantations, especially in the South where plantations were most common, slaves did the work while an overseer instructed them. In the early 19th century men did heavy labor, and were seen as strong, capable people, and women typically did food and clothing preparation. This began to shift once industry became popularized and women were moved into more domestic responsibilities such as watching after children and maintaining the household while the man was away. During this time however, people began to question the equality between men and women, and this led to different opinions on what types of jobs women should have (O’Malley). Opinions on women’s stance in society and women’s status tended to fluctuate in the 19th century based off of what people thought, and what women were going

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The next chapter highlights the gendered division of labor and the difficulty to keep a family as a slave. Chapter six and seven moves on to the eighteenth century and shows how women have improved in areas such as more political participation and increasing social class of

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Boydston writes, “But if middle-class women were encased in the image of the nurturant (and non laboring) mother, working-class women found that their visible inability to replicate that model worked equally hard against them.” The standard during the Antebellum period was a woman that didn’t do any kind of laborious task other than housework which was thought as being an enriching and awarding process. However, wage-earning women visibly were unable to live up to these new standards because they were forced out of their own gender sphere of domesticity just to find work. During the Antebellum period, it was believed to be a men’s sphere to work and men masculinity was based on the fact of being the main “breadwinner” for the family. By a woman going into this sphere they went against the formation of the two gender spheres.

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While reading about American history the thing that I found most appealing was the limited rights that women had during this era. Although women gave the early settlers longer life expectancy and brought hope to their future, women still were not considered equal to a man. Women were discriminated against and didn’t play an important role in early American history. Generally, women had fewer legal rights and career opportunity than men because they were considered weak and not able to perform certain tasks. Different women came from different ethnic backgrounds and were all created equal in the eyes of men.

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Specifically, southern white women used this period to elevate their social status so that they could climb the social tower to gain power and compare to men. Southern women wanted to get out of the ideal that women should only be housewives, so they used slaves to relieve themselves of house chores, which brought them away from just being housewives. This elevated them socially because instead of being ridden with housework, they were give leisure time and time to focus on their husbands and wives. Slaves were thought to benefit because slave owners would take care of the slaves and that they would be better off being a slave than running around Africa. Slave owners would give slaves food, shelter, and clothing, take care of their children, and teach them christianity (Jones, 102).

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For women in the Southern Colonies had very few legal rights such as not being able to vote or preach. Most women had difficult jobs most of the women 's jobs were being homemakers. Life for the women were hard and unforgiving. Life for the colonial women had to work on farms.

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As miserable as it is to be a slave in the South, being a black women worsens the condition. The role of a black women in both the Union and the Confederacy have always been portrayed and elaborated on the orthodox that black women are meant for manual labor, for being tools and for assisting men. However, black women in the South are treated much harsher of course. Majority of black women enslaved were vulnerable to rape, physical abuse and having their families taken away. While the Confederacy took black male slaves into the camp, black women were left to care for their children themselves while managing their plantations and other labor.

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The absence of education on plantation life is a topic that is deeper than it would appear on the surface. It is a significant part of the stigma that has haunted the African American culture to this

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The life women in the American colonies was treacherous, yet rewarding. There was so much death and sickness around at the beginning of the new world it is a wonder anyone survived. Had it not been for the nurturing and healing offered by women, this country may have never gotten itself off the ground. Women took care of the home, and the family and this remained the main focal point of the American colonial women. Although women’s lives changed exponentially over the century and a half, especially during the market revolution and the second great awakening, the true belief of what a woman was remained unchanged.

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sometimes worked long after their return from the fields, and long after the men had retired” (White, 1985, p. 122). None of the women’s duties to the slave owners or to their family could be left undone. Slave women had to balance all aspects of their lives

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