Old South Essays

Emily", Faulkner tells a story of a woman's life and death and the conflict between two eras; the Old South and the New South. Faulkner personifies the Old South as Miss Emily Grierson, the last southern bell. The young men and women of Jefferson represent the New South. Throughout the story, Faulkner uses an altered timeline to convey the struggle of the Old South versus the New South, and communicate the Old South's refusal to let go of the past and move forward into a new era. The story is set in the

Rebel, Cat in a Hot Tin Roof, and Jezebel. The books and films mentioned before will certainly help with the picture of women of the south in the past, present and future. African American women and Caucasian women have progressed greatly from roles that today would be unordinary. Women in the Old South were seen primarily as child birthers,

The Old South did not allow many education opportunities for women of any type at first. Initially, the South saw little need for farm wives, the majority of Southern women, to learn to read and write (McMillen 90). Many education opportunities were informal and women were often taught by other women useful skills and traits. However, female academies slowly began to open which “suggested that the South would not tolerate an unschooled female population” (McMillen 90). Many white and some free black

forms the myth of the “Old South” which was imagined as being stable and lacking any significant changes or crises. Documents written at the time along with books such as Creating an Old South contradict this view and reveal a number of divisive issues, including geographic divisions and disagreement over the ultimate fate of Indians that reveal that the idea of an unchanging South was just an illusion with no basis in reality. The author of the book Creating an Old South, Edward E Baptist, does

in the Southern States. Some examples of hypocrisy and hypocrites in the book are Aunt Alexandra, Miss Gates, and Mrs. Merriweather. To begin, Aunt Alexandra is one of the many voices of hypocrisy in the book. Aunt Alexandra is a symbol of old southern charm and what woman were supposed to act like in the 1930s. She lives by the fact that family is the most important thing in life. She judges

The Old South had required a better understanding of the power of social myths. That had involved recognizing the dreadful dimension of the region's history. This was when the white southerners had won short-term economic gains that over time, that had damaged the soil and awakened the moral indignation of parts of the world. They had a focus on agriculture, as well as the growing dependence that was on the slaves at the expense of the urban development. Slaveholding South had caught a ride on the

In this story Faulkner uses the life of the main character Emily Grierson to compare the old south to the new south. Faulkner uses a “we-narrator” to tell the story so that it is representing the entire community when the narrator speaks. Emily represents the old south in the fact that her dad kept her closed off from the rest of the world for thirty years. He would not allow her to go out with anyone and if anyone came to take her out he would send them away. After years of solitude it was like

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

political personality…Political fakes into account the attitudes, valves, and beliefs that people in a society have about the political system, including standard assumptions about the way the government works” There were many influence during the “Old South”. Agricultural is how people made money because they had farms and ranches that they could use. Back then there were mostly rural areas unlike today how there is both rural and urban now. Because of how big the agriculture industry is there was a

between the North and South caused the nation to go into war. When examining the nature of slavery, these two books do just that. Creating an Old South by Edward Baptist analyzes the time period before the civil war in middle Florida, focusing on two counties. It emphasizes the encounters by slaves, countrymen, rich, and women. The “old south” is attached to a myth where all the plantations were prosperous. He is retelling the story of the Middle South in order to create an old south. People are moving

The impact of slavery on the Old South is a difficult measure to establish because slavery was the Old South. While the popular adage was “Cotton is King,” it was simply a microcosm of the delusion of the day. Truly, slavery was king. Slavery was the growing tension of the time, political catalyst and ironically crux of American power. To the masses, slavery was a social defining stance; the “peculiar institution” to some and a defining moral line to others, American life was changed depending on

conflict between the Old South and the New South in America in the late 1940s. At that time, the aristocratic class of the Old South was slowly fading in the eyes of the industrial working class. In the play, this conflict is emphasized through Blanche’s character. She arrives in New Orleans with illusions of the past and with the inability to handle the modern world in which her sister lives. Contrastingly, Stanley represents the social expansion of the South in which the old aristocracy has no place

between modernizing society and the ideals of the “Old South”. In this rapidly changing society, one individual refuses to conform to such change. Miss Emily, much like her house, stubbornly rejects change, in a desperate attempt to maintain the values of the “Old South”. Her house itself stands as a reminder of a past era. In a city that was moving towards a new age, the house stood stubbornly against conformity as a representation of the “Old South”. The house and Miss Emily stand alone in a refusal

In the poems, “On the Subway” by Sharon Olds and “The South” by Langston Hughes, we seem many similarities in their themes and styles of writing. In Sharon Olds’ poem we see the presence of racial issues and how the Caucasian woman and the African American boy are both afraid of each other for different reasons. She talks about both white power and black power and the ways they affect the lives of her main characters in the poem. She uses symbolism when describing the woman and the young man when

The nature of the Old South depended on a firmly structured society where plantation owners, or a small white body of southerners, existed as the elites of society, “crackers,” who were sometimes depicted as poor whites but, in this case, refer to those whites in the south who represented a culture which drew from its Celtic origins, and, most importantly, African American slaves who were firmly regimented in state of inferiority to both crackers and planters. In terms of ethics and economics, the

of the Old South. The process of Reconstruction began shortly afterwards, and the post-Civil War South began the arduous process of reconciling the old with the new. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is set during this time period, describing a Southern town and its people caught up in a romanticized fantasy of the Old South, attempting to move forward into modernity. Emily’s story is far more figurative than literal; she functions as a relic of a bygone era, symbolizing the Old South, while

An Interpretation of the Old South. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990. The novel, Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South, James Oakes compares the lives of enslaved African Americans and their owners. It explains very thoroughly every aspect and detail of the Old South and its policies on slavery. He uses helpful quotes from slaves and their owners back in that time period to show you how they thought of themselves and their slaves. The “Old South” time period was from 1790

begin to feel pity for her. Faulkner uses the characterization of Miss Emily to show how she represents the Old South, and uses the conflicts between Miss Emily and the town to show how the town represents the New South. Miss Emily’s characterization

Obviously, Southern economic growth was in the different direction from northern. There were few large cities in the South, which were mainly centers for gathering and shipping cotton. New Orleans was the only city of significant size in the South. The region produced less than 10 percent of the nation 's manufactured goods. Plain Folk of the Old South included three-fourths of white southerners who did not own slaves. Most white southerners lived on self-sufficient farms. Most whites supported

characters have dysfunctional families that portray vast age gaps and generational divides. This family dynamic sets the stage for a clash of Old V.s New south as the elderly glorify the past and their children pose a threat to their traditional institutions with their modern beliefs. First, I will create a foundation to define and compare Old South vs. New South within the context of O’Connor’s stories. Then, I will discuss the flawed families in two of O’Connor’s short stories Good Country People and