The Reconstruction of White Southern Womanhood, 1865–1895

Jane Turner Censer

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9780807148167
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

This impressively researched book tells the important but little-known story of elite southern white women's successful quest for a measure of self-reliance and independence between antebellum strictures and the restored patriarchy of Jim Crow. Profusely illustrated with the experiences of fascinating women in Virginia and North Carolina, it presents a compelling new chapter in the history of American women and of the South.
As were many ideas, notions of the ideal woman were in flux after the Civil War. While poverty added a harder edge to the search for a good marriage among some "southern belles, " other privileged white women forged identities that challenged the belle model altogether. Their private and public writings from the 1870s and 1880s suggest a widespread ethic of autonomy. Sometimes that meant increased domestic skills born of the new reality of fewer servants. But women also owned and transmitted property, worked for pay, and even pursued long-term careers. Many found a voice in a plethora of new voluntary organizations, and some southern women attained national celebrity in the literary world, creating strong and capable heroines and mirroring an evolving view toward northern society.
Yet even as elite southern women experimented with their roles, external forces and contradictions within their position were making their unprecedented attitudes and achievements socially untenable. During the 1890s, however, virulent racism and pressures to re-create a mythic South left these women caught between the revived image of the southern belle and the emerging emancipated woman.
Just as the memoirs of southern white women have been key to understanding life during the Civil War, the writings of such women unlock the years of dramatic change that followed. Informed by myriad primary documents, Jane Turner Censer immerses us in the world of postwar southern women as they rethought and rebuilt themselves, their families, and their region during a brief but important period of relative freedom.

1

CHANGING VISIONS OF
WOMANHOOD

Few in Richmond doubted during the winter of 1873 that Mary Howard was a belle. Among those who danced attendance upon her was Albert Bruce, son of the wealthy Charlotte County family. Yet for all her powers of fascination, Mary Howard was a belle of a new stripe—when not charming young men on the dance floor, she taught school. That this young Richmond woman could command both admiration and a schoolhouse illustrates the changing nature of ideals of womanhood in the postwar period.¹

Few myths have been as durable as that of the southern belle. Any observer of the social life of either the nineteenth- or twentieth-century South might expect at least one southern belle to make her appearance. A creature of elegant evening events, the belle always commanded a host of male admirers. A belle was the cynosure of all beauty, the center of admiration. And in the parlance of the day, a belle trailed in her wake a gaggle of smitten suitors, each of whom offered undying devotion and marriage. Coquettish and fickle belles could rule capriciously, rejecting suitors right and left and breaking numerous hearts. Yet despite the ubiquity of the concept, the belle and her attributes have a history; they varied a great deal according to the period. Over time both men and women altered the definition of the belle’s charm and style as surely as they did their notions of fashion and beauty. Contemporary writings in the late nineteenth century suggest that the belle was merely one persona of the new woman emerging at a time when elite southern whites were rethinking notions of womanhood and proper female roles.²

Although the imagery of belledom looms especially large in writings about the antebellum South, the actual ideal for women even then had been much more complex and divided. Through the early part of the nineteenth century, the celebration of the belle had conflicted to some extent with the other pervasive ideal of modest, retiring womanhood. Belledom was simply the best-known phase in a life that otherwise was supposed to be largely oriented to self-abnegation and service. Historian Christie Farnham has commented on the ideals of self-control that from earliest childhood were drilled into girls in the select boarding schools that so many among the privileged attended. As adults, they should be modest, gentle, kind, quiet, industrious, and naturally innocent and pious in thought. At the same time, girls were occasionally allowed to be lively and, within the confines of school, competitive. Even the world of courtship and belledom had its competitive element.³

Antebellum manuals and parents alike censured the conduct of some belles. Beauty and captivating charm were admirable only when used unconsciously. A belle who self-consciously played on her attractiveness was regarded as a schemer whose arts and wiles might well create disgust and revulsion in her audience. Moreover, the queen of beauty who reigned too long risked losing her appeal, which was based on a mixture of loveliness, pleasing manners, and unavailability. As her hold over the hearts of men weakened, her vulnerability to criticism became all the greater. Admiration and popularity were commodities to be traded for a good marriage when their value stood at the zenith; once a belle’s stock began to drop, she had to use caution and sell quickly. In the 1830s, young Penelope Skinner showed how even belles knew some of this language of the market when she assured her brother that although she had as many admirers as any other belle in North Carolina, she also “wanted some of the old stock off the carpet, myself included.”⁴

When the Civil War burst on the world of the southern belle, its impact on these contradictory notions of womanhood was immediate and long-lasting. In particular, the demure image that so many parents and teachers had earlier sought to foster lost much of its appeal for young women. The war and the numerous soldiers it brought into southern parlors made courtship more frenetic, flirtatious, and bold. In the longer run, the war also promulgated images of heroines and heroic women who spied, nursed wounded soldiers, or valiantly protected hearth and home. Like the Joans of Arc and Deborahs of old, modern-day heroines now seemed close at hand. The ideal of womanhood, along with traditional values of self-sacrifice and duty, had come to include a more active, outspoken, and courageous aspect. This female self-reliance could be channeled into different forms of usefulness—benevolent and politically and socially conservative activities, as well as reforming ones—but the genie of engaged womanhood could never again be wholly bottled up.⁵

One excellent vantage point for observing the older generations’ prescriptions for proper womanhood in the late nineteenth century is in the sorts of upbringing they wished for their daughters and granddaughters. Both the virtues they espoused and the educations they sought for young women reveal their perspectives on these issues. Their views of courtship and women’s proper roles are evident in numerous discussions that also illustrate the outlook of younger women. Further evidence of beliefs about women’s ideal traits of character, abilities, and behavior can be found in the sorts of heroines created by southern women novelists of varying ages.

The kinds of education available to young women reveal some of the contradictions and ambiguities of their parents’ goals for them. For much of the nineteenth century, education had not proceeded in linear fashion at one school for either boys and girls. Rather, it was a patchwork construction, combining maternal instruction or that given by other close relatives with schooling by governesses and tutors, local schools, and boarding schools in larger towns. The war and later the straitened financial position of many old elite parents helped to perpetuate this pattern of haphazard schooling. Moreover, some parents feared that schooling would affect the health of their “nervous” or “delicate” daughters. Shortly before vivacious seventeen-year-old Sue Hubard was to leave for school in Baltimore, she became ill. The doctors decided that the “attack was from too much excitement” and not only advised against her attending school, but even against reading and writing.⁶

Despite the reduced circumstances of many among the old elite, most continued to pay for educations for young women that far exceeded mere literacy. While parents believed the education of sons was vital, many of them also valued the training of daughters. To be sure, the level and seriousness of the education differed according to the intellectual pretensions of the family. While the Carter family farmed historic Shirley plantation, the two daughters, Alice and Marion, were taught at home. Reminiscing decades later, Marion Carter Oliver claimed that their education by five different governesses had been a money-saving measure. Marion spent one year away at school, her sister none. Although the Carters economized on schooling, they nonetheless wanted educational opportunities for their daughters.⁷

Whether parents employed private teachers or sent their daughters to schools, members of the old elite worried about their daughters’ training. Discussing the education of her nephew’s daughters, Emily Dupuy declared that she fully agreed with the “opinion that a good education is a better fortune than gold & silver.” She rather tartly added, “As there seems at present but little prospect of many having this last to give, it seems more desirable than ever that our children should be well educated.” For many years the old elite had been urging daughters to study hard and make the most of their educational opportunities. These injunctions might have gained added weight when family “belt tightening” and sacrifice was necessary to pay for schooling. In 1879, William R. Aylett, who prided himself on being a descendant of Patrick Henry, brought up the question of education when he and his wife Alice were calculating whether she could afford a visit to friends and relatives. William assured Alice that she could use part of the eighty dollars recently deposited in the Planters National Bank, but he cautioned that she should not tap the Union Bank account. It must be retained for their daughter Pattie’s education, or she would not have the advantages her older sister Sallie had enjoyed. That Pattie might not receive as good an education as her sister was a prospect, according to William, “which would grieve me.” Yet he thought that this was the best time for Alice’s trip, since “our large & growing family of children will hereafter require every personal sacrifice at our hands.”⁸

Some mothers and even a few fathers taught their own daughters and sons. In Virginia at war’s end, Martha Clarke instructed her daughter, Mary Lyle Clarke, and two nieces. According to Martha, “The three little girls have a fine time together, and also have a very fine effect upon each other, in the study line in stimulating each other to do well in their books, which Mary Lyle needed badly, as I had great difficulty in making her study.” Sally Manning, Martha’s sister-in-law and a “fine French scholar,” taught the girls that language. In other cases, as in Charles and Carey Pettigrew’s large family, older daughters who recently had left school served as instructors. Jane Pettigrew, in particular, much preferred remaining at her boarding school to teaching her siblings, but acquiesced in the latter as part of her duty to her parents: “Of course I know I ought to go and teach the little ones at home, but I do wish I was young enough to come back here next year.” Virginia Hankins, a schoolteacher herself, at times supervised the education of her younger sister, Mary. In February 1883, Virginia reported about Mary: “I have put her hard to work again, at her books.”⁹

Some old elite families who had fallen on hard times took advantage of the newly created free schools. In Virginia, Martha and William Ambler enrolled their daughter Nannie in the “public free school four miles off,” although a few months later they decided that it was “not a good one, the female employed not being a good teacher.” The next year they found a school near their Louisa County home for Nannie, but sent her to board because the round-trip ride would have been ten miles each day. In Wilmington, North Carolina, northern reformer Amy Bradley, who had worked for the U.S. Sanitary Commission (the Civil War forerunner of the Red Cross), opened Tileston Institute, a school she intended for the education of poor white children. But her school’s reputation soon stood so high that members of the old elite were also enrolling their off-spring there. John DeRosset, a physician and member of a wealthy planting and professional family, profusely thanked her in 1877 for educating his children: “In my opinion Wilmington has never possessed an institution where order, discipline and effective methods of instruction have been carried to such an excellent degree as in that under your charge. I can never forget my own obligation to you.” In 1875, while a student at Tileston Institute, John’s niece, Adelaide Meares, called it a “splendid school,” and added, “So far, I am perfectly delighted with it.”¹⁰

Although Leila Madison Dabney was married to a prestigious lawyer and judge in Powhatan County, Virginia, the family struggled financially during the postwar years. At one point the Dabneys so worried about their children’s training that Leila begged her wealthy elderly aunt, Phebe Bailey, for assistance. Leila justified her request: “I ask you because I know how kind you have always been to me, and it goes to my very soul to see my children growing up in ignorance around me. I have taught them as far as I can, but you know I cannot teach music.” It is unclear whether Phebe Bailey responded to this request, but two months later Leila reported that her husband had taken a case that would pay one hundred dollars and had immediately hired a music teacher for their daughters. Describing the woman as a “fine music teacher, but poor in other respects,” Leila quickly added, “We were glad to get her as I can teach every thing but music myself.”¹¹

This emphasis on music leads to the question of the curriculum studied by young women. The patchwork-quilt nature of women’s education, even among those who spent considerable time at school, meant that their instruction was far from standardized. In addition to subjects such as English grammar and composition, history, natural sciences, mathematics, and moral philosophy, antebellum female schools had taught the “ornamental arts”: music, embroidery, and more esoteric arts and crafts, such as netting, china painting, and the like. By the 1850s, many female schools, especially those that styled themselves academies, seminaries, or colleges, had created intellectually demanding curricula. In 1868, Maria Louisa Carrington reported that her youngest daughter’s Richmond school offered music (both instrumental and vocal), French, Latin, natural philosophy, and algebra. Sue Hubard, at age sixteen, when her education was still unfinished, wrote, “I understand French and Latin tolerably well, and have studied the usual English branches taught now except Arithmetic of which I know very little. I have always disliked it & being an only daughter & much indulged have never studied [it] as I should.”¹²

In addition to literacy and general knowledge, the elegant young lady was supposed to possess a host of accomplishments, foremost among which were music, art, and foreign languages. Parents and grandparents alike pushed young women to practice their playing or singing. Elizabeth Horner, for example, congratulated her granddaughters on improving in their music. Parents and daughters alike testified to the high regard in which these accomplishments were held. One young woman, Sallie Aylett, proudly informed her parents that she would be singing second soprano in the Christmas soirée at her school in Staunton. (Music particularly occupied the Aylett family. When William R. Aylett, Sallie’s father, had drawn up his will several years earlier, he bequeathed a piano each to three of his daughters, while the fourth received the family pipe organ.)¹³

The aim of education broadly defined was to provide, in addition to academic knowledge, the marks of a thoroughly finished young lady. These included a number of skills, such as writing without mistakes or blots in the graceful, spidery handwriting of the day. R. H. Dulany admonished his daughters to improve their penmanship and told his daughter Fannie, “Both Mary and you are improving in your writing as well as in your composition. Continue to take pains and you will find but little trouble in writing a good hand.” Charlotte Carrington, while teaching her daughters, considered the possible educational influence of a flower garden: “I want to interest myself with establishing a flower garden, for my little girls this spring, they all love flowers. And I think it is a beautiful taste which should be cultivated.” Here, parents of the old elite were continuing an earlier kind of training, as all these arts and graces had long been a valued part of a young lady’s education.¹⁴

On its surface, this education seems composed of impossibly contradictory elements. Why were parents combining such different kinds of courses as Latin and the ornamentals? If they wanted their daughters well educated, why the emphasis on music and art? If female education were to be limited to what today might seem a frivolous display of upper-class notions, why had Latin, German, algebra, and the like wormed their way into the curriculum? To a large extent, this unlikely combination flowed historically from the more rigorous antebellum female academies, which had simply expanded their curricula, retaining the ornamental subjects while incorporating elements of the general humanistic education that young males received. Once accepted, this vision of education for females continued into the postwar period with the addition of more demanding coursework. Peter Evans Smith captured this uneasy pairing of knowledge and “polish” when he told his daughter that his design for her had always been for her to be an “accomplished and fine Lady.” Other postwar southern parents wanted this somewhat contradictory amalgam of well-educated daughters who also possessed “womanly” accomplishments. Moreover, as historian Christie Farnham has pointed out in her survey of antebellum southern women’s education, training in music and art need not necessarily be frivolous. Music lessons could prepare the recipient to perform well, in addition to rounding out an aesthetic education.¹⁵

In the estimation of late-nineteenth-century parents, music and, to a lesser extent, art could have a decidedly practical aspect. Leila Dabney had been careful to mention her practical goals to her aunt when she sought Phebe Bailey’s financial assistance: “I wish my girls to learn music so that they may be able to teach some day themselves.” In the meantime she wanted them to be able to instruct their youngest sister. Widowed Maria Louisa Carrington, who taught school herself, explicitly indicated the larger purpose of the education of her two daughters, Willie and Bessie, while discussing Willie’s curriculum: “I hope she will lay in such a fund of learning, that she will be able to support herself, by teaching, and not be dependant on any one. I know I have tried to instil into both her, and Bessie a feeling of independence, and I think they have it.” Several years later, Maria Louisa praised Willie’s aptitude for drawing: “I feel that every accomplishment she can learn, will add to her power of self support, if she has to lean on herself.” Carey Pettigrew of North Carolina expressed similar sentiments about the importance of education: “I dread any more debt, tho’ if I had the opportunity of borrowing the money to educate my children I certainly would, as that would make them independent and able to support themselves.” Thus, even as some mothers emphasized the graceful ornamental arts and accomplishments that would make their daughters admired members of society, they also wished to give young women some means of self-support. Formal education would make it possible for women to earn wages and ensure, if necessary, an independent existence. This indicates an important change of attitude from the antebellum period, when southern elite whites did not expect education to prepare women for paid employment, in part because higher education remained so exclusively the province of the wealthy.¹⁶

While some of the emphasis that both schools and parents placed on music and French sprang from practical reasons, these adults also wanted education to reinforce class distinctions. Some parents were motivated in part by fear of falling into the lower orders. In a moment of brooding over her children, Leila Dabney despaired about their futures: “I sometimes wish all mine, were laid low in their graves …, for it is a keen pang to see them suffer, and grow up like the lower class around us.” In Virginia Hankins’s measured approval of her brother’s fiancée in 1888 lurked a similar foreboding: “She is very nice and is a lady with refined ways—she will make the best poor man’s wife I know of. She knows how to work, and how to be poor and not lower herself. Johnny’s poverty and being cut off from all society was beginning to make him lower himself, in dress—in manners, after a while it would have had its effect on his principles and morals. She will I believe, keep him up...

Table of contents

• COVER
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• ABBREVIATIONS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1: CHANGING VISIONS OF WOMANHOOD
• 2: WOMEN AND THE NEW DOMESTICITY
• 3: “WHAT WILL BE MY OWN”: WOMEN AND PROPERTY OWNERSHIP
• 4: WOMEN AND THE OLD PLANTATION
• 5: WOMEN IN PUBLIC: SCHOOLTEACHERS AND BENEVOLENT WOMEN
• 6: BECOMING AN AUTHOR IN THE POSTWAR SOUTH
• 7: WOMEN WRITING ABOUT THE NORTH AND SOUTH
• EPILOGUE
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX