This is an authoritative work by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese examining the lives of black and white women and their intricate relationship with the idea of the household and with each other. She presents an in depth, well-researched study of the racial and class divisions from which the lives of southern women were shaped. She looks at not only the outside economic influences, but also the system of household labor that defined the woman’s place in the southern household. She apologizes up front for the lack of sources on black women, but does a fair, if somewhat heavy-handed job in presenting the lives of the slave mistress. In the first chapter she acknowledges that she tries to take to task some of the recent scholarship concerning the slave mistresses and white southern women that has tried to conclude that because of the domination of white men and the task of managing the household (both black and white), white southern women became a slave of the slaves. Fox-Genovese reminds us that before white women were southern belles, they were first and foremost slaveholders and in this role they were capable of the same domination and abuse that the male slaveholder was capable of. She does not argue in any way that the white male was not the dominating force in the South and that white women were not in a submissive position, but in relation to black women (and black men), white women were a dominant power, as racist as any white man.

In the lengthy first chapter, Fox-Genovese presents her definition of the plantation household as being one with twenty or more slaves. She explores the growth of cities in both the North and South in the antebellum period and uses the information to demonstrate the primary difference between the two regions and how it affected economic and social systems. The southern household was the central unit of production, while in the North, the factory system was on the rise. In the North, people left their homes to work. In the South, the household was the center of everything including work and socialization. It was these very distinctive households that shaped the lives of women, both black and white.

 In discussing slave owning women, Fox-Genovese contrast them to Northern women. She contends that Southern women did not receive the same education as that of the North, though that could probably be argued by some of the more recent scholarship on the education of southern women. These women were trained to be proper belles by their mothers who they eventually would emulate as they started their own households. There was considerable stress in the transition from daughter to wife, but this was eased by the fact that their husbands would oversee the management of the plantation and the slaves would do all of the work. The women did have to become managers themselves in respect to the household, organizing its daily activities. As far as actually engaging in the daily task necessary to keep the plantation running, the mistress success depended on her “ability to order, persuade, or cajole servants to do assigned task properly.” (p. 115) These women almost fully accepted male dominance and within the numerous diaries and personal journals she uses to draw her conclusions, she finds most of the women loved their families and did not sit in a constant state of depression because of the paternalistic social system that existed in the South. They felt it was their duty to take care of their families and they felt camaraderie with their husbands. She also refutes the popular idea that southern women were closet abolitionist. The popular Mary Chestnut is often portrayed as a secret abolitionist, but Fox-Genovese says this is not accurate. She, along with the majority of slave holding women, was racist. Louisa McCord, a highly educated southern woman, wrote political essays pronouncing her belief that blacks were a separate, subhuman species. There were few of these women who supported the North in the Civil War and many who did everything they could possibly do to help their southern men fight the war.

 Fox-Genovese, even with lack of sources, provides a much bleaker picture of  the lives of black women. They were relentlessly subjected to cruelty in every form. They were raped by their masters, whipped by their mistresses, expected to do “man’s” work all day long, and then assume the role of mother and wife in the evenings. They lived in constant fear of their families being sold away from them and what the master or his sons would do to her young daughters. If the women worked in the big house, they were responsible for the cooking, cleaning, washing, nursing, and other various tasks depending on the size of the household. Black women did develop bonds with other black women because of and in spite of their shared experiences and this is what helped them survive within this social system.

 Considering her lack of sources, Fox-Genovese does a fair job in reconstructing the lives of women both black and white. She shows that by the toils of the slave women, mistresses were able to lead privileged lives and in no way did they share the common bond of oppression as the degrees in which they experienced oppression were so dramatically different. The only real area in which this book lacks is in examining those white southern women who went against the grain, fought for abolition, and who did not simply accept their fates as slaveholders, such as the Grimke sisters or Mattie Griffin. But these women were the exception to the general rule that existed within the southern gentry and do not in any way provide an authentic presentation of the lives of these women. This is an exemplary work for those interested in women’s history as well as slavery as a social system in the South.
 

Texas Christian University

Sharon Romero