Negotiating Boundaries of Southern Womanhood: Dealing with the Powers That Be

Abstract

In a time when most Americans never questioned premise that women should subordinate to men, and in a place where only white men enjoyed fully rights and privileges of citizenship, many women learned how to negotiate societal boundaries and to claim a share of power for themselves in a male-dominated world. Covering early nineteenth through early twentieth centuries, Negotiating Boundaries of Southern Womanhood describes ways southern women found to advance their development and independence and establish their own identities in context of a society that restricted their opportunities and personal freedom. They confronted, cooperated with, and sometimes were co-opted by existing powers: white and African American elite whose status was determined by wealth, family name, gender, race, skin color, or combinations thereof. Some women took action against established powers and, in so doing, strengthened their own communities; some bowed to powers and went along to get along; some became powers, using status to ensure their prosperity as well as their survival. All chose their actions based on time and place in which they lived. In these thought-provoking essays, authors illustrate complex intersections of race, class, and gender as they examine ways in which southern women dealt with the powers that be and, in some instances, became those powers. Elitism, status, and class were always filtered through a prism of race and gender in South, and women of both races played an important role in maintaining as well as challenging hierarchies that existed.