Problem
What was life like for women living in the antebellum South? The popular image is one of big plantation houses, elaborate crinolines, Scarlett O'Hara. How well does that track with the reality? To what extent, and in what ways, were Southern women's lives defined by living in a slave society?
We had best keep in mind Harriet Jacobs's story, she being a Southern woman after all. What was life in the "Old South" like for her, and for 2 million other Black women (40 percent of all women in the South)?
Among white women, we have Mary Chesnut's account. What do we learn from her? How do her experiences compare with those of Jacobs?