Negotiating Boundaries of Southern Womanhood

Book excerpt: In eleven thought-provoking essays covering the early nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, Negotiating Boundaries of Southern Womanhood examines the complex intersections of race, class, and gender and the 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 the South, and women of both races played an important role in maintaining as well as challenging the hierarchies that existed to claim a share of power for themselves in a male-dominated world. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.