Summary Of The Plantation Mistresses By Catherine Clinton

THE PLANTATION MISTRESS The Plantation Mistresses introduced by Catherine Clinton present in vivid detail the story of real lives and activities as a wife, household executive of white women’s during the nineteenth-century. This historian book illustrates clearly that while the “Southern belle” may have prevail momentarily, it was the “Steel magnolia” who reigned. This paper will review, evaluate and provide a critical analysis of Clinton’s story as well as her main arguments. By focusing on any areas of weakness within the story. Most people frequently think of the women of the Old South as appealing, as well as conceited, lacking intelligence, susceptible to dramatic situations, and almost totally decorative. However, their life as

Nonetheless, southern women were often pulled out from their family, constrain to live a miserable life at the husband house and unable to leave their house without an escort, whether is to visit family member often hundreds of miles away. Her husband could often leave the plantation for weeks for business purpose elsewhere in the country, trusting her to run the plantation alone. In the Old South marriage was not standardized, women were forced into arrange marriage often to others family member in other to keep their wealth. The Old South was very much an undemocratic society, built on old-fashioned notions of honor and fortune, and women were captive to this far more than men were. Although they had all the luxury a person could want in the world, despite laws that forbid a woman from owning slaves and the lack of sufficient education, responsibility for managing the entire plantation often fell on her in the absence of her husband. She was responsible for taking care of her home, raise and teach her children. Beyond the fact that she took care of her children’s, she was also required to looks at needs of any slaves her husband may own, stitching their clothes, keeping a lawn to

Inappropriate sexual behavior was not unusual in the Southern Society, although men were held to a moderate extent responsible for their act if they had enticed a teenage girl placed under their custody, women were blamed and abandon to their own more frequently. In some cases, were husband were attentive to them, plantation mistress had to worry about been cheated on, feeling isolated, they became addicted to narcotic. Plantation mistress suffering for so much abused that they took their anger toward their female slaves, beating, abusing and making them responsible for having an affair with their husbands. While Catherine Clinton has argued that plantation mistress was secretly opposed to the system of slavery, base on my reading of this book, I somewhat believe that they were also responsible or part of the development of slavery. However, I will remain neutral because the author presented lots of examples to sustain her argument. Clinton's main idea of the book is to in light the confusion on a category of American women in the nineteenth-century. Her significant benefaction of the work lies perhaps