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The Plantation Mistress by Catherine Clinton
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The Plantation Mistress

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The Plantation Mistress by Catherine Clinton
Paperback $18.00
Feb 12, 1984 | ISBN 9780394722535

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    Feb 12, 1984 | ISBN 9780394722535

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  • Dec 01, 2010 | ISBN 9780307772480

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Praise

The Plantation Mistress challenges and reinterprets a host of issues related to the Old South. The result is a book that forces us to rethink some of our basic assumptions about two peculiar institutions—the slave plantation and the nineteenth-century family. It approaches a familiar subject from a new angle, and as a result, permanently alters our understanding of the Old South and women’s place in it.” —Eric Foner, History Book Club Review

“Clinton has assembled many interesting quotations from old letters and diaries to support her belief that women in the antebellum South were generally overworked, often unhealthy, and little freer than their slaves.” —Atlantic Monthly

“One can be grateful that the recent emphasis on the study of women’s history has encouraged this much-needed work.” —Christian Science Monitor

Table Of Contents

Preface: Hidden Lives, xi

Chapter I: Women in the Land of Cotton, 3

Chapter II: Slave of Slaves, 16

Chapter III: Circle of Kin, 36

Chapter IV: The Day to Fix my Fate, 59

Chapter V: The Moral Bind, 87

Chapter VI: The Fallen Woman, 110

Chapter VII: Equally Their Due, 123

Chapter VIII: Precious and Precarious in Body and Soul, 139

Chapter IX: Every Woman Was an Island, 164

Chapter X: The Curse of Slavery, 180

Chapter XI: The Sexual Dynamics of Slavery, 199

Chapter XII: Foucault Meets Mandingo, 223

Appendix A, 232

Appendix B, 239

Abbreviations of Archives Referred to in Notes and Bibliography, 243

Notes, 245

Bibliography, 295

Index, 324

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