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164 “The Typical Woman of the New South” Julia Magruder R Born in Charlottesville,Virginia, Julia Magruder (1854–1907) claimed an illustrious southern heritage as the niece of Confederate general John Bankhead Magruder. In addition to writing essays and short stories for a number of magazines , she wrote novels, including Across the Chasm (1885), in which the love between a northerner and a southerner brings national harmony, and Princess Sonia (1895), which was illustrated by Charles Dana Gibson.1 Magruder’s “Typical Woman of the New South” was published by Harper’s Bazar (as the periodical’s name was then spelled) in 1900 and illustrated with a portrait of this “typical woman” by Howard Chandler Christy. The magazine, with the subtitle A Repository of Fashion, Pleasure, and Instruction,first appeared in 1867, and along with articles on domestic economy, fashion, interior design, and later gardening, it featured fiction and reviews, such as William Dean Howells’s “Heroines of Fiction” series. Historian and translator Mary L. Booth began as editor and is credited with making the magazine a phenomenal success. In addition to the focus on fashion,Harper’s Bazar included a gossip section,cartoons , woodcuts and etchings from Winslow Homer and Thomas Nast, and articles on women’s rights. Margaret Sangster, widely known for her work in general interest, Christian, and children’s magazines, served as editor of the weekly magazine during the 1890s until Elizabeth Jordan, a reporter for the New York World, took control in 1899 and changed the magazine to a monthly in 1901. In 1895, circulation exceeded 75,000; in 1900, the magazine sold for ten cents a copy or four dollars a year.2 Harper’s Bazar, Nov. 3, 1900. women’s club movement and women’s education 165 Perhaps it will be a surprise to many when the present writer pronounces one of the prominent characteristics of the women of the new South to be industry. It has so long been an accepted conclusion that Southern women of the higher class are indolent and lacking in energy, that perhaps nothing but a visible object-lesson will do away with this idea. Such an object-lesson is not far to seek, if a spirit of fairness is brought to the question. Indeed, would not the employment of that spirit modify , if it did not quite reverse, the same dictum concerning the women of the old South? When we remember the exquisite specimens of needle-work handed down from our grandmothers, and consider that all those tiny tucks and delicate ruffles were done before the invention of sewing-machines; when we see the beautiful examples of embroidery and netting and darned work and crocheting, to say nothing of the charming old patch-work quilts, etc.—do we not feel that the present generation is shamed by the past? Besides this, every Southern girl knows how her grandmother’s pickles and preserves and cake and pastry are held up to her as an ideal, as well as the careful housekeeping, the cultivation of flowers, and many other such expenditures of time and energy. It has often been maintained that the possession of slaves made the Southern women lazy, but it was oftener the case that this fact demanded an extraordinary degree of energy and industry, for to meet the needs of a hundred men, women, and children. who depended on their owners for everything, was, in itself, so great an exaction that it is no unusual thing to hear former slave-owners say that they never knew what freedom was themselves until their slaves were freed. All this may seem irrelevant to the question under consideration, but when we reflect that the broadened and strengthened activities of the Southern woman of the present are the outcome of the habits and customs of her ancestors, it is directly to the point. The difference between the two types is vast. As to which has the advantage, that must depend upon the ideal in each individual’s mind. Some would argue that the loss of the delicate reserve, the quaint propriety, the exacting self-respect, etc., that characterized our grandmothers was not compensated for by the energy and achievement , in more public walks of life, which characterize the Southern woman of today . Those who are familiar with A Southern Planter (the book written some years ago by a Southern woman, which so delighted Mr. Gladstone that he wrote to the author asking her permission to edit and have...

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