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6 ‘‘Something for the Girls’’: Marriage Customs and Girlhood P ut a high price on yourself,’’ a Southern newspaper warned girls wanting good husbands who could provide for them. In 1864 the impact of the war caused the Yorkville Enquirer to reprint this piece of counsel highlighted ‘‘Something for the Girls.’’ Put off the ways of children. Your girlish days will soon be over. Be helpful to the marriage. Do not be too forward or anxious; exercise prudence and modesty, and avoid noisy or boisterous behavior that men do not like. Do not adorn yourselves with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array. Those too anxious to marry might as well hang out a sign. According to St. Paul, women should adorn themselves in modest apparel. Again in spring 1865, the Enquirer offered tips on ‘‘Who Will Make a Good Wife.’’ A good girl rises early, sets the table, and fixes her father’s breakfast ‘‘cheerfully.’’ She must have ‘‘a kind heart.’’ If she drags herself out of bed at 9 a.m. and says how awful she feels, she must be ‘‘lazy and mopish.’’ On the other hand, if she sweeps the floor or cleans the clothes, she is ‘‘industrious.’’ If she has a novel in one hand and a fan in the other, shedding tears, she is ‘‘unfit for a wife.’’1 In nineteenth-century America, marriage became a milestone marking formally the end of childhood. Therefore, this stage of life was a time to cultivate in the psyches of girls the acceptance of appropriate marriage customs. New brides had to bear children, preferably males. Married women without children were scorned. Even other women held them in contempt. Mary Chesnut was the target of her father-in-law’s barbs. One day in her presence, the old man told his wife that, unlike Mary, she was not useless; through her children, she had produced twenty-seven grandchildren, a veritable tribe.2 Even before the Civil War, the premodern and modern intertwined in South Carolina to extend the period of childhood, or at least to forestall early marriages . Traditional farmers wanted to keep their children home to maximize the output of a struggling household. As for elite Carolinians, taking their cues from modern Europe, they too began prolonging the childhood of their daughters , which resulted in an extension of girlhood. Both trends encouraged later 66 Marriage Customs and Girlhood first marriages. In 1860 the average age of couples starting on their first marriage in Edgefield District was twenty for women and twenty-five for men. As in modern Europe, young elite girls were cloistered in secular convents, called ‘‘female academies,’’ under the assumption that such innocents needed protection from the dangers of the outside world while they were being properly educated to be useful members of society. Although locked up in metaphorical gardens of extended childhood, these girls were not protected from the consumerism of modern culture. As young women, they resisted traditional notions of morality, religion, and marriage. The instability of the war further encouraged their rebellion.3 The war made it more difficult for parents and educators to monitor the young, who were smitten with romantic patriotism. Younger girls were participating too early in courting and other premarital rituals. Some of them were merely thirteen or fourteen years old. Emma Holmes watched aspiring belles, only fifteen years old, engaged in activities that might have brought censure before the war. Sallie Bull enraged her somewhat stodgy older fiancé by performing in the scandalous round dance. Worse yet, with someone else! Sallie broke off the engagement and continued in her precocious ways. Even girls cloistered in private academies caught the war fever and its Byronic romanticism ; they, too, wanted to break the bonds of girlhood. Sallie McDowall of Camden, for instance, wrote her first name in her notebook with the surnames of some twenty boys from elite families. She also drew a heart-shaped wreath with the inscription ‘‘Rise Sons of Carolina, Rise and Mount,’’ the title of a poem that captured her romantic sentiments. Young girls who faithfully followed parental restraint wondered years later if they had done the right thing. One girl, declining a kiss from her fifteen-year-old beau, promised him one when he returned, but he died in an early battle.4 A cultural war prevailed between generations involving morality, marriage customs, and fashion. Adults thought the younger generation was going to hell in a handbasket (a refrain that...

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