The Reconstruction of White Southern Womanhood, 1865-1895 (review)

In this carefully researched and well-written book, Censer analyzes emancipation's effects on elite southern white women in North Carolina and Virginia, especially coastal Craven County, North Carolina, a cotton enclave; New Hanover County, North Carolina, a rice area; and Fauquier County, Virginia, a mixed farming tidewater area. Detailed quantitative work in censuses, county records, and newspapers at the county level defines household structure and property-holding patterns. Women's letters, diaries, and publications, both nonfictional and fictional, and the writings of male kin and friends fleshes out the findings. Censer enters the debates that succeeded Anne Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830–1930 (Chicago, 1970), arguing that the Civil War improved elite women's lives because they had the education and status to explore possibilities that poorer women did not. By isolating class and taking generation into account, Censer was able to document a hesitant and contested process of liberation that steadily rendered elite women's lives more akin to their northern counterparts. Of the three generations that she identifies—those born before 1820, between 1820 and 1849, and between 1850 and 1869—the greatest measures of independence, but also of domesticity, accrued to the last group.

The elder generation's postwar angst germinated from its poor relationship to freedpeople and to the challenges of housework, for which its members possessed precious few skills. As children of war, the youngest generation coped better because of demands already encountered, and proved more independent and adept at work of many kinds. Women, regardless of age, resented the decline of African-American household labor. The altered social relations that emancipation engendered ushered in new styles of architecture and modern indoor kitchens. The younger generation found sewing machines and washing machines a necessity. They donned the mantle of moral superiority and breathed substance into middle-class respectability. They made little headway as property or business owners, although unmarried daughters began to inherit on a par with sons, generally serving as teachers and clerks. They became more urban. In the 1890s, the growing hysteria about alleged African-American predatory sexuality, a myth that they did much to promote, made "protection" a prominent literary theme.

Censer argues that the desire for a more involved public and civic life, and the widespread embrace of allegedly benevolent causes, motivated the "lost cause" activities and literature that these women abundantly produced. She offers a weak apology for their obsession with "lost cause" sentimentality, based on the fact that they did not originate the genre. But lack of imagination would hardly seem to exonerate them from their active participation in the construction and onset of Jim Crow. Yet, methodologically and interpretively, Censer's work is a strong contribution to women's and social history and advances understanding of the tidal wave of social change unleashed by emancipation. As a group heavily dependent on African-American labor, the challenges that elite women faced and how they responded to them clarifies the early years of freedom and the growing backlash against black independence. Censer has given us a landmark opportunity to revisit emancipation history from a unique and telling perspective.