-
Mary Bayard Clarke: Design for “Upsetting the Established Order of Our Dear Old Conservative State”
- University of Georgia Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
174 Mary Bayard Clarke Design for “Upsetting the Established Order of Our Dear Old Conservative State” Terrell Armistead Crow Mary Bayard Devereux Clarke (1827–86), by birth and upbringing, should have followed the traditional domestic role ascribed to elite white women in antebellum North Carolina. Instead, she described herself as “intensely individual in my thoughts and sentiments” and advised one of her sons, “live your own life,” adding, “I was brought up to think I ought to live some body elses life and must take my opinions—and feelings as I did my clothes when a child, they were cut and made properly and I must wear them.” Having written poems and stories from an early age, she chose to become a professional writer when few of her peers approved of married women working outside the home. Indeed, some in her family did not approve of her career. Sister Catherine (Kate) Devereux Edmondston chided women who published, saying, “O! beware of stepping out of your sphere. . . . Then indeed you would forget a woman’s first ornament, modesty. Women have no business to rush into print; so wide an arena does not become them.” The Devereux family, through inheritance and marriage, maintained multiple plantations located in several counties along the Roanoke River bottom as well as comfortable homes in Raleigh. Mary’s father, a Yale-educated attorney, also owned more than a thousand African Americans enslaved on those plantations . The Devereux women—beneficiaries of and participants in the plantation and slave economy of the South—were expected to manage their homes and care for their families while male relatives pursued public interests. They married, reared children, spent summers at popular resorts, engaged in philanthropic roles in their churches, and became accomplished hostesses. Domestic concerns constituted the primary occupations for most elite south- Mary Bayard Clarke 175 ern women before the Civil War. In return, they received the benefits of being a “lady” under male protection within the South’s patriarchal society and, with luck, found marriage partners to support them. One historian astutely observed that most privileged southern women simply fulfilled destinies rather than created ones of their own. Gender roles for southern white women stressed the ideals of dutiful daughters, wives, and mothers. White southern males stood at the apex of society as heads of households, businesses, and government. Black women, the vast majority of whom were enslaved, performed the domestic chores that enabled planter women to travel, entertain, attend church, and oversee the education of their children. Mary Devereux, born into this conservative world and well aware of class, race, and gender distinctions, nurtured ambitions of moving beyond domestic boundaries and into the public world of literature. Her writing and development received encouragement from her mother and eldest sister as well as from an Englishwoman hired to tutor her. In her highly autobiographical published poem “I’ve Been Thinking,” she described how her “Mother’s love watched o’er me” and her “fostering kindness” guided her. Mary’s eldest sister, Frances, saved some of the early letters Mary wrote in the 1830s, pleased with her aptitude. Frances also supported Mary’s publishing interests in later years. Although Mary benefited from her family’s wealth and the superior education and luxuries it provided, she differed from them in deciding how to put those advantages to use. Part of her independence developed after her mother, Catherine Ann Johnson Devereux, died in 1836 from consumption. According to a deathbed witness, among Mrs. Devereux’s last words were concerns for the burden she left her eldest daughter: “what a charge Frances, what a charge you will have!” Frances, in fact, regarded her younger siblings as her “children,” even after her own marriage. Her father, who doubtless felt all his children needed an actual mother, selected an extremely wealthy partner within a year of his first wife’s death. He married Ann Mary Maitland of New York in 1837, much to his children’s dismay. Sister Sophia mentioned her “chilled & unhappy girlhood ,” while sister Elizabeth asserted, “Oh! if our Mother had only been spared to us how different would have been the lives of every one of her children! I know . . . all of our lives would have been so different had we had her to go to to tell our troubles & get from her such loving good advice & counsel! Yes we have all needed her, every one has suffered for the want of her love.” Mary wrote her former tutor years later that the Roanoke...