Description
Book SynopsisSusanna (Susan) Preston Shelby Grigsby (1830-1891), a white plantation mistress and slaveholder, struggled to participate in the economic modernization of antebellum Kentucky, both morally and financially. She yearned to create a happy, solvent household for her family and domestic workers, both free and enslaved. As the nineteenth century progressed, so shifted labor patterns within the plantation household. Paid white lower-class women worked alongside black slaves. And as hard times fell on Grigsby, financial imperatives and custom prevailed over her moral qualms. Class, race, and gender collide in Susanna Delfino''s Bonds of Womanhood: The World of a White Anti-Slavery Slaveholder. Drawing on Grigsby''s correspondences, Delfino seeks to understand how white women participated in the economic transformation of 1840s Kentucky. Rather than a simple account of white domestic labor, Grigsby''s letters reveal a rich variety of interlocking gender, class, and race-related issues. While Gr
Table of ContentsIntroduction Kentucky Looking 'Backward' to the Future The Bitter-Sweet Taste of Progress Bonds of Womanhood The World Turned Upside Down Coda Bibliography Index
