Lockley, Timothy James (2002) Spheres of influence : working black and white women in antebellum Savannah. In: Delfino, Susanna, 1949- and Gillespie, Michele, (eds.) Neither lady, nor slave : working women of the Old South. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 102-120. ISBN 9780807854105

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Abstract

The vast majority of Southern women worked. About three-quarters of all white Southern families did not own slaves on the eve of the Civil War, and consequently women in these families generally shared with black women the necessity of working. Whatever else may have divided them, and there was much, black and white women regularly toiled in the fields to produce goods for the market and for the dinner table, they worked in the home caring for children and occasionally producing handicrafts and in urban areas, as this essay will demonstrate, they pursued a variety of wage-earning occupations. As Stephanie McCurry has demonstrated, this was true in some slaveholding families as well. It was the work of the wives that helped to secure the economic independence of yeoman households in coastal South Carolina, even those owning up to ten slaves. Only a small number of elite white women in the South enjoyed the leisured lifestyle popularized in twentieth-century mythology.

Item Type:	Book Item
Subjects:	F History United States, Canada, Latin America > F001 United States local history H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies > Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Savannah (Ga.) -- History -- 18th century, Savannah (Ga.) -- History -- 19th century, Women -- Employment -- Georgia -- Savannah -- History
Publisher:	University of North Carolina Press
Place of Publication:	Chapel Hill, N.C.
ISBN:	9780807854105
Book Title:	Neither lady, nor slave : working women of the Old South
Editor:	Delfino, Susanna, 1949- and Gillespie, Michele
Official Date:	2002
Dates:	Date Event 2002 Published
Page Range:	pp. 102-120
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access

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