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In the master's eye : representations of women, Blacks, and poor whites in antebellum Southern literature / Susan J. Tracy.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: Amherst, Mass. : University of Massachusetts Press, �1995.Description: 1 online resource (ix, 307 pages)Content type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 058518688X
  • 9780585186887
  • 1122054122
  • 9781122054126
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Additional physical formats: Print version:: In the master's eye.DDC classification:
  • 810.9/975 20
LOC classification:
  • PS261 .T73 1995eb
Online resources:
Contents:
The antebellum South -- The production of Southern literature -- The form of Southern literature -- The genesis of the "Plantation novel" -- Representing Southern women's lives -- Unmarried women: the "Belle," passive sufferer versus spirited woman -- Unmarried women: the "Spinster" and the "Fallen woman" -- Married woman: mothers -- Widows -- Slavery: the "Patriarchal" institution -- The master-slave relationship: individual portraits of slaves -- The problem of class in Southern society and Southern literature -- Representations of poor whites -- The problem of the yeoman farmer.
Action note:
  • digitized 2010 committed to preserve
Summary: This book explores the way in which literature can be used to reinforce social power. Through rigorous readings of a series of antebellum plantation novels, Susan J. Tracy shows how the narrative strategies employed by proslavery Southern writers served to justify and perpetuate the oppression of women, blacks, and poor whites.Summary: Tracy focuses on the historical romances of six authors: George Tucker, James Ewell Heath, William Alexander Caruthers, John Pendleton Kennedy, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, and William Gilmore Simms. Using variations on a recurring plot - in which a young planter/hero rescues a planter's daughter from an "enemy" of her class - each of these novelists reinforced an idealized vision of a Southern civilization based on male superiority, white supremacy, and class inequality. It is a world in which white men are represented as the natural leaders of loyal and dependent women, grateful and docile slaves, and inferior poor whites. According to Tracy, the interweaving of these themes reveals the extent to which the Southern defense of slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War was an argument not only about race relations but about gender and class relations as well.
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Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-296) and index.

This book explores the way in which literature can be used to reinforce social power. Through rigorous readings of a series of antebellum plantation novels, Susan J. Tracy shows how the narrative strategies employed by proslavery Southern writers served to justify and perpetuate the oppression of women, blacks, and poor whites.

Tracy focuses on the historical romances of six authors: George Tucker, James Ewell Heath, William Alexander Caruthers, John Pendleton Kennedy, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, and William Gilmore Simms. Using variations on a recurring plot - in which a young planter/hero rescues a planter's daughter from an "enemy" of her class - each of these novelists reinforced an idealized vision of a Southern civilization based on male superiority, white supremacy, and class inequality. It is a world in which white men are represented as the natural leaders of loyal and dependent women, grateful and docile slaves, and inferior poor whites. According to Tracy, the interweaving of these themes reveals the extent to which the Southern defense of slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War was an argument not only about race relations but about gender and class relations as well.

The antebellum South -- The production of Southern literature -- The form of Southern literature -- The genesis of the "Plantation novel" -- Representing Southern women's lives -- Unmarried women: the "Belle," passive sufferer versus spirited woman -- Unmarried women: the "Spinster" and the "Fallen woman" -- Married woman: mothers -- Widows -- Slavery: the "Patriarchal" institution -- The master-slave relationship: individual portraits of slaves -- The problem of class in Southern society and Southern literature -- Representations of poor whites -- The problem of the yeoman farmer.

Use copy Restrictions unspecified star MiAaHDL

Electronic reproduction. [S.l.] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010. MiAaHDL

Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. MiAaHDL

http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212

digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL

Print version record.

English.

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