History concepts and contexts

¶ … Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South," by Victoria E. Bynum. Specifically, it will look at why I found the book to be interesting and valuable for research on how women lived in the Old South.

UNRULY WOMEN: A REVIEW

Unruly Women" is more than just a book about how women lived in the South in the 19th century. It is a graphic history of how husbands, masters, and owners treated their women. It is a tale of women who did not fit in their society, and how society regarded them. It is the story of black women, and white women, and how they considered each other, and interacted with the men in their lives. It is often fascinating, and often disturbing. Bynum has taken a difficult subject, and made the reader want to learn more. Bynum herself says in the Introduction, "Why should historians interested in the dynamics of power and politics in the antebellum South investigate this politically powerless minority of women? This book addresses these questions by examining three broad categories of women who behaved in atypical fashion" (Bynum 1).

Throughout the book, Bynum consistently shows that women have always maintained a different social position than men, and it has usually been based on their gender and sexuality. Women attain these positions in a wide variety of ways, from using marriage as a stepping-stone, to creating their own roles defined by their sexuality. "For example, Mary Jenkins Chambers, the mistress of a planter household, had worked her way into the highest echelons of southern society through the time-honored fashion of 'marrying up.' In 1831, while still a teenager, she married Joseph Hart, only to become widowed before her twenty-first birthday. In 1834, she married Elijah Barnett, whom she also outlived, and she married her final husband, Asa Chambers, of Montgomery County, at the age of forty-one in 1856. As the owner of twenty-one slaves and eight hundred acres of land, Chambers was one of Montgomery County's wealthiest men" (Bynum 16).

In the South, being a white woman in Southern society meant confronting the issue of slavery sometime during your life. Bynum's stories of slavery, and how white women turned away while atrocities were committed are at once frightening, because they really happened, and fascinating, because they are a bit of insight into a world that no longer exists, and hopefully could never exist again.

Because the institutions of the family and slavery were interlocked, white women occupied an important place in the cultural and economic life of southern society. Wives of slaveholders served as conduits for the transmission of power and property from one generation to the next. As caretakers of the family, they also oversaw much of the daily workings of the slave system. Finally, as the repository of a southern code of honor that regarded them as symbols of racial and sexual purity, white women maintained the racial distinctions that were crucial to the continued hegemony of white men (Bynum 64).

The planter's wives served as a beacon of gentility, and looked the other way when their husbands sired mulatto children with the slave women. Their place in society was accepted and secure, as long as they kept their mouths shut.

Slaves in the South, on the other hand, often suffered even more because of their gender, than they did because of their race. They were often raped and/or impregnated by their employers, and since they had no social standing, or any form of justice, there was nothing they could do to prevent it.

An Orange County slave, Harriet, personified the double burden of gender and race suffered by slave women. Dr. James Strudwick Smith of Chapel Hill purchased fifteen-year-old Harriet in 1834 as a personal servant for his daughter Mary Ruffin Smith. Although Harriet eventually married Reuben Day, Jr., a prominent free black in the county, this marriage had no legal standing because of her slave status (Bynum 17).

Harriet and her sisters could be sold at any time, leaving her family behind, and this was a very common practice with slave owners.

Often, these "Unruly Women's" only defiant act was to complain about an abusive or power hungry husband. "Such complaints usually singled out men who exhibited physical and mental cruelty toward women" (Bynum 1). This unheard of deed singled them out as "unruly" - what kind of woman could not get along in their own household? Because of the laws of the time, often, their complaints were simply ignored, or the husband's brutality was upheld as his right. "As Chief Justice Richmond Pearson stated in blunt terms after denying a divorce to a woman who had been beaten and horsewhipped by her husband, 'The law gives the husband power to use such a degree of force necessary to make the wife behave and know her place'" (Bynum 61).

Divorce was not unheard of in the Old South, but the granting of a divorce was not always simple, or even fair. Martha Trice wanted to divorce her husband because he had squandered the fortune she brought into the marriage from the death of her first husband. "She also complained that her husband had denied her money for basic necessities, beaten her on several occasions, and committed adultery" (Bynum 74). The judge did not agree, however, and not only denied her request for a divorce, he also made her pay the court costs!

Martha Trice returned to her father's home, where she contributed to the family economy by housekeeping and sewing. As a well-to-do widow without a provision of separate estate, she had entered a second marriage with her property at risk. Her failure to win a divorce left her penniless and as dependent on her family as a child (Bynum 74).

One interesting and terrifying note that Bynum makes about divorce at the time, was that, "Although women suffered greater physical vulnerability than men, not a single woman received a divorce solely on the grounds of having been beaten by her husband" (Bynum 77). They had other legal means to try to end the abuse, but removing themselves from the household by divorce was not one of them.

Of course, sexuality and sexual behavior was much different for women in the Old South. Simply put, "nice girls did not do those things," and the others who did were most likely "poor white trash," or black women. However, Bynum found that some single women beat the system, while retaining their position in polite society.