Southern Belle In The Antebellum South
History of the Old South
Research Paper
Bailey K
Empowerment of the Southern Belle in the Antebellum South
The southern belle was perhaps one of the most charming characters of the American Antebellum South. She was and is often romanticized through fictional novels and plays, and many women throughout history have likely drawn parallels between their lives and that of heroines like Scarlett O’Hara. Southern women themselves might have looked back on the period of their lives they spent as belles as one of the most favorable. But the belle life stage simply bridged the gap into what was often the darkest period of their lives, and also where they reached their highest purpose and achievement as defined by their societal structure: …show more content…
the domestic pedestal of marriage. Once she reached that stage, a belle’s sole purpose was to be caring mother and a dutiful wife, and very little allowed her to stray from that role. Still, research suggests that as gender roles began to change with the coming of the Civil War, there were a number of outlets in her life that allowed the southern belle to empower herself. This essay will explore the belle, her life, and each of those empowering facets.
A southern belle, in most senses of the term, is a young woman of marriageable age who is out in southern society. She comes from a wealthy family and most often lives on a slave-owning plantation. She is confined to the ideals prescribed for her by the southern society in which she lives. That is, she is expected to be a perfect picture of charm, beauty and passiveness. She is certainly not outspoken, nor does she wear her emotions on her sleeve. Those around her suppress any characteristics that might bring out a desire for independence. Wealthy southerners lived within a sense of Victorianism and would react inflexibly to behaviors and movements that might disrupt or corrupt their rigid society. This was the life they learned to live.
Inwardly, belles had aspirations and expectations for their lives. They had notions about slavery, promiscuity of the men surrounding them, and most importantly, romance. According to an essay by Kathryn Lee Seidel, their idea of romance was a vain one. They expected to be swept away by a “gallant cavalier” who was taken by her “magical charming powers” and they often extended their courtship seasons in an effort to wait for that suitor. They might even be briefly smitten with ill-suited suitors because they fit the dashing description painted in their minds. These ideas came primarily from romance novels about belles who reached beyond societal walls and were rewarded. The ideas are described by as “the cult of romantic love.” This was an acceptable middle class value, but was not a reality for elite southerners. Diaries and letters between southern women expose the disappointment in realizing that the husbands they married turned out to be far from cavalier, and that they were chosen by those husbands not because of their magical charm, but because of their dowry.
Belles might have occasionally had unrealistic aspirations to be independent women, likely brought on by fictional novels and admiration of teachers from their schooling days, but most actually sought after the domestic life, unaware of the dissatisfaction it would quickly bring. Oftentimes, they would be discouraged by the hasty change in status that marriage brought about. They moved from the pampered, exciting lifestyle of a belle where friends surrounded them, they traveled often, and were likely admired by a number of suitors to the lonely, diligent and unacknowledged lifestyle of a domestic housewife whose happiness depended entirely on that of her often absent husband. At this point in her life, she is closed off to much of the outside world. But with the Civil War looming and a number of forthcoming social and religious movements, southern women found ways to reach outside of their austere domestic lifestyles and transform their identities.
Though education was part of a belle’s early life, it was the first and arguably the most important occasion for empowerment. Education for girls was an extreme privilege that might only be afforded to those from wealthy families. Women who could boast little more than domestic skills would not be appealing to suitors, and would likely make dull wives. If they were educated, they could have intellectual conversations with their husbands, and would recognize their intelligence. It was also the role of mothers to educate their children. And so, an education was a necessity for belles that was provided during their upbringing, though the rationale was often different for belles and their fathers. Fathers cared only to provide their daughters with enough education to master “polite culture” and be appealing to potential suitors. To a belle, education was an opportunity for self-improvement and an escape from the confined lives they lived. Nonetheless, becoming educated was the first step in becoming an independent woman.
Belles would be sent away from home to boarding schools before they reached their teens, and then would move on to female academies. During their schooling, men were absent, and so submission to them was no longer a concern. Instead, peers who understood them, and who they could confide in surrounded them. They were, for the first time, equal to those around them, which provided them with a sense of freedom. It also allowed them to push back against the restrictions society expected them to live by back home. With knowledge, young women were able to form their own identities, and competition with peers and a desire to succeed lent them a small caliber of aptitude. During their schooling years, they might also have encountered a number of teachers who they would look up to and often strive to be like. This was likely the first glimpse of an alternative life outside of what awaited them when they returned home. An education shaped the belle’s mind towards a desire for independence. It gave her a personal identity, which would have been oppressed in her home life, and gave her another leg to stand on, or an alternative to the domestic life. With an education, a belle might be able to support herself through a teaching career, or even as a writer.
Along with education and the ability to read came empowerment through literature.
How literature shaped courtship and romantic ideals has already been discussed, but literature also encouraged independence as an alternative life choice. Fictional romance novels about the “belle gone bad” were very popular with young women. The idea of the “bad belle” was heavily encouraged by the oppressive nature of southern society. These stories encouraged women to use their femininity to their advantage, as a weapon of sorts. Betina Entzminger suggests that feminine weakness was the very foundation of feminine strength. A woman could use her charms to manipulate the male sex, and that is what the bad belle did. She was one who used her “women’s weapons” but did not play by the rules of womanhood. Much of this theory has to do with the idea of feminine sexuality. In this sense, a woman was no longer an object, but a subject. She could empower herself through her sexuality—through her body. A woman’s sexuality was directly associated with how she saw herself, and how others saw her: again, as a subject or an object. (Hall, 38) As an object, her sexuality served as the foundation for oppression. But as an object, sexuality serves as part of what and who she is. Fictional novels moved the belle as an object into the belle as a subject who could think and act based on her own inclinations.
One famous belle-gone-bad was Belle Boyd, a southern planter’s daughter who stepped up to the plate, …show more content…
and outside of the boundaries laid for her by society during the Civil War. She was particularly famed for shooting a Yankee soldier dead after he disrespected her mother. She charmed Yankee soldiers for their secrets, serving as a spy for the confederate military.
Another bad belle was Janine from Daughters of New Orleans. She rebelled against the social prescriptions of a lady and swore off marriage and dependent life. Janine went through a chaotic string of adventures that lead her to different lovers, one a gambler who sent her away with enough means to support her for the rest of her life. Yet another example of a belle who resisted the rigid structure of the South, rose above, and succeeded. These stories left belles with ideas that put the submissive and dependent nature their upbringing accustomed them to in jeopardy.
Relationships formed with other women by southern belles served as another avenue of empowerment. Many of the strongest friendships were formed at boarding schools and academies, but little more engagement than letters would likely be kept up. Seclusion from the outside—family and friends—was just one unfortunate characteristic of plantation life for a married woman. However, friendships might also have been made with neighboring women, and those who were involved in the same causes. These relationships gave them freedom from loneliness, a connection to the outside world, and most importantly, similarity in values or beliefs. Knowing that they had allies in the causes they supported likely encouraged them to step outside of their boundaries to fight harder for them.
With the 1840s came the next great opportunity for empowerment of women: the Second Great Awakening. Religion served as a mechanism for the southern woman to be publicly visible in a society where her role was generally private. Ministers of this religious renewal encouraged women to be pious and pure. They suggested that the more perfect a woman was, the more positive influence she might have on the “straying men” in her life. Infidelity and promiscuity were present at many stages in a southern woman’s life. She might experience it with her own father, brothers, and eventually her husband. And most often, it was with slaves. In an effort to counter the sinful ways of the men in their lives, women of all ages would flock to religious revivals. Not only did they feel a sense of achievement in becoming more pure for the benefit of their husbands’ good will, they were given an opportunity to express themselves. During these revivals, women could be boisterous and outspoken without fear of disrupting the ideals of a refined belle. Religion became one facet of the belle’s life that helped promote in her a sense of self-awareness and worth.
Alongside religion came the encouragement by ministers for women to become involved in charity work. Not only did it give them an outlet outside of their domestic duties to devote themselves to, it served as an opportunity to build relationships with other women also involved. Still most importantly, it empowered them to develop a sense of independence in being able to help those who were not independent themselves.
As the South crept towards the Civil War, slavery became more and more disputed. Surprisingly, many southern women were opposed to slavery and thought it was a cruel practice. The opposition, though, was likely a result of the promiscuity of men with slave women, rather than the conclusion that it was cruel. The issue of the “wandering husband” encouraged a decline in female support of the institution of slavery. Anti-slavery movements provided an opportunity for women to connect with other women who identified with their problems, and I gave them something to believe in. There were a number of movements, but according to personal diaries, most were relatively quiet because of the financial dependency of the southern belle on the slavery system.
In the onset of the American Civil War, many things began to change for the southern belle—most importantly, the roles she played. Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States, the Emancipation Proclamation was declared, southern states began to secede from the union, and the country began its plunge into war. Within one year, the structure of southern society shifted substantially to a dependency on women. With men preparing to leave the home front to serve the Confederate cause, women would begin to fill their shoes. They became managers of the plantations, communicators of news and survival advice, and even spies—roles that never would have been dreamed of. Essentially, in an effort to preserve the structure of their lives, southerners pushed it further out of its rigid boundaries.
The Antebellum southern belle, in all her glory, represented many of the ideals we associate still today with a nostalgic view of southern America.
And yet, it is that set of ideals that the belle struggled against for so long. The pre-Civil War belle was a private operator and a perfect, lasting picture of what a southern lady ought to have been. But that image of delicate and docile nature hid a lifetime of oppression by a rigid social structure. The unyielding mission to preserve that patriarchal caste system that has been afflicting societies for centuries remained steadfast even in the midst of changes to the rest of the country. Wealthy southerners and their families drew uncanny parallels to kings and princes with their “noble blood.” They ruled the south and all who shared it with them—slaves and yeoman alike. Finally, they pushed their way into a war that would eventually crumble the way of life they had been fighting to
preserve.
Until the onset of the war, the southern belle could find only small ways to empower herself and cultivate her individuality. They were true signs of southern progress, however slow, but did not offer her the freedom to choose and control her own life. That might have been something only a war could offer. The belle was quickly cast into roles that she was unfamiliar with, but that allowed her step outside of the rigid southern boundaries and into the shoes that at that time could fit only a woman.
Although the fall of the elite South—and the southern belle as we knew her along with it—reads like a sad story, it was actually the beginning of a new kind of South. The new South was one where the southern belle might have the opportunity to live the alternative life of her choice. She would have the ability to empower herself to become a belle-gone-good.
Sources
1. Boyd, Belle, and Curtis Carroll Davis. Belle Boyd in camp and prison,. A new ed. South Brunswick [N.J.: T. Yoseloff, 1968.
2. Brown, Alexis Girardin. 2000. "The Women Left Behind: Transformation of the Southern Belle, 1840-1880." Historian 62, no. 4. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost.
3. Entzminger, Betina Iris. "The Belle Gone Bad: Southern Women Writers and the Femme Fatale." Dissertation Abstracts International, 1999. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost.
4. Hall, Glinda Fountain. 2008. "Inverting the Southern Belle: Romance Writers Redefine Gender Myths." Journal Of Popular Culture 41, no. 1. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost.
5. Jabour, Anya. "Southern Belles: Courtship," and “Blushing Brides: Engagement.” In Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
6. Seidel, Kathryn L. 1977. "The Southern Belle as an Antebellum Ideal." Southern Quarterly 15, no. 4: 387-401. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost.
7. Toth, Emily. Daughters of New Orleans. New York: Bantam Books, 1983.
--------------------------------------------
[ 1 ]. Seidel, Kathryn L. 1977. "The Southern Belle as an Antebellum Ideal." Southern Quarterly 15, no. 4: 387-401. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 8.
[ 2 ]. Brown, Alexis Girardin. 2000. "The Women Left Behind: Transformation of the Southern Belle, 1840-1880." Historian 62, no. 4: 759. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 759.
[ 3 ]. Seidel, Kathryn L. 1977. "The Southern Belle as an Antebellum Ideal." Southern Quarterly 15, no. 4: 387-401. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 3-4.
[ 4 ]. Jabour, Anya. "Southern Belles: Courtship," and “Blushing Brides: Engagement.” In Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. 113-180.
[ 5 ]. Seidel, Kathryn L.1977. "The Southern Belle as an Antebellum Ideal." Southern Quarterly 15, no. 4: 387-401. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 8.
[ 6 ]. Brown, Alexis Girardin. 2000. "The Women Left Behind: Transformation of the Southern Belle, 1840-1880." Historian 62, no. 4. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 763-764.
[ 7 ]. Jabour, Anya. "College Girls: School." In Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. 47-82.
[ 8 ]. Brown, Alexis Girardin. 2000. "The Women Left Behind: Transformation of the Southern Belle, 1840-1880." Historian 62, no. 4. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 764.
[ 9 ]. Jabour, Anya. "College Girls: School." In Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. 47-82.
[ 10 ]. Entzminger, Betina Iris. "The Belle Gone Bad: Southern Women Writers and the Femme Fatale." Dissertation Abstracts International, 1999. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 75.
[ 11 ]. Boyd, Belle, and Curtis Carroll Davis. Belle Boyd in camp and prison,. A new ed. South Brunswick [N.J.: T. Yoseloff, 1968.
[ 12 ]. Toth, Emily. Daughters of New Orleans. New York: Bantam Books, 1983.
[ 13 ]. Hall, Glinda Fountain. 2008. "Inverting the Southern Belle: Romance Writers Redefine Gender Myths." Journal Of Popular Culture 41, no. 1. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 11.
[ 14 ]. Jabour, Anya. "Dutiful Wives: Marriage." In Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. 181-214.
[ 15 ]. Brown, Alexis Girardin. 2000. "The Women Left Behind: Transformation of the Southern Belle, 1840-1880." Historian 62, no. 4. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 761.
[ 16 ]. Brown, Alexis Girardin. 2000. "The Women Left Behind: Transformation of the Southern Belle, 1840-1880." Historian 62, no. 4. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 762.
[ 17 ]. Brown, Alexis Girardin. 2000. "The Women Left Behind: Transformation of the Southern Belle, 1840-1880." Historian 62, no. 4. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 765.
[ 18 ]. Seidel, Kathryn L.1977. "The Southern Belle as an Antebellum Ideal." Southern Quarterly 15, no. 4: 387-401. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 5.
Research Paper
Bailey K
Empowerment of the Southern Belle in the Antebellum South
The southern belle was perhaps one of the most charming characters of the American Antebellum South. She was and is often romanticized through fictional novels and plays, and many women throughout history have likely drawn parallels between their lives and that of heroines like Scarlett O’Hara. Southern women themselves might have looked back on the period of their lives they spent as belles as one of the most favorable. But the belle life stage simply bridged the gap into what was often the darkest period of their lives, and also where they reached their highest purpose and achievement as defined by their societal structure: …show more content…
the domestic pedestal of marriage. Once she reached that stage, a belle’s sole purpose was to be caring mother and a dutiful wife, and very little allowed her to stray from that role. Still, research suggests that as gender roles began to change with the coming of the Civil War, there were a number of outlets in her life that allowed the southern belle to empower herself. This essay will explore the belle, her life, and each of those empowering facets.
A southern belle, in most senses of the term, is a young woman of marriageable age who is out in southern society. She comes from a wealthy family and most often lives on a slave-owning plantation. She is confined to the ideals prescribed for her by the southern society in which she lives. That is, she is expected to be a perfect picture of charm, beauty and passiveness. She is certainly not outspoken, nor does she wear her emotions on her sleeve. Those around her suppress any characteristics that might bring out a desire for independence. Wealthy southerners lived within a sense of Victorianism and would react inflexibly to behaviors and movements that might disrupt or corrupt their rigid society. This was the life they learned to live.
Inwardly, belles had aspirations and expectations for their lives. They had notions about slavery, promiscuity of the men surrounding them, and most importantly, romance. According to an essay by Kathryn Lee Seidel, their idea of romance was a vain one. They expected to be swept away by a “gallant cavalier” who was taken by her “magical charming powers” and they often extended their courtship seasons in an effort to wait for that suitor. They might even be briefly smitten with ill-suited suitors because they fit the dashing description painted in their minds. These ideas came primarily from romance novels about belles who reached beyond societal walls and were rewarded. The ideas are described by as “the cult of romantic love.” This was an acceptable middle class value, but was not a reality for elite southerners. Diaries and letters between southern women expose the disappointment in realizing that the husbands they married turned out to be far from cavalier, and that they were chosen by those husbands not because of their magical charm, but because of their dowry.
Belles might have occasionally had unrealistic aspirations to be independent women, likely brought on by fictional novels and admiration of teachers from their schooling days, but most actually sought after the domestic life, unaware of the dissatisfaction it would quickly bring. Oftentimes, they would be discouraged by the hasty change in status that marriage brought about. They moved from the pampered, exciting lifestyle of a belle where friends surrounded them, they traveled often, and were likely admired by a number of suitors to the lonely, diligent and unacknowledged lifestyle of a domestic housewife whose happiness depended entirely on that of her often absent husband. At this point in her life, she is closed off to much of the outside world. But with the Civil War looming and a number of forthcoming social and religious movements, southern women found ways to reach outside of their austere domestic lifestyles and transform their identities.
Though education was part of a belle’s early life, it was the first and arguably the most important occasion for empowerment. Education for girls was an extreme privilege that might only be afforded to those from wealthy families. Women who could boast little more than domestic skills would not be appealing to suitors, and would likely make dull wives. If they were educated, they could have intellectual conversations with their husbands, and would recognize their intelligence. It was also the role of mothers to educate their children. And so, an education was a necessity for belles that was provided during their upbringing, though the rationale was often different for belles and their fathers. Fathers cared only to provide their daughters with enough education to master “polite culture” and be appealing to potential suitors. To a belle, education was an opportunity for self-improvement and an escape from the confined lives they lived. Nonetheless, becoming educated was the first step in becoming an independent woman.
Belles would be sent away from home to boarding schools before they reached their teens, and then would move on to female academies. During their schooling, men were absent, and so submission to them was no longer a concern. Instead, peers who understood them, and who they could confide in surrounded them. They were, for the first time, equal to those around them, which provided them with a sense of freedom. It also allowed them to push back against the restrictions society expected them to live by back home. With knowledge, young women were able to form their own identities, and competition with peers and a desire to succeed lent them a small caliber of aptitude. During their schooling years, they might also have encountered a number of teachers who they would look up to and often strive to be like. This was likely the first glimpse of an alternative life outside of what awaited them when they returned home. An education shaped the belle’s mind towards a desire for independence. It gave her a personal identity, which would have been oppressed in her home life, and gave her another leg to stand on, or an alternative to the domestic life. With an education, a belle might be able to support herself through a teaching career, or even as a writer.
Along with education and the ability to read came empowerment through literature.
How literature shaped courtship and romantic ideals has already been discussed, but literature also encouraged independence as an alternative life choice. Fictional romance novels about the “belle gone bad” were very popular with young women. The idea of the “bad belle” was heavily encouraged by the oppressive nature of southern society. These stories encouraged women to use their femininity to their advantage, as a weapon of sorts. Betina Entzminger suggests that feminine weakness was the very foundation of feminine strength. A woman could use her charms to manipulate the male sex, and that is what the bad belle did. She was one who used her “women’s weapons” but did not play by the rules of womanhood. Much of this theory has to do with the idea of feminine sexuality. In this sense, a woman was no longer an object, but a subject. She could empower herself through her sexuality—through her body. A woman’s sexuality was directly associated with how she saw herself, and how others saw her: again, as a subject or an object. (Hall, 38) As an object, her sexuality served as the foundation for oppression. But as an object, sexuality serves as part of what and who she is. Fictional novels moved the belle as an object into the belle as a subject who could think and act based on her own inclinations.
One famous belle-gone-bad was Belle Boyd, a southern planter’s daughter who stepped up to the plate, …show more content…
and outside of the boundaries laid for her by society during the Civil War. She was particularly famed for shooting a Yankee soldier dead after he disrespected her mother. She charmed Yankee soldiers for their secrets, serving as a spy for the confederate military.
Another bad belle was Janine from Daughters of New Orleans. She rebelled against the social prescriptions of a lady and swore off marriage and dependent life. Janine went through a chaotic string of adventures that lead her to different lovers, one a gambler who sent her away with enough means to support her for the rest of her life. Yet another example of a belle who resisted the rigid structure of the South, rose above, and succeeded. These stories left belles with ideas that put the submissive and dependent nature their upbringing accustomed them to in jeopardy.
Relationships formed with other women by southern belles served as another avenue of empowerment. Many of the strongest friendships were formed at boarding schools and academies, but little more engagement than letters would likely be kept up. Seclusion from the outside—family and friends—was just one unfortunate characteristic of plantation life for a married woman. However, friendships might also have been made with neighboring women, and those who were involved in the same causes. These relationships gave them freedom from loneliness, a connection to the outside world, and most importantly, similarity in values or beliefs. Knowing that they had allies in the causes they supported likely encouraged them to step outside of their boundaries to fight harder for them.
With the 1840s came the next great opportunity for empowerment of women: the Second Great Awakening. Religion served as a mechanism for the southern woman to be publicly visible in a society where her role was generally private. Ministers of this religious renewal encouraged women to be pious and pure. They suggested that the more perfect a woman was, the more positive influence she might have on the “straying men” in her life. Infidelity and promiscuity were present at many stages in a southern woman’s life. She might experience it with her own father, brothers, and eventually her husband. And most often, it was with slaves. In an effort to counter the sinful ways of the men in their lives, women of all ages would flock to religious revivals. Not only did they feel a sense of achievement in becoming more pure for the benefit of their husbands’ good will, they were given an opportunity to express themselves. During these revivals, women could be boisterous and outspoken without fear of disrupting the ideals of a refined belle. Religion became one facet of the belle’s life that helped promote in her a sense of self-awareness and worth.
Alongside religion came the encouragement by ministers for women to become involved in charity work. Not only did it give them an outlet outside of their domestic duties to devote themselves to, it served as an opportunity to build relationships with other women also involved. Still most importantly, it empowered them to develop a sense of independence in being able to help those who were not independent themselves.
As the South crept towards the Civil War, slavery became more and more disputed. Surprisingly, many southern women were opposed to slavery and thought it was a cruel practice. The opposition, though, was likely a result of the promiscuity of men with slave women, rather than the conclusion that it was cruel. The issue of the “wandering husband” encouraged a decline in female support of the institution of slavery. Anti-slavery movements provided an opportunity for women to connect with other women who identified with their problems, and I gave them something to believe in. There were a number of movements, but according to personal diaries, most were relatively quiet because of the financial dependency of the southern belle on the slavery system.
In the onset of the American Civil War, many things began to change for the southern belle—most importantly, the roles she played. Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States, the Emancipation Proclamation was declared, southern states began to secede from the union, and the country began its plunge into war. Within one year, the structure of southern society shifted substantially to a dependency on women. With men preparing to leave the home front to serve the Confederate cause, women would begin to fill their shoes. They became managers of the plantations, communicators of news and survival advice, and even spies—roles that never would have been dreamed of. Essentially, in an effort to preserve the structure of their lives, southerners pushed it further out of its rigid boundaries.
The Antebellum southern belle, in all her glory, represented many of the ideals we associate still today with a nostalgic view of southern America.
And yet, it is that set of ideals that the belle struggled against for so long. The pre-Civil War belle was a private operator and a perfect, lasting picture of what a southern lady ought to have been. But that image of delicate and docile nature hid a lifetime of oppression by a rigid social structure. The unyielding mission to preserve that patriarchal caste system that has been afflicting societies for centuries remained steadfast even in the midst of changes to the rest of the country. Wealthy southerners and their families drew uncanny parallels to kings and princes with their “noble blood.” They ruled the south and all who shared it with them—slaves and yeoman alike. Finally, they pushed their way into a war that would eventually crumble the way of life they had been fighting to
preserve.
Until the onset of the war, the southern belle could find only small ways to empower herself and cultivate her individuality. They were true signs of southern progress, however slow, but did not offer her the freedom to choose and control her own life. That might have been something only a war could offer. The belle was quickly cast into roles that she was unfamiliar with, but that allowed her step outside of the rigid southern boundaries and into the shoes that at that time could fit only a woman.
Although the fall of the elite South—and the southern belle as we knew her along with it—reads like a sad story, it was actually the beginning of a new kind of South. The new South was one where the southern belle might have the opportunity to live the alternative life of her choice. She would have the ability to empower herself to become a belle-gone-good.
Sources
1. Boyd, Belle, and Curtis Carroll Davis. Belle Boyd in camp and prison,. A new ed. South Brunswick [N.J.: T. Yoseloff, 1968.
2. Brown, Alexis Girardin. 2000. "The Women Left Behind: Transformation of the Southern Belle, 1840-1880." Historian 62, no. 4. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost.
3. Entzminger, Betina Iris. "The Belle Gone Bad: Southern Women Writers and the Femme Fatale." Dissertation Abstracts International, 1999. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost.
4. Hall, Glinda Fountain. 2008. "Inverting the Southern Belle: Romance Writers Redefine Gender Myths." Journal Of Popular Culture 41, no. 1. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost.
5. Jabour, Anya. "Southern Belles: Courtship," and “Blushing Brides: Engagement.” In Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
6. Seidel, Kathryn L. 1977. "The Southern Belle as an Antebellum Ideal." Southern Quarterly 15, no. 4: 387-401. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost.
7. Toth, Emily. Daughters of New Orleans. New York: Bantam Books, 1983.
--------------------------------------------
[ 1 ]. Seidel, Kathryn L. 1977. "The Southern Belle as an Antebellum Ideal." Southern Quarterly 15, no. 4: 387-401. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 8.
[ 2 ]. Brown, Alexis Girardin. 2000. "The Women Left Behind: Transformation of the Southern Belle, 1840-1880." Historian 62, no. 4: 759. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 759.
[ 3 ]. Seidel, Kathryn L. 1977. "The Southern Belle as an Antebellum Ideal." Southern Quarterly 15, no. 4: 387-401. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 3-4.
[ 4 ]. Jabour, Anya. "Southern Belles: Courtship," and “Blushing Brides: Engagement.” In Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. 113-180.
[ 5 ]. Seidel, Kathryn L.1977. "The Southern Belle as an Antebellum Ideal." Southern Quarterly 15, no. 4: 387-401. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 8.
[ 6 ]. Brown, Alexis Girardin. 2000. "The Women Left Behind: Transformation of the Southern Belle, 1840-1880." Historian 62, no. 4. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 763-764.
[ 7 ]. Jabour, Anya. "College Girls: School." In Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. 47-82.
[ 8 ]. Brown, Alexis Girardin. 2000. "The Women Left Behind: Transformation of the Southern Belle, 1840-1880." Historian 62, no. 4. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 764.
[ 9 ]. Jabour, Anya. "College Girls: School." In Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. 47-82.
[ 10 ]. Entzminger, Betina Iris. "The Belle Gone Bad: Southern Women Writers and the Femme Fatale." Dissertation Abstracts International, 1999. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 75.
[ 11 ]. Boyd, Belle, and Curtis Carroll Davis. Belle Boyd in camp and prison,. A new ed. South Brunswick [N.J.: T. Yoseloff, 1968.
[ 12 ]. Toth, Emily. Daughters of New Orleans. New York: Bantam Books, 1983.
[ 13 ]. Hall, Glinda Fountain. 2008. "Inverting the Southern Belle: Romance Writers Redefine Gender Myths." Journal Of Popular Culture 41, no. 1. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, 11.
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