Single, White, Slaveholding Women in the Nineteenth-Century American South

A broad and eloquent study on the relatively overlooked population of single women in the slaveholding South

Single, White, Slaveholding Women in the Nineteenth- Century American South investigates the lives of unmarried white women—from the pre– to the post–Civil War South—within a society that placed high value on women’s marriage and motherhood. Marie S. Molloy examines female singleness to incorporate nonmarriage, widowhood, separation, and divorce. These single women were not subject to the laws and customs of coverture, in which females were covered by or subject to the governance of fathers, brothers, and husbands, and therefore lived with greater autonomy than married women.

Molloy contends that the Civil War proved a catalyst for accelerating personal, social, economic, and legal changes for these women. Being a single woman during this time often meant living a creative and nuanced life, operating within a tight framework of traditional gender conventions while managing subtle changes that worked to their advantage. Singleness was often a route to autonomy and independence that over time expanded and reshaped traditional ideals of Southern womanhood.

Molloy delves into these themes and their effects through the lens of various facets of the female life: femininity, family, work, friendship, law, and property. By examining letters and diaries of more than three hundred white, native-born, Southern women, Molloy creates a broad and eloquent study on the relatively overlooked population of single women in both the urban and plantation slaveholding South. She concludes that these women were, in various ways, pioneers and participants of a slow but definite process of change in the antebellum era.