Hello readers!
Welcome to this week’s installment of First Sentence Friday and Free Book Friday! For the foreseeable future, the free book is an Advance Reader Copy (ARC) of When the Jessamine Grows. ????
The Civil War with its complicated background as to why it began also highlighted or re-ignited certain areas of the public’s beliefs and their personal standing on why they would fight for the “cause.”
For instance, this week’s sentence introduces two minor characters with a different set of morals and values than Joetta. Both Eliza Garner and Rebecca Hammond, give readers a perspective of one of these beliefs during this era. While their farms aren’t as large as the plantation owned by another minor character mentioned below, Clovis Poole, the Hammonds and the Garners aren’t yeoman farmers either, and they have enslaved people working their land. During this time, some held to the idea that enslaved people were a danger to them as white women, a common mindset that sent many men to the battlefront. They wished to protect their families, particularly their frail, and weak womenfolk.
From N.C. State University educational website:
“The Old South social norms emphasized white women’s inherent weakness and sexual vulnerability. During the Civil War, white women did not have protection from black men. Protection was a pillar of Southern society and before the Civil War the greatest perceived threat to the purity white women was black men.”
If you want, you can read more on the topic from the source here.
These frailties and weaknesses were considered normal, and part of being a woman of this time. I’m not sure how someone like Joetta McBride was expected to participate in this sort of mindset. It’s well-known those like her worked hard and endured backbreaking work in the fields and household. To that end, her way of life among many others, doesn’t support this view of women.
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Chapter 15
Eliza Garner and Rebecca Hammond came to participate in the sewing group, and while Joetta was only slightly acquainted with them through church, she was aware they each lived on large farms of several hundred acres and were friends with the eccentric Clovis Poole.
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FREE BOOK FRIDAY!!!
For this week’s chance to win a signed ARC of When the Jessamine Grows tell me if you are familiar with this thinking during the Civil War – that women were weak and frail, and needed protection.
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PRE-ORDERS
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Pre-order links for your convenience:
Kensington Publishing Corporation
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I was not wholly aware of the perception of white women as being frail and vulnerable, but it makes sense that in the context of slavery—where black men were not even considered human—that they’d succumb to those fears (as misguided as they were). It is ironic that the biggest threat to slave women were white owners and overseers.
That’s exactly right. Enslaved black women were victims time and again of the very thing whites were afraid would happen to their women, and that they were vulnerable due to their frailty/weakness and lack of protections from their husbands b/c they were on the battlefront, was one of the biggest concerns.
I have heard of this phrase or saying as u called it. Back I. Them days women didn’t fight wars. It’s not to say that women were frail and weak. Women were stronger back in them days when it came to protecting the kids. Men perceived them as frail and weak. They thought women didn’t know how to fight to protect their family, neighbor, or even a stranger. The men thought women needed to be protected. If need to be women can fight to protect their family, neighbors, strangers and yes even their town.
Men have always been the one that are strong. Where men believe women lack is really the opposite. Just like when you see a mama bear. You mess with her cubs she will mess with you. She will fight with ever ounce of strength, fiber, and being she has to protect her family. Yes even when a man is not able to protect their family.
There was so much back in that time that was erroneous, or just strange. I’m sure 150 years from now, what is believed and thought will be way off course. And it’s true, time and again women proved themselves different from how they were viewed, and were able to do many things when called upon. Look at the Westward expansion, and what that required of women.
not really
Yes I’m familiar with this women were very frail and protected especially during the civil War time
When I worked at Fort Jackson Army Base in Columbia, SC, I worked at Transfer Point, where people got their final pay from basic training, retirement or coming from Germany. The buildings were sooo old. There was a bed in the women’s restroom from the days that woman were considered weak and needed a place to lay down. I found that very interesting.
That IS interesting. I was sitting here trying to think of other trends back in the day that were similar, and I’d have to say it was probably medication. In Civil War era and before/after, laudanum comes to mind. And then, women became addicts.