glymph2008

@Book{ glymph2008,
	author = {Thavolia Glymph},
	title = {Out of the House of Bondage: the Transformation of the Plantation Household},
	address = {New York},
	publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
	year = 2008,
}

Brilliant book that refocused attention on the household as a site of labor and struggle between mistress and slave. In doing so it also overturns the image of plantation mistress as unprepared for the management tasks thrown on to her by war or unwilling to use violence to control enslaved people.

In terms of my project, the book is making me rethink the evidence I have about women like Maggie Martin; will probably need to come back to this book for another close read. It’s also useful as a model of how to think about the impact of the Civil War on Southern social relations as one of “transformation” instead of total destruction and new creation.

Glymph notes, “The decision of a slave to stand side by side with an owner during the war or to stay put after the war .. had little to do with the concept of loyalty as it is typically understood in our everyday usage. Its complexities and ambiguities of meaning to those who fought or lived through the Civil War must be teased out” (104).

p. 9: “In historical scholarship, freedom is often reified as a ‘thing’ or a ‘place’ that one can ‘obtain’ or ‘go to.’ But freedom is not separate from the understandings and intuitions of those who seek it, or live it.”