Ultimately, Roberts notes, Confederate belles’ inability “to embrace either model of womanhood left them in limbo, somewhere between an irrelevant standard and reality.” Perhaps this conflict gives the moonlight-and-magnolias myth-one that seems potent to those who would uphold the Antebellum South as a social ideal-some of its deep emotional sway. Given the deaths of young Confederate men, this suddenly became a crisis, challenging the very basis of the Southern belle society young Confederate women had been raised to treasure. This grief produced “cracks in the patriotic facade of Confederate femininity,” says Roberts, especially since belles were supposed to focus on marriage above all else. These sacrifices included wartime restrictions on dress, parties, and social movements, but as the war went on, they also included the grief that accompanied the deaths of family members and friends. “Young Confederate ladies…were forced to reconcile the belle ideal with unfamiliar notions of patriotic womanhood and wartime realities.” As the war dragged on, the Union's advantages in factories, railroads, and manpower put the Confederacy at a great disadvantage. “At a pivotal time in their lives, young women were confronted with the impossibility of attaining the customary belle ideal,” writes Roberts. In the South, a smaller industrial base, fewer rail lines, and an agricultural economy based upon slave labor made mobilization of resources more difficult. As social functions and the availability of eligible suitors disappeared, women were forced to adopt the ideal of “Confederate womanhood” along with that of the belle. Upheld by the leisure and wealth of slavery, writes Roberts, belles were expected to achieve even higher status for their families through desirable marriages and social ties.īut the Civil War disrupted this ideal, Roberts writes. ![]() As young women entered the social world, they crossed two thresholds at once: that of a critical moment in their adolescence and that of a play for social power (one supported by money and slavery) on behalf of their families. ![]() Being a belle wasn’t just about sitting on a porch with a fan, writes Roberts-it was tied up in social structures centered around social debuts, courtship and marriage. Not simple at all, writes Giselle Roberts, who studies the ideal and the reality of the Southern belle both before and during the Civil War. So…what was life really like for Southern belles before and during the war? ![]() Trending Questions Is the statement true that unlike planets a dwarf planet cannot have moons? Is this the answer the moon unlike the earth does not rotate so you see the same side of the moon? Why does the sky appear much bluer in some states? Can a spore be seen with the naked eye? Who sings so far away? Why is the heliocentric picture of the solar system called a model of the solar system? What model of the universe that suggests that the sun is the center of the universe was first brought by? What other planets in the solar system have wind? How are lunar and sonar eclipse different and alike? What are three ways that the inner planets are different from the putter planets? How high up does the troposphere go? Which planet has the lowest inclination to the ecliptic of any planet? A photograph showing circular star trails is evidence that the earth? What units are distances to stars measured in and why? What is the relationship between Vega and Pleiades? Two stars having annual parallax of 0.1 and 0.02 arc seconds respectively.If they appear to have same magnitude.Modern-day debate over the Confederacy centers on the dangerous myths upheld by things like the Confederate battle flag, which is used both as a racist symbol and a beacon of a “simpler” Southern society by its proponents today.
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