Book Review

Canada and the United States

Laura F. Edwards has undertaken an admirable effort in this synthetic work on southern women during the Civil War era. She has produced an engaging book that, in linking the political strife of the war to the social history of the southern household, will perhaps be most useful in an undergraduate curriculum. Scholars in the field, however, will probably want a more substantial examination, one that draws more deeply on the primary sources.

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As Edwards explains in the introduction, her book is meant to be a "synthetic, interpretive work that rests on scholarship in southern women's history" (p. 5). In this regard, her book relies mostly on the growing body of secondary literature that covers this field. She also uses some primary sources, allowing her to personalize her story along the way. Moreover, Edwards adopts a broad scope for her book, examining the experiences not only of elite plantation women (the ones who came closest to the Scarlett O'Hara stereotype identified in the title) but also of poorer white women, free black women, and enslaved women. Her study is organized with a chronological focus on the war years: before, during, and after.

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