Out of the House of Bondage by Thavolia Glymph focuses on the principal site of southern social and familial organization: the household. As such, this study contributes abundantly to the literature on women’s history and emancipation. Glymph is concerned not only with understanding how a society responds to an emancipated population but also with exploring the limits of freedom and how gender might dictate the course of, and responses to, such freedom.
The author’s primary argument is that during the nineteenth century, the definition of what constituted a plantation “household” changed. By investigating the relationships of power between southern white and black women from the Civil War into emancipation, Glymph argues that the static terms “public” and “private” are not accurate descriptors for southern gendered ideology. Rather, the management of labor (be it enslaved or free) emerged as the driving discourse in households. Glymph contends that the imagined “cult of domesticity” produced violent interactions between mistresses and enslaved women. The first two chapters in particular suggest that violence inscribed life in the household and beyond its walls. As evenhanded as Glymph is in her treatment of violence experienced by enslaved women and the roles of subordination assumed by white plantation women in relation to patriarchal male figures, mistresses were, nonetheless, the “female face” of the slave owners’ often-violent power (p. 4). Emerging from that line of inquiry is Glymph’s suggestion to reexamine the politics of domination as well as previously held convictions about the nature of slave resistance (p. 67).
Glymph’s central argument about labor management in domestic spaces builds on the work of scholars of the southern household such as Peter Bardaglio, Catherine Clinton, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, and Anne Firor Scott; that of women and emancipation such as Laura Edwards, Leslie Schwalm, and Marli Weiner; and that of the history of gender and race such as Nancy Bercaw, Noralee Frankel, and Jacqueline Jones. The author’s conclusions are based on such sources as Works Progress Administration interviews of ex-slaves, diaries of plantation mistresses, county court records, personal family papers, and organizational records of mutual aid societies from nine southern archives.
There are very few criticisms to offer on this work. Chapter 1 provides a detailed overview of gendered violence and engages a broad range of scholarly literatures. Chapters 6 and 7 shift focus from southern women to a discussion of the white and black population in the South. That transition supports the author’s argument for change within the context of liberation movements. This shift is effortless, detracting not at all from the tightly woven narrative of the first five chapters.
Glymph suggests that Out of the House of Bondage is part of a larger research trajectory on class and regional variations during the era of emancipation. Whether this book is the first of an ongoing study or the author’s definitive word on the topic, Glymph has provided a new canvas for classic questions of enslavement, emancipation, and domestic spaces.
Jessica Millward
University of California
Irvine, California