".The Bold Atmosphere of Mrs. Hentz" and Others: Fast Food and Feminine Rebelliousness in Some Romances of the Old South

In the romances of the female authors of the Old South, there is no myth-making on the theme of the lost American Eden such as appears in the adventure fiction of their male counterparts. What the women wrote were indoor, triumph-of-love domestic romances that reveal suppressed rebelliousness against the expected submissiveness of females in the nineteenth century. A feminist urge is evident in the neglected fiction of women authors of the antebellum South well before it finds its clearer voice in the twentieth century. Back then and in that place, among women there was indeed a chafing at the bit. But in their day there was little thought that a struggle for the greater rights for women could be won in any measure. There is a current of pessimism that underlies their uncertain fantasies of feminine freedom. It is a very private kind of feminism that is kept out of focus for the sake of the authors' professional and personal endurance in the male-dominated world of the plantation South. One typical example of this pattern of hesitant feminine social protest occurs buried unexpectedly in a lovers' conversation at the end of Chapter 16 in Eliza Anne Dupuy's (1814-1881) The Planter's Daughter (1856). This statement is unique for Mrs. Dupuy: her romances usually are not at all critical of the contemporary relationship between men and women. The main theme in The Planter's Daughter is the danger of land speculation, which destroys the generous, wealthy planter Charles Harrington. Before the crash comes to Wavertree Plantation, however, his beautiful daughter Adele talks one day with her chivalrous Virginia beau Philip Evelyn. Her statement about the need for some redress of wrongs done to women of her time is surprising, because she is otherwise so typical of the demure, blonde, graceful, domestically content Southern belle-a planter's daughter-who appears in antebellum Southern romances. Adele and Philip are discussing the character of Eve in Milton's Paradise Lost and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Drama of Exile. Adele feels Mrs. Browning's Eve is "truer to our ideal of the womanly nature" than is Milton's. Philip laughs and says in a "mock heroic tone" that he cannot tolerate such "rebellion against the long established superiority of my sex over yours." Adele persists: "You forget that this is the age of woman's rights-or rather the redressing of her wrongs. I need not take up arms in their defense, because my sex are proving themselves in every way, quite capable of taking care of themselves." In answer to Philip's question if she is "really an advocate of these women's conventions," she answers, "Yes, if by such means only right can assert itself." But then, using her protected and privileged social standing as a way out, Adele backs away from her statement. Agitation will do for those other women who suffer and for whom new liberalizing laws might be helpful; she would not, after all, take part in such a convention. She would stay on the sidelines. Conventions are all right for women who actually today endure ...evils that legislation can correct. I can very well understand that as society is now constructed, a woman may be made too much a slave of a worthless or unprincipled husband. But I am so fortunate as to occupy a position that in a measure places me above the sufferings by which women among the medium and lower walks of life are often crushed. There is another objection [that] I have to the feminine reformers]-they claim too much; they wish to step out of the sphere nature has evidently allotted to them, and claim such privileges as would destroy the feminine qualities which are their greatest charm. They forget the beautiful words of Roger Asham to Lady Jane Gray-"Women, like plants in woods, derive their softness and tenderness from the shade." Through Adele, then, Mrs. Dupuy makes and then backs away from an antebellum Southern woman's protest against social and domestic restrictions and injustices. …