The Secret Eye: The Journal of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, 1848-1889 (Gender and American Culture)
Few diaries by Southern women are as rich as Thomas's account, which marks the transition of a plantation mistress to a school teacher and political activist, thereby charting the change from the Old South to the New. This abridged version, with a superb introductory essay on Southern women as diarists by Nell Painter, offers the most sustained female commentary on many subjects--marriage, religion, slavery, war, women's emotional and physical burdens, and more. Especially revealing are Thomas's observations during the fall and adjustment of the planter class and her preoccupation with slavery's effects on male-female relations and identities. Though she lived most of her life in Augusta, Georgia, Thomas's is an almost universal voice of Southern white women chafing against slavery, male-dominated institutions, and the spiritual and material poverty of the postwar South. This is a real Scarlett O'Hara, with grit. Highly recommended.- Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., PhiladelphiaCopyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.