3 Review(s)

The contributors to The Varieties of Women's Experiences offer fourteen brief biographical essays revealing the broad range of the fascinating lives lived by women in the post-Civil War South. Arranged chronologically, they chart a course of generational change, yet reveal that despite limitations there were always more opportunities for extraordinary women than we tend to realize. By including stories about white and black, Jew and gentile, rich and poor, native and immigrant, widowed and married, the book explores the diversity and complexity of what it could mean to be a "Southern woman" at a time when social norms restricted many to their household and wifely duties. A welcome addition to the literature on Southern women's history, this book will appeal to a broad range of readers.