Sally G. McMillen summarizes the latest thinking about the lives of women in the South, both white and black,
elite and ordinary. One of the best features of the book is the author's ability to weave the lives of all these
women together in the same chapters. The excellent introduction is followed by four chapters on Family Life and
Marriage, Reproduction and Childrearing, Social Concerns: Education and Religion, and Women at Work.
.McMillen points out that many myths still surround antebellum Southern women. They were much more complicated
people than the women portrayed in many novels and histories. Of course, they cannot be lumped into one group as
they differed according to time, region, race, and class, but all were influenced by living in a rural, agricultural,
slave society. In this society women were supposed to be submissive and hardworking and devoted to the family and
home; each person had a place and women were supposed to know theirs.