I: The place, the war, the first reconstruction -- The place and the people -- Disorder and chaos of war -- Rebuilding and resisting -- II: Defining women, defining their braided relations -- Marriage and cohabitation within the aristocratic paradigm: wealthy white women and the free brown elite -- Marriage and cohabitation outside the aristocratic paradigm: slaves and free laboring women -- Mixing and admixtures -- Work and workers -- Leisure and recreation -- Women and the law -- Illness and death
Summary
This study of women in antebellum Charleston, South Carolina, looks at the roles of women in an urban slave society. Kennedy takes up issues of gender, race, condition (slave or free), and class and examines the ways each contributed to conveying and replicating power. Her study examines the lives of the women of Charleston and the variety of their attempts to negotiate the web of social relations that ensnared them
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-301) and index
