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Dissertation Information for Christine Jacobson Carter

NAME:
- Christine Jacobson Carter

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (2001)

ADVISORS:
- James L Roark

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Mary E. Odem
- Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Southern single blessedness: Unmarried women in Savannah and Charleston, 1800--1865

Abstract: In the antebellum South, most white women married and married young, and the institutions of marriage and motherhood simultaneously elevated and endangered wives. Indeed, the southern ideologies of masculinity, femininity, and even slavery and paternalism, relied upon white women marrying. Yet, in Savannah and Charleston, there were vibrant enclaves of well-to-do, white unmarried women who lived active, satisfying lives and who joined in the culture's celebration of domesticity even as they failed to marry. Striving to be useful, daughters, sisters, and aunts served their families as caretakers, surrogate mothers, and assistants, and served their communities through churches and other organizations. Additionally, they sustained rich female friendships and contributed to the emerging discourse about them, both as readers and as writers. Drawing on this discourse and manuscript sources, I argue that unmarried women in Savannah and Charleston found meaningful roles and relationships, creative expression, and remarkable leadership there.

Over the course of the first two-thirds of the century, spinsterhood in the cities was increasingly palatable due to improving rhetoric about the unmarried state, communities of like-minded women, strong churches, active benevolent organizations, and crucial connections to the Northeast and Europe. Although the scholarship about southern spinsters is relatively slim, their records are rich and their numbers are greater than previous assumptions would allow, especially in these urban areas. I demonstrate that, because they lived in Charleston or Savannah, these women were able largely to overcome stereotypes about "old maids;" to create blessed, single lives; and to fashion a southern version of the ideology of single blessedness.

The first chapter provides a descriptive backdrop of Savannah and Charleston and reveals how communities of well-to-do, often unmarried, women flourished in these urban centers which, despite fundamental economic and cultural ties, were quite unlike the plantation South. Chapter Two reveals that the rhetoric about unmarried women was beginning to brighten over the course of the nineteenth century, and that as readers and as authors, unmarried southern women in these cities found vindication and even celebration of their lives. In Chapter Three, I describe the range of roles assumed by unwed women in service to their families. Chapter Four demonstrates how friendships with other women held a close second-place to family relationships in the lives of southern women, inspiring reverence, nostalgia, and, usually, pleasure. Chapter Five shows that urban women created and joined numerous benevolent, church, and charitable organizations which often targeted unmarried women specifically. The final chapter examines the ways that unmarried women were at the center of important cultural shifts precipitated by the Civil War and explores the ways that they contributed to, and were changed by, the war effort.

MPACT Scores for Christine Jacobson Carter

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-02-02 22:45:44

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Students under Christine Jacobson Carter

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None