Song Character Analysis Worksheet - The University of North ...

usiness. She was responsible for the bookkeeping duties and harvesting supervision in
her husband’s absence, in addition to her regular duties: maintaining the gardens,
supervising the domestic servants, providing medical care for the servants, and religious
education. 37 Chastity was also of supreme importance for the Southern female as a
“certification of racial purity and of her husband’s prestige.” 38 The Southern male’s
masculinity was identified with his personal honor, and many duels were fought over
such reputations. According to Margaret R. Wolfe, the stereotype of the Southern Belle
is based in the standards of seventeenth-century English etiquette as a counterpoint to the
aristocratic male. Her characteristics were “modesty, chastity, meekness, godliness, and
compassion.” 39 The Southern Belle should be “a submissive wife whose reason for being
is to love, honor, obey, and occasionally amuse her husband, bring up his children, and
manage his household.” 40
After the Civil War (or the “War of Northern Aggression” for this stereotype), the
subservience of the Southern Belle gave way to a stronger, more outspoken woman as a
result of her trials of survival, and the emotional and psychological defeat of the men who
did return home. Unlike the New England Victorian, the Southern Belle was skeptical of
the suffragist movement and its implicit female independence. From their experiences of
being left behind to take care of business during the war, they were convinced that inde-
pendence meant “intolerable burdens.” For those whose men did not return, an “ethos”
37 Pleck, 1952.
38 Pleck, 1952.
39 “The Southern Lady: Long Suffering Counterpart of the Good Ol’ Boy,” Journal of Popular
Culture 11 (summer 1977): 18.
40 Wolfe, 18.
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