Reminder about due dates:Comments are due Saturday night  (January 25). Replies are due Tuesday night  (January 28).
Note: Use these questions to develop the response that you post on the Discussion Board Forum for Week Two.  See the Teacher's Notes here.

1. One inevitable issue for a course on southern women writers is the image of women as white southern belles. What do you think are the characteristics of the southern belle? In which writers or texts do you find these characteristics of the southern belle reflected? Do these readings suggest other essential elements of southern belle-dom?  In what ways do these readings contradict or challenge your image of southern womanhood? Which readings most re-inforce the image? Which ones most contradict it? How so? Do the the fictional texts seem more or less likely to reinforce the image of the belle? Do you find any surprises here?

2. Weeks & Perry argue that the notion of the southern belle helped to maintain the social and economic structure that supported slavery. What evidence from this week's readings would validate this correlation between the belle and slavery? What evidence might contradict it?  Weeks & Perry also observe that the notion of the belle was reinforced by a broader nineteenth-century ideology referred to as the Cult of True Womanhood, which emphasized the domestic virtues of women. They point out that one way that nineteenth-century women achieved status and a degree of power was by affirming their roles as true women.  How do one or more of the writers here seem to view this role of true womanhood? In what ways does it empower them ? How does it limit them? How conscious do the writers seem of any contradictions?

3. Given very limited educations, unable to own property or earn wages, white women in the antebellum South made marriage the business of their lives. How does Bowen's story about this business compare with Pinckney's comments to her father about choosing a husband? What seem to be the important qualities in a husband for parents of daughters? to what extent do daughters seem to share these views?  How do Mrs. Mansfield's actions and arguments reinforce the stereotypes of the southern lady? How do Anna's actions challenge those notions? Why would women like Anna's aunt support them? How does Bowen challenge those stereotypes?

4. Both Kemble and Grimke are white women who rejected slavery. Identify one or two specfic arguments or objections they make to slavery. How does their own gender and status seem to affect the kinds of arguments they use? To what extent do they recognize any parallels in the situations of white women and slaves?

5. Both Grimke and Jacobs address themselves to white women, urging them to sympathize with the plight of black women. What steretypes and assumptions do both writers have to confront in their readers--i.e., what sexual stereotypes of black women would keep white women (true women) from identifying with them? How do Grimke and/or Jacobs deal with these barriers? Why were these stereotypes useful to the antebellum South? What images of woman and slave does Linda Brent offer her readers? To what extent are these images contradictory?

6. To which of these readings did you react most strongly? Why? Which ones challenged or altered any of your notions about southern women? about Southern women writers? How? What issues or questions have these texts and the discussions raised for you?
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