Reconstructing the Household : Families, Sex, and the Law in the Nineteenth-Century South - Peter W. Bardaglio

Reconstructing the Household

Families, Sex, and the Law in the Nineteenth-Century South

By: Peter W. Bardaglio

Paperback | 2 March 1998 | Edition Number 2

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In Reconstructing the Household , Peter Bardaglio examines the connections between race, gender, sexuality, and the law in the nineteenth-century South. He focuses on miscegenation, rape, incest, child custody, and adoption laws to show how southerners struggled with the conflicts and stresses that surfaced within their own households and in the larger society during the Civil War era. Based on literary as well as legal sources, Bardaglio's analysis reveals how legal contests involving African Americans, women, children, and the poor led to a rethinking of families, sexuality, and the social order. Before the Civil War, a distinctive variation of republicanism, based primarily on hierarchy and dependence, characterized southern domestic relations. This organic ideal of the household and its power structure differed significantly from domestic law in the North, which tended to emphasize individual rights and contractual obligations. The defeat of the Confederacy, emancipation, and economic change transformed family law and the governance of sexuality in the South and allowed an unprecedented intrusion of the state into private life. But Bardaglio argues that despite these profound social changes, a preoccupation with traditional notions of gender and race continued to shape southern legal attitudes. |Based on literary and legal sources, this study reveals how legal contests involving women, children, African-Americans, and the poor of the 19th-century South led to a rethinking of families, sexuality, and the social order.
Industry Reviews
[A] signal contribution to legal history, the history of the family, and the study of southern race relations."Journal of Social History" �A� signal contribution to legal history, the history of the family, and the study of southern race relations."Journal of Social History" �Bardaglio� has given coherence and heft to previously scattered facts and interpretations."Journal of the History of Sexuality" �A� readable and rewarding book."Journal of American History" "[A] signal contribution to legal history, the history of the family, and the study of southern race relations."Journal of Social History"" This book will join a handful of others as indispensable to the study of southern regionalism."Journal of Interdisciplinary History" [Bardaglio] has given coherence and heft to previously scattered facts and interpretations."Journal of the History of Sexuality" Should establish a model for future studies of the southern household."Southern Quarterly" [A] readable and rewarding book."Journal of American History"

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