Fictive mastery: Slaveholding widows in the American Southeast, 1790-1860

This dissertation explores the position of slaveholding widows in the eastern states of the American South between 1790 and 1860. Widowhood significantly changed the responsibilities and social position of slaveholding women, endowing them with legal independence and property rights. Slaveholding widows routinely did white men\u27s work: managing plantations, hiring overseers, commanding slaves, and contracting with merchants. Slaveholding widows\u27 actions as household heads and independent women raise critical questions about the ways that gender and slavery shaped white women\u27s access to and exercise of power. Using concepts of feminine dependence, familial interdependence, and master-class privilege to facilitate and justify their work, these widows avoided being treated as transgressive or anomalous. Performing both women\u27s and men\u27s work in a society supposedly characterized by rigid patriarchy, these widows helped to shape the meanings of gender for their households, their families, and their communities. Moreover, the comparatively advantageous position of its widows reveals the extent and the limits of the slaveholding class\u27s power: widows participated in, contributed to, and benefited from the fictive mastery of the slaveholding class. The study of slaveholding widows also illuminates regional and life-cycle variations in American women\u27s relationships to family, property, households, and networks of exchange