Scott, Anne F. The Southern Research Proposal

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But women were members of voting organizations, just like Northern women, writes Scott -- even if they attended in white gloves.

While Scott's work is valuable in that it chronicles the lives of many influential Southern women, whose voices would otherwise be lost to history, certain aspects of her thesis seem contradictory. She is eager to stress Sothern women's strength, but some of the diaries she quotes chronicle the voices of girls constantly felt pressured repress their opinions to maintain marital bliss. In her conclusion, she speaks of Harriet Simmons, whom she saw as an example of how women of high social standing could "get away with being radical" (Scott 239). But the fact that women were forced to 'get away' with being radicals, rather than openly espousing such an ideal is telling of the oppression still felt by many Sothern women.

While it is true that the reality of women's lives was not the one of softness and "spirituality" of the myth, the fact that the myth was present cannot be ignored, as Scott seems tempted to do at times (Scott 20). In one of the diary entries she includes, a young woman says that she would like to die, because she had not found a husband (Scott 7). Moreover, the idea of the 'steel Magnolia' or Scarlett O'Hara wrestling to save Tara, just as Scott's real southern women fought pestilence and managed livestock is not so new (Scott 29).

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Scott admits that Southern suffragettes tended to condemn the actions of Alice Paul and the more notable Northern radicals in their desire to seem ladylike. While Scott's desire to honor Southern women's contribution to suffrage and progressive causes is commendable, and there were notable exceptions to the ideal of the genteel Southern lady, like the abolitionist Grimke sisters, these examples emerge more as exceptions to an ideological system that had clear and demonstrable effects upon the psyches of women, an effect demonstrated in the primary….....

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https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/scott-anne-f-southern-16269