During the American Civil War, elite Southern women were required to step outside their traditional role as the protected gender in order to take on responsibilities like supporting Confederate troops, maintaining and operating plantations, supervising slaves, and providing for their families. For planter-class women, advances in personal autonomy were not discarded after the war, however, the more public nature of their postwar activities was conducted within the confines of a traditional gender construct, constrained by overarching issues of race and class. The diaries and journals left by four Georgia women, Eliza Frances Andrews, Mary Sharpe Jones, Frances Butler Leigh, and Ella Gertrude Thomas, all women whose families had an enormous stake in the plantation culture of the antebellum South, reveal the life-altering changes experienced by them as they struggled to maintain class distinction in the face of Confederate defeat and the destruction of the plantation system.
","abstract_html":"<p>During the American Civil War, elite Southern women were required to step outside their traditional role as the protected gender in order to take on responsibilities like supporting Confederate troops, maintaining and operating plantations, supervising slaves, and providing for their families. For planter-class women, advances in personal autonomy were not discarded after the war, however, the more public nature of their postwar activities was conducted within the confines of a traditional gender construct, constrained by overarching issues of race and class. The diaries and journals left by four Georgia women, Eliza Frances Andrews, Mary Sharpe Jones, Frances Butler Leigh, and Ella Gertrude Thomas, all women whose families had an enormous stake in the plantation culture of the antebellum South, reveal the life-altering changes experienced by them as they struggled to maintain class distinction in the face of Confederate defeat and the destruction of the plantation system.</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Yock, Carolyn P."],"institution":null,"degree_name":"Master of Arts","degree_level":"Master's Thesis","degree_discipline":"Humanities","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Patricia Dougherty, OP, PhD","Martin Anderson, JD, PhD"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2009,"date_issued":"2009-01-01T08:00:00Z","date_published":"2009-01-01T08:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:05:51Z","subjects":["Humanities","Arts and Humanities"],"languages":[],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://scholar.dominican.edu/humanities-print-theses/274","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Patricia Dougherty, OP, PhD","Martin Anderson, JD, PhD"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Yock, Carolyn P."]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Humanities"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Master's Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Master of Arts"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Humanities","Arts and Humanities"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://scholar.dominican.edu/humanities-print-theses/274"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["During the American Civil War, elite Southern women were required to step outside their traditional role as the protected gender in order to take on responsibilities like supporting Confederate troops, maintaining and operating plantations, supervising slaves, and providing for their families. For planter-class women, advances in personal autonomy were not discarded after the war, however, the more public nature of their postwar activities was conducted within the confines of a traditional gender construct, constrained by overarching issues of race and class. The diaries and journals left by four Georgia women, Eliza Frances Andrews, Mary Sharpe Jones, Frances Butler Leigh, and Ella Gertrude Thomas, all women whose families had an enormous stake in the plantation culture of the antebellum South, reveal the life-altering changes experienced by them as they struggled to maintain class distinction in the face of Confederate defeat and the destruction of the plantation system.
"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["A Requiem to Departed Days: The Transformation and Retrenchment of Planter-Class Women in Georgia"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Patricia Dougherty, OP, PhD","Martin Anderson, JD, PhD"],"dc:creator":["Yock, Carolyn P."],"dc:description.abstract":["During the American Civil War, elite Southern women were required to step outside their traditional role as the protected gender in order to take on responsibilities like supporting Confederate troops, maintaining and operating plantations, supervising slaves, and providing for their families. For planter-class women, advances in personal autonomy were not discarded after the war, however, the more public nature of their postwar activities was conducted within the confines of a traditional gender construct, constrained by overarching issues of race and class. The diaries and journals left by four Georgia women, Eliza Frances Andrews, Mary Sharpe Jones, Frances Butler Leigh, and Ella Gertrude Thomas, all women whose families had an enormous stake in the plantation culture of the antebellum South, reveal the life-altering changes experienced by them as they struggled to maintain class distinction in the face of Confederate defeat and the destruction of the plantation system.
"],"dc:identifier":["https://scholar.dominican.edu/humanities-print-theses/274"],"dc:subject":["Humanities","Arts and Humanities"],"dc:title":["A Requiem to Departed Days: The Transformation and Retrenchment of Planter-Class Women in Georgia"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Humanities"],"thesis:degree_level":["Master's Thesis"],"thesis:degree_name":["Master of Arts"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:05:51Z"}