SOURCE: Shillingsburg, Miriam J. “The Ascent of Woman, Southern Style: Hentz, King, Chopin.” In Southern Literature in Transition: Heritage and Promise, edited by Philip Castille and William Osborne, pp. 127-40. Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1983.

In the following essay, Shillingsburg studies representative works by Caroline Hentz, Grace King, and Kate Chopin as they reflect women's changing views in the late nineteenth-century American South.

When one considers the “role of woman” in nineteenth-century America, various stereotypes come to mind: the bustling New England matron, the political activist, and the plantation belle on a pedestal, to name only a few. Our common conception of the upper-class southern woman is that she was either satisfied with her position on the pedestal, or if not, as with Mary Boykin Chesnut, she dared not say so out loud. While both these conceptions are truthful ones, they do not tell the whole story of...