The antebellum era in the South was a time of slavery, prejudice, and scandal. In the South, the majority of the population was African American people who were subjugated because of the color of their skin. Willa Cather's last novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, illustrates this pre- Civil War period by focusing on a Virginian back country millhouse and its proprietors, the Colbert Family. The novel centers on the wary mistress of the house, Sapphira Colbert, and her suspicions about an affair between her husband and a mulatto slave girl. Cather exposes the implications of master-slave affairs during antebellum times and their impact on the wives of the slaveholders. Although slaves were considered property, wives of slaveholders perceived the open sexual relations between masters and slaves as a threat.

In the South there was a considerable amount of promiscuity between masters and slaves. The close contact with...