The Old South, glorify, vilify or omit?

bead1

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Hi, non USA citizen here after advice...

I wanted to write a Civil War Ball scene into my novel. I won't lie, seemed like a romantic, interesting setting for some character development and plot revelations.

As I was researching hooped dresses and ladies hairstyles of the era, I came across an article about the banning of hooped skirts at the University of Georgia. (Washington Post: "Remove the Southern Belle from her Inglorious Perch"). The whole thing seems dangerous now: I certainly don't want to glamorise a racist regime. Should I be writing about the Civil War at all?
 
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angeliz2k

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Hi, non USA citizen here after advice...

I wanted to write a Civil War Ball scene into my novel. I won't lie, seemed like a romantic, interesting setting for some character development and plot revelations.

As I was researching hooped dresses and ladies hairstyles of the era, I came across an article about the banning of hooped skirts at the University of Georgia. (Washington Post: "Remove the Southern Belle from her Inglorious Perch"). The whole thing seems dangerous now: I certainly don't want to glamorise a racist regime. Should I be writing about the Civil War at all?

That's some very contentious, tricky, complicated territory you're wading into, which I suppose you realize, given your post.

My first question is, what is the nature of this novel and this scene? The entire novel isn't set during the Civil War, I take it, so it's just one ball scene? What context are you presenting it in? Time travel? A foreigner visiting?

Second question: North or South? Given context clues, I'm going to guess South. There are [big] problems with that. Like that WaPo article alludes to, the antebellum south has been mythologized and glamorized. Not only was it probably not as lovely and grand as people might like to imagine, there was the MASSIVE problem of, ya know, slavery, making it all about as glamorous as a heap of dirt. If setting this in the South, you cannot avoid the issue of slavery, but addressing the issue of slavery means knowing what you're talking about. Also, there would have been privations during the war that made things much less romantic. Yes, they did still have entertainments, but there was often no food and the clothes were old. In some places, not even that much was possible. The South was devastated by the war. AND it's important to note that only a small number of people lived like the elite of the Old South. Most people did not live that way, at all. So, the glamorized South didn't even really exist.Aside from the fact that you'll be referencing a world that didn't really exist, the very fact that you're referencing that world is problematic, unless you're prepared to confront it. I don't know where you're from, but the memory of the South and the Confederacy is a major hot-button topic here in the U.S. You need to be aware of the conversations that are going on around that and why they're going on. You cannot simply place a scene in the Civil War South because it seems interesting and romantic. That's the wrong way to approach it (judging by your tone, I think you get this). Readers of color in particular will not thank you.

If it's set in the North, then there will be fewer shortages and there's less romanticism, but it's still important to keep in mind that the politics of the North were very divided.

Look, you might be able to get away with a cursory treatment of the time period, but you probably won't, and you shouldn't try. I may be biased, since the antebellum/Civil War time period has been my jam for a long time now, but I think the time period must be approached with extreme respect and care and shouldn't be written about unless the writer has done deep and extensive research and knows the period. It was the pivotal moment in this nation's history, and we're still struggling with the after-effects. It is a big, ugly can of worms.

So, am I saying don't do it? No. I think you can; I personally think anyone can write about anything. I'm just saying . . . proceed with care.
 

Belle_91

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Hi,

Southerner here. I used to work at a plantation as well and had to wear corsets and hoopskirts that feed into the Southern belle myth.

My two cents, is that you can absolutely write about the Civil War time, but keep it realistic. Know that what paid for the silks, hoops, and lavish settings were human flesh. Also, if you don't want to have to cover enslavement, which you would certainly have to do if you set a novel in the old south, you could do set your novel in the North. (However, don't think it was a utopia for people of color. See the New York Draft Riots of 1863, one of the worst race riots in American history). Or, if you are more interested in the fashion than the politics, you could set your novel in say Victorian London in the 1860s. Does the plot itself center around the Civil War?

I love living in the South and am a proud Southerner. I hope to be known as a Southern author. However, I am also completely aware of the South's many layers and facets of history. I acknowledge enslavement and the disenfranchisement of people of color (which, I would argue is also not solely a Southern issue, despite what others in America may think).

I know a lot of historic sites in the South are getting rid of their guides in period dress because it fed into the myth of the pure, perfect Southern Belle, which is steeped in racism.

I recommend this set of videos on deconstructing the myth of the Southern Belle: http://southernbellefilm.com/ (See Scholar's response). It's a reaction to a camp that was here in TN which taught girls how to become "proper ladies" by relying on Southern Belle myths. These videos by the scholars give a more nuanced look at the real Southern belles, covering things from their education to how they grossly benefited from slavery.

I also recommend reading Tara Revisited by Catherine Clinton and Mother's of Invention: Woman of the slave-holding South.

Hope this helps.
 
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InkFinger

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You should not write about the U.S. Civil War for the purposes of a ball, but it's an interesting setting for a story. Conflict makes for good story telling and it's hard to get more conflict than a civil war, no matter where it is. If your concern is elevating the Confederate social elite, then don't elevate them. It's perfectly possible to use the setting without hiding or glossing over the troubling aspects of the Old South.
 

angeliz2k

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I agree with Belle wholeheartedly.

Also, a bit off-topic, but another book that pokes (blows?) a hole in the idea of the genteel Southern belle is They Were Her Property by Stephanie Jones-Rogers, which illustrates just how involved women were in the ugliness of slavery. And of course, the North didn't have clean hands when it came to slavery; they bought Southern cotton, often sympathized with slavery and slave-owners (President Buchanan is an example), had made fortunes trading in slaves, were financially involved in slavery, and were often as prejudiced/racist as Southerners. Lincoln's message in the Second Inaugural wasn't so much reconciliation as shared guilt.

You should not write about the U.S. Civil War for the purposes of a ball, but it's an interesting setting for a story. Conflict makes for good story telling and it's hard to get more conflict than a civil war, no matter where it is. If your concern is elevating the Confederate social elite, then don't elevate them. It's perfectly possible to use the setting without hiding or glossing over the troubling aspects of the Old South.

This.
 

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I think there are multiple things to consider.

Of course you don't want to portray the Confederacy as a wonderful, gilded place where nothing is amiss. Similarly, you don't want to make everyone a cartoonish villain. Neither would be a historically accurate representation.

Depending on the genre of your novel and your style of writing, I think you would be best served by portraying it as a society wrapped in a thin veneer of gentility, hiding something much uglier underneath.

There is a scene in one of Wilbur Smith's novels (I think it's A Sparrow Falls) where one of the characters goes to pre-war Nazi Germany, and he captures what could have been an accurate mood brilliantly. Everything is gay and everyone is healthy and happy. Yet their eyes look at the table when a uniformed Gestapo officer walks by, or else the singing fades away whenever soldiers lead a prisoner past.

If it's up your street, you might also consider reading the Starbuck Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell. He never finished the series (and probably never will now, for similar reasons as you state), but it portrays a Northerner who defects to fight for the South. The books do a great job of balancing the humanity of the South with the innate wrongness of parts the culture at the time.
 
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Belle_91

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Just want to add that Angeliz makes some great points. Here in Nashville, only about 11% of the population owned enslaved people. Of those slave-owners, an even smaller number owned the sprawling plantations that we think of in films/novels like Gone with the Wind. However, while slave-owners were in the minority, they controlled the majority of the power. They were lawyers, judges, congressmen, senators, and in twelve cases, presidents. Their world was tiny and not the typical experience of a person living in the South back then.

The ideas of the old South: the gentility, grand plantations, and a fight not over keeping people enslaved but over "state's rights" (the main state's right being...keeping people enslaved) were all inventions of the post-Civil War era, known as the Lost Cause. That world that I think you might have been initially drawn to when discussing your scene for a Civil War ball in the Old South, really is about as accurate as Lord of the Kings is to the Medieval Ages. People, writers especially, were drawn to it because it validated their feelings over African American men gaining more political rights in the 1880s and 1890s. White southerners had to accept defeat and they did that by reinventing their history. They became honorable gentlemen defending hearth and home--and fragile Southern belles--from damn Yankees and black men. It's the one time in history I can think of where the people who lost dominated the narrative of that event for quite sometime.

I also wanted to add that you should look up the WPA Slave Narratives. White writers in the 1920s/1930s interviewed people who were formally enslaved about what their experience on these plantations were. I would also recommend Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup and the works of Fredrick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. Incidents in Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs is another good place to start. These were all works done by people who experienced enslavement during the time you want to write about.

Also, I would recommend reading current fiction to see how writers are handling it now. I really enjoyed The Yellow Crocus and Invention of Wings, though these kind of fall into a slippery slope of the white savior. I haven't read it yet, but The Book of Lost Friends which recently came out is on my Christmas list.

Sorry if the post is long and overwhelming, but I have a degree in history and nineteenth century South is my sweet spot. As Angeliz said, I think if you want to write a piece like this you can, but make sure you back it up with a TON of research because this is a subject that Americans are still struggling with.
 
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mccardey

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This is a really interesting thread. :Sun:
 

gothicangel

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As a student historian/archaeologist, my instinct is to say: tell the truth. Don't glorify, don't vilify. As for omission, there is no greater sin of historical vandalism than pretending something didn't happen. Plus, also remember that by the standards of the time, the South was no more racist than any other state or country. Yes, others had chosen the abolish slavery, that doesn't mean that they did not still hold deeply racist attitudes towards non-whites. Lincoln may have abolished slavery, but he did not see African-Americans as equals either.
 
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Chris P

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Gothicangel made my main point: tell the truth, and to do that research, research, research. Belle's suggested first-hand accounts are almost exactly the books/narratives I was going to suggest. I also wonder if being aware of white attitudes of the time would help too. I recently discovered E.D.E.N. Southworth, a Virginia-born writer who was one of the best selling writers of the 1850s to 1870s. Her work is "oh, jeez"-inducing today in its racial attitudes (even if the stories are quite good), but were bought by the crateful at the time. There is always a disconnect between what people readand how they live (DC life is not nearly what Tom Clancy and James Patterson make it to be) but nevertheless reflect the culture of the time. But as Belle says be sure to understand modern attitudes too; your readers are modern, and reflecting past voices too much will hit a dead note today.
 

angeliz2k

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As a student historian/archaeologist, my instinct is to say: tell the truth. Don't glorify, don't vilify. As for omission, there is no greater sin of historical vandalism than pretending something didn't happen. Plus, also remember that by the standards of the time, the South was no more racist than any other state or country. Yes, others had chosen the abolish slavery, that doesn't mean that they did not still hold deeply racist attitudes towards non-whites. Lincoln may have abolished slavery, but he did not see African-Americans as equals either.

I don't really agree with that. There's a reason the South perpetuated slavery and other states/countries did not. That isn't to say that the North wasn't racist, as well; it was. But they at least believed that black people ought to be free, which is more than Southerners believed. While the North wasn't morally pure on the issue, there isn't quite moral equivalency. There was plenty of blame to go around, but most of it lay squarely with white Southerners.

The racism was exceptionally deep and intense in the South at this time. It was self-perpetuating. The whole economic and social system demanded complete de-humanization of black people, or else it fell apart. You can't sustain slavery unless the people you enslave are not really human at all. So, both and white and black people were taught this from the time they were born. (It's a bit of a chicken-egg thing: did slavery exist because of racism, or did racism exist to validate slavery? They probably perpetuated each other.) Most white Southerners believed it all thoroughly. It could still be ugly in the North--but it wasn't the same level of fervor.
 

indianroads

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It could get tricky when you tell the story from you character's POV. Writing an 18th century character with a 21st century mindset would create a false narrative of that time.
 

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Also, don't forget that many in the rural South were sharecroppers, both black and white. They worked like dogs and lived in poverty. There was nothing privileged about their lives.
 
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Hi, non USA citizen here after advice...

I wanted to write a Civil War Ball scene into my novel. I won't lie, seemed like a romantic, interesting setting for some character development and plot revelations.

As I was researching hooped dresses and ladies hairstyles of the era, I came across an article about the banning of hooped skirts at the University of Georgia. (Washington Post: "Remove the Southern Belle from her Inglorious Perch"). The whole thing seems dangerous now: I certainly don't want to glamorise a racist regime. Should I be writing about the Civil War at all?

Ask yourself whether this scene serves the story and moves it forward. If the Civil War ballroom scene doesn’t effectively carry out either of those two directives, then it may be fluffy window dressing. Can you remove the scene entirely without affecting your story? If so, then remove it. Does it serve the story and propel it forward? Leave it in.
 

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A section in one of my books is about the Civil War. Specifically, about a particular ambush event and how it relates to what's going on in the present tense.

I'm proud to say that I injected nothing controversial whatsoever. You can do the same.
 
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Unimportant

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This thread is a year old, so the original poster may not be following it, but it's a good story aspect to bear in mind.
 
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Helix

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A section in one of my books is about the Civil War. Specifically, about a particular ambush event and how it relates to what's going on in the present tense.

I'm proud to say that I injected nothing controversial whatsoever. You can do the same.

How did you determine whether what you wrote was 'controversial' or not? What were your criteria?
 

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How did you determine whether what you wrote was 'controversial' or not? What were your criteria?

It wasn't about the war or any of the circumstances surrounding it. It was about how some old letters from the time correlate to events happening in the present life of the MC.
 

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It wasn't about the war or any of the circumstances surrounding it. It was about how some old letters from the time correlate to events happening in the present life of the MC.

So the way to avoid controversy about the Civil War is not to write about it.

(Everyone, plz note how I have avoided any references to Fawlty Towers.)
 
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RGS-Author

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So the way to avoid controversy about the Civil War is not to write about it.

(Everyone, plz note how I have avoided any references to Fawlty Towers.)
I wasn't looking to avoid controversy; it just wasn't part of the story. Without giving out a spoiler, my MC discovers that the current nightmare he's going through may relate to some clues in old letters from the Civil War, passed down in his family.
 

Helix

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I wasn't looking to avoid controversy; it just wasn't part of the story. Without giving out a spoiler, my MC discovers that the current nightmare he's going through may relate to some clues in old letters from the Civil War, passed down in his family.

But the thread is about a story set during the Civil War. That's why I'm a bit perplexed by your suggestion.
 

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I wasn't looking to avoid controversy; it just wasn't part of the story. Without giving out a spoiler, my MC discovers that the current nightmare he's going through may relate to some clues in old letters from the Civil War, passed down in his family.
Probably a good idea to look at the date and specs of the original post...
 

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But the thread is about a story set during the Civil War. That's why I'm a bit perplexed by your suggestion.

Yeah. I get what you mean and I see where he's coming from. The only reason I tossed in what I did is because topics can be addressed without getting into offensive territory. Now granted, if my book was "about" the Civil War, it would be a whole different animal.

But at the same time, hooped skirts and hairstyles aren't controversial, and I see no reason to not write about that era if he really wants to.
 

angeliz2k

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Yeah. I get what you mean and I see where he's coming from. The only reason I tossed in what I did is because topics can be addressed without getting into offensive territory. Now granted, if my book was "about" the Civil War, it would be a whole different animal.

But at the same time, hooped skirts and hairstyles aren't controversial, and I see no reason to not write about that era if he really wants to.
That is . . . false.

The imagery of the Old South is VERY political and very controversial. Think about the imagery of a white lady in a cage crinoline and a lovely hairstyle dancing while at the same time actively enslaving people around her. And think of the descendants of those enslaved people reading a story about it, in which all we see is the pretty picture. Or make it a Northern woman, who may not be directly involved in slavery but isn't concerned about the plight of enslaved people. Or maybe the white woman is concerned with it, in which case, that fact would be a big fact in her life. And keep in mind how this all appears today.

For instance, there is a lot of controversy over people having weddings and photo shoots at former plantations. The imagery is explosive. It carries a LOT of weight.

Everything is political, even the avoidance of politics. Especially in this particular time period and topic, you can't avoid the politics of it because it's baked in.