Reference no: EM133259787

Question: When you analyze the above paragraph what was the real reason/purpose of educating women in the Old South?

But if the Southern belle is something that is created, then what were the actual roles of upper-class Southern women in the Old South? In her book The Education of the Southern Belle, Christie Anne Farnham reveals that many more colleges for women were being established in the South than in the North. The evidence suggests that upper-class Southern women were, in fact, better educated than their Northern counterparts, but most Southern women did not utilize this education after the completion of their studies. Southern women's education, however, did not end with academics. It also included instruction in how to be a proper lady; "Although the Southern belle was viewed, on the one hand, as the natural product and crowning glory of Southern slave society, on the other hand, it was clear to many that it was an ideal that needed to be developed. In addition to conversation in the parlor, institutions often held soirees/parties for local townspeople" (Farnham 128). This sort of social interaction demonstrates the Southern woman's educational experience, and explains why most women chose instead to stay on the plantation and assume traditional women's roles because a sense of duty to their race, society, and social standing. Marianne Barnett, in her anthropological study of the Southern folklore heard through her mother, explains this sense of duty as a dedication and sensitivity to pride. "Mother [and the stories she tells] instructs me carefully in the art of preserving" self-respect (Barnett 212). Proper behavior and speaking, even in the face of personal danger, is of the utmost importance. Presentation of self, and personal awareness of this presentation, thus seems to lie at the heart of what it means to be a Southern belle.