Southern Belle In The Antebellum South

History of the Old South
Research Paper
Bailey K

Empowerment of the Southern Belle in the Antebellum South

The southern belle was perhaps one of the most charming characters of the American Antebellum South. She was and is often romanticized through fictional novels and plays, and many women throughout history have likely drawn parallels between their lives and that of heroines like Scarlett O’Hara. Southern women themselves might have looked back on the period of their lives they spent as belles as one of the most favorable. But the belle life stage simply bridged the gap into what was often the darkest period of their lives, and also where they reached their highest purpose and achievement as defined by their societal structure:
How literature shaped courtship and romantic ideals has already been discussed, but literature also encouraged independence as an alternative life choice. Fictional romance novels about the “belle gone bad” were very popular with young women. The idea of the “bad belle” was heavily encouraged by the oppressive nature of southern society. These stories encouraged women to use their femininity to their advantage, as a weapon of sorts. Betina Entzminger suggests that feminine weakness was the very foundation of feminine strength. A woman could use her charms to manipulate the male sex, and that is what the bad belle did. She was one who used her “women’s weapons” but did not play by the rules of womanhood. Much of this theory has to do with the idea of feminine sexuality. In this sense, a woman was no longer an object, but a subject. She could empower herself through her sexuality—through her body. A woman’s sexuality was directly associated with how she saw herself, and how others saw her: again, as a subject or an object. (Hall, 38) As an object, her sexuality served as the foundation for oppression. But as an object, sexuality serves as part of what and who she is. Fictional novels moved the belle as an object into the belle as a subject who could think and act based on her own inclinations.

One famous belle-gone-bad was Belle Boyd, a southern planter’s daughter who stepped up to the plate,
And yet, it is that set of ideals that the belle struggled against for so long. The pre-Civil War belle was a private operator and a perfect, lasting picture of what a southern lady ought to have been. But that image of delicate and docile nature hid a lifetime of oppression by a rigid social structure. The unyielding mission to preserve that patriarchal caste system that has been afflicting societies for centuries remained steadfast even in the midst of changes to the rest of the country. Wealthy southerners and their families drew uncanny parallels to kings and princes with their “noble blood.” They ruled the south and all who shared it with them—slaves and yeoman alike. Finally, they pushed their way into a war that would eventually crumble the way of life they had been fighting to