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Family Values in the Old South. Edited by Craig Thompson Friend and Anya Jabour. (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida, c. 2010. Pp. [viti], 257. $69.95, ISBN 978-0-8130-3418-8.)
Craig Thompson Friend and Anya Jabour have edited a fine collection of ten essays that examine various topics relating to the southern family during the antebellum period. The introduction discusses the extant literature on the topic, and the essays seek to dispel popular and historiographical myths regarding the southern family. The topical organization of the essays reflects the objective of the collection. Part 1 examines how southern family values were defined and how some family structures contradicted that definition. The second part probes how behavior within some southern families reflected or undermined dominant themes of the idealized southern family. Part 3 explores how some families reflected or contradicted the dominant political culture of the antebellum South. While these categories are useful in getting the reader to understand the thematic logic of the collection, all three juxtapose the alternative ways southerners lived and viewed family life against the dominant social and political ideals of the time.
Americans, especially southerners, are fond of popular myth...