Wedding Belles and Enslaved Brides: Louisiana Plantation Weddings in Fact, Fiction and Folklore
Dissertation directed by Professor John Wharton Lowe, Robert Penn Warren Professor of English
Pages in dissertation, 380, Words in Abstract, 234
Abstract
Along with rites of passage marking birth and death, wedding rituals played an important role in ordering social life on antebellum Louisiana plantations, not only for elite white families but also for the enslaved. Louisiana women's autobiographical accounts of plantation weddings yield considerable insights on the importance of weddings for Louisiana plantation women before, and especially during, the Civil War. Moreover, information contained within the Louisiana Writers' Project narratives reveal various types of wedding ritual used to unite the enslaved on Louisiana plantations despite laws and codes that prohibited slave unions. In contrast to these historical accounts, plantation weddings in the fictional imagination reveal that the figure of the bride reflects careful authorial negotiation of racialized and gendered ideologies. Fictional images found in a wide-ranging collection of texts portray the Louisiana plantation wedding as a site of struggle by white or black brides against racial and patriarchal constraints. Currently, heritage tourism perpetuates notions of whiteness on Louisiana plantations, fostering romantic nostalgia of the past and adaptation of that past into the present. For contemporary brides, choosing a Louisiana plantation as a wedding venue evokes stereotyical notions of the Old South in terms of gendered femininity. Yet, there is some indication that previously entrenched notions of racial and class hierarchies are slowly being overturned. This project begins with a reenacted wedding at Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site, providing a discursive framework for examining the manner in which the white southern belle or the enslaved bride and her wedding on a Louisiana plantation recycle through historical, fictional and contemporary productions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-04252012-225800 |
| Date | 11 May 2012 |
| Creators | Levin, Cherry Lynne |
| Contributors | deCaro, Frank, Lowe, John, Costello, Brannon, Bach, Jacqueline, ware, carolyn |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04252012-225800/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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