Bücher von William H. Pease

Pursuing the meaning of gender in nineteenth-century urban American society, Ladies, Women, and Wenches compares the lives of women living in two distinctive antebellum cultures, Charleston and Boston, between 1820 and 1850. In contrast to most contemporary histories of women, this study examines the lives of all types of women in both cities.

Through letters, diaries, novels and memoirs, this volume focuses on the female descendants of Louise Gibert Pettigrew, who rose from obscurity to privileged prominence in Charleston and on low country plantations, where they flourished as belles and shocked society with their unconventionality.