Big house after slavery: Virginia's plantation elite and their postbellum domestic experiment

This study examines the economic, social, and political challenges that Virginia planter families faced following Confederate defeat and emancipation. It addresses how both men and women of the planter elite responded to the problems of the postwar period and how their adaptations to life without slavery altered their marital relationships and their conceptions of gender roles. In response to the financial crisis created by emancipation, many of Virginia's former masters had to put themselves to work on their plantations because they could not afford to hire a large wage-labor force to replace their slaves. Plantation mistresses also had to expand their responsibilities, taking on the tasks of cooking and cleaning as well as working in the garden, the henhouse, and the dairy.; Having to make such adaptations to their own behavior contributed to an identity crisis among Virginia planters. They valued their status as elites and struggled to maintain the appearance of high social standing, even if doing so required both men and women to work harder at difficult, unfamiliar labor. In their attempts to preserve their class status, planter couples were forced to reconsider their understanding of proper gender roles. Men had long been accustomed to the role of breadwinner, but having to share this responsibility with their women challenged their standing as men as well as their position as elites. As a result, hierarchical marital arrangements broke down on plantations in the postwar period and were replaced by a greater mutuality between husbands and wives. Though this transformation took place largely in private, Virginia planters also engaged in a public debate about their image as men. While the agricultural organizations that they joined acknowledged women's contributions to plantation life and encouraged planter couples to collaborate, Virginia politicians celebrated instead men's traditional role as providers and protectors of weak, submissive women. This public debate about gender roles suggests that Virginia elites experienced complex emotional responses to the challenges of their time.