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A review by torlin_keru
Mary Chesnut: A Diary From Dixie by Mary Boykin Chesnut
4.0
I finally finished!
I started my review when I was in the middle of the book:
So far, I enjoy her writing style; she writes clearly and intelligently. She is also very open with her opinions on almost everything she writes about. As you might expect with a journal, a lot of the events don't have bearing on the rest of the occurrences, except in a vague way to provide more context for the time period.
Her views on slavery, politics, and the war are very interesting and conflicted. She doesn't like that there is a war or slavery, but she stands behind her country. Her views are definitely not modern, but it IS interesting to view the Antebellum South through the eyes of a woman (instead of a man) that actually lived through that period.
A lot of the journal is full of gossip, though she usually protects the identity of people of whom she tells unflattering stories.
The author is anti-slavery, and claims that most Southern women are. Her reasons for being anti-slavery are mostly selfish, however. She often talks negatively of the slaves around her, but shares interesting or flattering stories about their lives as well. She doesn't like that slave owners have all slaves at their mercy (especially the women), she doesn't like having them walking through her house at any time of the day, and she doesn't like that they don't work harder (even though she works even less!). She doesn't like having to pay for their upkeep. Whenever she talks about Northern women, she describes their "easy life." Despite all this, I find her easily likable.
Many parts of the journal were written in my hometown, and I recognize some of the surnames. My forebears were not in her social circle, so I haven't read anything about them unless they were included among the men ("Sandhill tackeys") who would not fight at the beginning of the war because it was a "rich man's war."
About halfway through the book, she starts mentioning how much money she pays for different items, showing the inflation and scarcity endemic to the late Confederacy.
This book really is an incredible chronicle of how the Southern plantation class went from immense wealth and comfort to being dependent on the loyalty of their former slaves. At the beginning, Mrs. Chesnut talked about luxuries such as ice in an off-hand way and lingered on her illnesses, which also seem more frequent. By the end of the war, she had milked cows and helped her lady's maid (slave) clean their rooms and cook. She still took to her bed, but only mentioned it in passing. She paid exorbitant prices for food, and was happy with "bread and molasses." She had seen or heard of the horrors of war--maimed soldiers, starvation, cruelty to women and children, death and destruction. She would lament, "And what was it all for? Nothing!"
Despite this and the difficulty in rebuilding, I could still see at the end of her diary that she and her circle of friends would be able to regain their old way of life.
True to a what you would expect of a journal, the book goes through stages of being more interesting and less interesting, depending on the society that Mrs. Chesnut associates with.
I started my review when I was in the middle of the book:
So far, I enjoy her writing style; she writes clearly and intelligently. She is also very open with her opinions on almost everything she writes about. As you might expect with a journal, a lot of the events don't have bearing on the rest of the occurrences, except in a vague way to provide more context for the time period.
Her views on slavery, politics, and the war are very interesting and conflicted. She doesn't like that there is a war or slavery, but she stands behind her country. Her views are definitely not modern, but it IS interesting to view the Antebellum South through the eyes of a woman (instead of a man) that actually lived through that period.
A lot of the journal is full of gossip, though she usually protects the identity of people of whom she tells unflattering stories.
The author is anti-slavery, and claims that most Southern women are. Her reasons for being anti-slavery are mostly selfish, however. She often talks negatively of the slaves around her, but shares interesting or flattering stories about their lives as well. She doesn't like that slave owners have all slaves at their mercy (especially the women), she doesn't like having them walking through her house at any time of the day, and she doesn't like that they don't work harder (even though she works even less!). She doesn't like having to pay for their upkeep. Whenever she talks about Northern women, she describes their "easy life." Despite all this, I find her easily likable.
Many parts of the journal were written in my hometown, and I recognize some of the surnames. My forebears were not in her social circle, so I haven't read anything about them unless they were included among the men ("Sandhill tackeys") who would not fight at the beginning of the war because it was a "rich man's war."
About halfway through the book, she starts mentioning how much money she pays for different items, showing the inflation and scarcity endemic to the late Confederacy.
This book really is an incredible chronicle of how the Southern plantation class went from immense wealth and comfort to being dependent on the loyalty of their former slaves. At the beginning, Mrs. Chesnut talked about luxuries such as ice in an off-hand way and lingered on her illnesses, which also seem more frequent. By the end of the war, she had milked cows and helped her lady's maid (slave) clean their rooms and cook. She still took to her bed, but only mentioned it in passing. She paid exorbitant prices for food, and was happy with "bread and molasses." She had seen or heard of the horrors of war--maimed soldiers, starvation, cruelty to women and children, death and destruction. She would lament, "And what was it all for? Nothing!"
Despite this and the difficulty in rebuilding, I could still see at the end of her diary that she and her circle of friends would be able to regain their old way of life.
True to a what you would expect of a journal, the book goes through stages of being more interesting and less interesting, depending on the society that Mrs. Chesnut associates with.