The Devil's Lane

Sex and Race in the Early South

Bibliographic Data

ID11675172
AuthorsKarlyn E Wood (0000-0003-0510-9956, corresponding author), Kirsten Wood
Year1998
Volume18
Issue3
Pages554-554
Publication date1998-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeREVIEW
Review ofThe Devil's Lane: Sex and race in the early South, Catherine Clinton, 1997
VenueJournal of the Early Republic (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0275-1275 • E-ISSN: 1553-0620
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3124686
OpenAlexW2067702034
LanguageEN

When Europeans settled in early South, they quarrelled over many things -- but few imbroglios were so fierce as battles over land. Landowners wrangled bitterly over boundaries with neighbours and contested areas became known as the devil's lane. Violence and bloodshed were but some of consequences to befall those who ventured into these disputed territories. The Devil's Lane highlights important new work on sexuality, race, and gender in South from seventeeth to nineteenth centuries. Contributors explore legal history by examining race, crime and punishment, sex across colour line, and slander. Emerging stars and established scholars such as Peter Wood and Carol Berkin weave together fascinating story of competing agendas and clashing cultures on southern frontier. One chapter focuses on a community's resistance to a hermaphrodite, where town court conducted a series of examinations to determine individual's gender. Other pieces address topics ranging from resistance to sexual exploitation on part of slave women to spousal murders, from interpreting women's expressions of religious ecstasy to a pastor's sermons about depraved sinners and graphic depictions of carnage, all in name of exposing evil, and from a case of infanticide to practice of state-mandated castration. Several of authors pay close attention to social and personal dynamics of interracial women's networks and relationships across place and time. The Devil's Lane illuminates early forms of sexual oppression, inviting comparative questions about authority and violence, social attitudes and sexual tensions, impact of slavery as well as twisted course of race relations among blacks, whites, and Indians. Several scholars look particularly at Gulf South, myopically neglected in traditional literature, and an outstanding feature of this collection. These eighteen original essays reveal why intersection of sex and race marks an essential point of departure for understanding Southern social relations, and a turning point for field of colonial history. The rich, varied, and distinctive experiences showcased in The Devil's Lane provide an extraordinary opportunity for readers interested in women's history, African-American history, southern history, and especially colonial history to explore a wide range of exciting issues

Political science · Race (biology · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Demography · Gender Studies · Race, History, and American Society

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