*Civil War Era Southern Belle Doll

Many Americans think of the Southern Belle as the idealized Confederate woman. The stereotypical Scarlett O'Hara flirting with her beau is an iconic image of the landed gentry of the Old South. The Civil War, however, began the process of liberating women by enabling them to play a leading role, both in providing a livelihood for themselves and their families and in supporting the military effort.

Some upper class ladies supervised plantations, while others sponsored soldier-aid activities, administered relief programs for needy civilians, worked as nurses, or in government offices. Free women of all classes found employment in factories making munitions, clothing, and other commodities. Women comprising the non-slaveholding yeomanry, or middle class, the largest segment of Southern society, plowed fields, harvested crops, cut firewood, slaughtered livestock, nursed the sick and buried the dead, while their husbands, fathers, and sons were away performing military service.

This Southern Belle doll is boxed.