Explore the vast range of titles available.

Laas recalls Violet Blair, a fashionable belle from an elite Washington DC family, through a series of prenuptial letters she wrote to her betrothed in 1874. The letters reveal her as a feminist ahead of her time.

\"Notorious Woman: The Celebrated Case of Myra Clark Gaines\" by Elizabeth Urban Alexander is reviewed.

Beautiful, intelligent, accustomed to exercising authority, and demanding equality without apology, Violet Blair (1848-1933) was the leading belle of Washington D.C. In 1874 she wed Albert Janin. Her experience offers an opportunity to explore the question of how such a vain and assertive woman managed within that most patriarchal of nineteenth-century institutions--marriage. Violet was no shrinking flower; she set the original terms of their marriage, and Albert, for the most part, obeyed. He, however, was not simply a hen-pecked husband. Understanding precisely how to handle his difficult wife, he managed to live his life much as he wished. Both partners retained their individual identities while maintaining their marital bond. Their fifty-four-year marriage provides ample evidence of the variety and complexity that could exist between two fundamentally conservative people who had worked out their own definition of marriage. Because of the abundance of both his and her letters, in addition to her revealing diaries, Violet and Albert speak for themselves throughout this work. Their own words vividly recreate their thoughts and feelings, bringing us as close as possible to the reality of their lives and strengthening our understanding of their actions and relationship. The years of Violet's life encompass a transitional period for women. Located between the nineteenth-century ideal of domesticity and the twentieth century stereotype of the New Woman, Violet persisted in clinging to many of the older attitudes toward women and their place while at the same time foreshadowing the mind set of the modern woman. This study examines the distribution of power within a marriage and attempts to uncover the meaning of power and control to a particularly strong woman who bowed to most conventions of society but refused to relinquish her own individuality, independence, or authority. It is a story of shifting power and certain struggle, ending in a kind of stasis in which both partners retain their autonomy while dependent on the other.

\"Love and Power in the Nineteenth Century: The Marriage of Violet Blair\" by Virginia Jeans Laas is reviewed.

The richness is in the detail: medicine, travel and communication, parenting, education, extended family relationships, plantation finances, slavery, death, religion- these topics and more are dealt with on a daily basis, and that specificity provides important insight into the minds and lives of antebellum Southern women. Living on her St. Simons Island plantation retreat and owning fifty slaves, Anna assumed responsibility for the family's financial security.