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Louisiana Plantation Weddings in Fact, Fiction and Folklore

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Louisiana Plantation Weddings in Fact, Fiction and Folklore Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2012 Wedding belles and enslaved brides: Louisiana plantation weddings in fact, fiction and folklore Cherry Lynne Levin Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Levin, Cherry Lynne, "Wedding belles and enslaved brides: Louisiana plantation weddings in fact, fiction and folklore" (2012). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3506. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3506 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. WEDDING BELLES AND ENSLAVED BRIDES: LOUISIANA PLANTATION WEDDINGS IN FACT, FICTION AND FOLKLORE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In The Department of English By Cherry Lynne Pyburn Levin B.A., University of Houston, 1975. M.A., University of California, Berkeley, 2000 M.A. Texas A&M University, 2004 May, 2012 Acknowledgments The following people have taught me much about literature and folklore as well as southern studies and I am deeply grateful for their willing donation of time and energy to see this project to completion. My Dissertation Director, John Wharton Lowe and Emeritus Professor Frank deCaro always took time to listen and give suggestions. Carolyn Ware has been a willing participant, introducing me to the culture of Southeastern Louisiana and cheerfully sharing ideas and books for much needed resources. Brannon Costello and Jacqueline Bach have been helpful in suggesting ways to structure my unruly thoughts. I am grateful for the friendship and advice of Solimar Otero. She is a valuable friend and colleague. I am also grateful to the Louisiana State University Special Collections Librarians at Hill Memorial Library. Elaine Smyth, Tara Laver, Gina Costello and Judy Bolton have gone out of their way to help me track down obscure references or obtain difficult documents. I owe a special thanks to Angela Proctor, Special Collections Librarian, at Southern University for supporting my research on documents in the John Cade Library. Also, Mary Linn Wernet guided my research in the Federal Writer’s Collection at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches. James C. Clifford at the University of New Orleans was helpful in locating items in the Special Collections in the Earl K. Long Library at The University of New Orleans. To my many friends in the wedding industry in Louisiana, you have enriched my life with your creativity and vision. I owe a special thanks to Dane and Alicia Hupp of Old South Photography, Danielle Bray of Bray Danielle Photography, and Aaron Hogan of EyeWander. Also I am grateful to Penny Scioneaux of Oak Alley, Kaitlyn Stechmann of Nottoway, Cecile Boudreaux of Houmas House and Charlotte McKeithan of Greenwood for putting up with all ii my demands and answering all of my many questions. A special thanks also to Judy Whitney Davis for sharing her expertise and opinions from a tour guide’s perspective. To Wilbur and Edna Robinson, many thanks for providing a home away from home and to my lovely neighbors, Jon and Carol Morrill for great food, stimulating conversation and technological support. I am deeply grateful for your generosity and sharing. I need to thank my friends, Shannon Mercer, Carol Lacome and Jennifer Hewitt for many years of continual support and good humor. Most importantly, I thank my husband, Jonathan Michael Levin and my five amazing children - Nathan, Samantha, Lelah, Benjamin and Sarah for giving me wings to fly so far from home. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………………… ii ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………. v INTRODUCTION: …………………………………………………………………. 1 CHAPTER I: ANTEBELLUM LOUISIANA WOMEN’S LIFE WRITING............ 13 CHAPTER II: WEDDINGS OF THE ENSLAVED ON LOUISIANA PLANTATIONS ……………………………………………….................... 101 CHAPTER III: LOUISIANA PLANTATION WEDDINGS IN THE LITERARY IMAGINATION…………………………………………….. 178 CHAPTER IV: THE PLANTATION MYSTIQUE ……………………….........… 257 AFTERWORD…………………………………………………………………….... 345 WORKS CITED ………………………………………………………………...…. 354 VITA……………………………………………………………………………..…. 371 iv Abstract Along with rites of passage marking birth and death, wedding rituals played an important role in ordering social life on antebellum Louisiana plantations, not only for elite white families but also for the enslaved. Autobiographical accounts of plantation weddings written by Louisiana women yield considerable insights on the importance of weddings for Louisiana plantation women before and especially during the Civil War. Moreover, information contained within the Louisiana Writers’ Project narratives reveal various types of wedding ritual used to unite the enslaved on Louisiana plantations despite laws and codes that prohibited slave unions. In contrast to these historical accounts, plantation weddings in the fictional imagination reveal that the figure of the bride reflects careful authorial negotiation of racialized and gendered ideologies. Fictional images found in a wide-ranging collection of texts portray the Louisiana plantation wedding as a site of struggle by white or black brides against racial or patriarchal constraints. Currently, heritage tourism perpetuates notions of whiteness on Louisiana plantations, fostering romantic nostalgia of the past and adaptation of that past into the present. For contemporary brides, choosing a Louisiana plantation as a wedding venue evokes stereotypical notions of the Old South in terms of gendered femininity. Yet, there is some indication that previously entrenched notions of racial and class hierarchies are slowly being overturned. This project begins with a reenacted wedding at Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site which provides a discursive framework for examining the manner in which the white southern wedding belle or the enslaved bride and her wedding on a Louisiana plantation recycle through historical, fictional and contemporary productions. v Introduction Each spring, when the camellias and azaleas are in full bloom, enveloping the landscape with rich hues of bright color, Interpretive Rangers from the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism reenact the April 9, 1857 plantation wedding of Sarah Turnbull to James Pirrie Bowman. A posting on the website for the Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site announces the marriage of this antebellum bride to the boy-next-door with the claim that “Love is in the air and two historic plantation houses and families are united on this day.” 1 For tourists or other interested spectators, there is the promise of viewing a nineteenth-century marriage ceremony followed by a reception with refreshments, period music and dancing. Intrigued by the possibility of viewing such an event, I left Baton Rouge on a spring morning in April, 2010 for the drive to St. Francisville, a small community that purposefully retains much of its historic plantation flavor to attract tourism to the area. Until the 1840’s, West Feliciana Parish was one of the richest cotton producing areas of Louisiana. However, with the introduction of sugar cane into the region in the late 1830’s, the West Feliciana Parishes rivaled the southeastern sugar parishes by the end of the 1840’s in terms of financial prosperity. Large plantation estates mark the verdant landscape as signifiers of the visible wealth and status of these nineteenth-century planters. Rosedown, a plantation estate, completed in 1835 at a cost of thirty-five thousand dollars by Daniel Turnbull as a wedding gift for his bride, Martha Barrow, is now owned and operated by the Office of State Parks for the State of Louisiana. Throughout Louisiana alone over one hundred and fifty such sites designated by the word “plantation” are open to the public for 1http://www.crt.state.la.us/parks/rosedown.aspx. 1 heritage tourism, offering insights into the lives of these elite planters by revealing biographical information on family members and by emphasizing the architectural features and period furnishings of the homes. The tour guides, predominantly women in period costume, expose visitors to cozy and informal versions of antebellum plantation life through their performance of southern identity. Heritage tourism, stretching throughout the Lower Mississippi Valley region extends across the Louisiana plantation belt in five distinct areas.2 Each of these areas promote plantation tourism through guided tours, often arranged by companies in New Orleans that bring the tourist-guests by bus to view several of the homes in one excursion. Replete with gift shops and on-site restaurants, and most recently, an on-site spa, these plantations are open to the public for tours at a nominal fee. Thousands of visitors are drawn annually to these various sites, contributing substantial monies to the state and local economy.3 During the antebellum period, each of these areas supported plantation systems, defined as large-scale agricultural farming of specific crops, usually cotton and sugar cane, primarily
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