Now, what happened to them and to women of their class in the late nineteenth century?
Faust: You have lots of widows. Their personal lives were transformed; their domestic lives were transformed; their households were transformed. That had economic consequences. Many of them were forced to move into the labor force. Teaching at last becomes feminized in the South. It had not been before the war although it had been in the Northern states since the early nineteenth century. These women moved into positions like postmistresses, if they could find that kind of work, or other kinds of genteel undertakings that they hoped would not impugn their status. People who had been more on the margins of the class may have moved into work places such as the textile mills that began to open later in the nineteenth century. That was a source of employment for white women, many of whom were struggling in the aftermath of the war. Among the elite, there were endless complaints about something that came to be called the “servant problem.” Domestic life changed, and enormously greater amoun
