A fascinating, scholarly glimpse into what it meant to be a Southern belle.
This collection of historical correspondence illuminates a North Carolina belle’s upbringing, courtships, marriage, and death at age 22 following childbirth.
“On the carpet,” in the parlance of 1830s America, meant to be under consideration; applied to young women, it meant being on the marriage market—and in constant danger of being replaced by fresher stock. Such concerns underlie many of the letters here written by and to Penelope Skinner (1818-1841); the chief correspondents are her brother Tristrim Lowther Skinner (1820-1862); her father, Joseph Blount Skinner (1781-1851); and the husband she married in 1840, Dr. Thomas Davis Warren (1817-1878). (The originals are among the Skinner Family Papers, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Southern Historical Collection.) In this scholarly, thoroughly researched account, Maillard (The Belles of Williamsburg, 2015, etc.), a Skinner descendant, has assembled a valuable collection of primary sources and provided illuminating notes, comments, illustrations, and an extensive bibliography and index. The letters begin in 1832 with a joint missive from the Skinner children to their father expressing concern over a cholera epidemic and end in 1841 with a condolence note to Penelope’s father after her death—indicative of the 19th century’s many dangers. Readers learn about Penelope’s schooling, homesickness, her close relationship with her brother, and episodes of depression. Many letters ask after family servants, such as “Aunt Barbara,” the child’s African-American nanny. The Southern belle is an archetype, but it’s established in most readers’ minds by popular conceptions like Gone With the Wind. This volume gives direct insight into the complicated, chancy world of matchmaking. Letters are filled with Penelope’s worries about being “on the carpet,” and competitive, catty remarks about other girls: “I should be pleased also to hear from Mary Mosely is she as large as ever,” she writes in 1839. Though considered thin-faced and sallow, Penelope had 30 offers and three failed public engagements; suitors were perhaps put off by her father’s “queer ways.” It’s poignant that achieving her main goals, marriage and childbirth, brought about her early death.
A fascinating, scholarly glimpse into what it meant to be a Southern belle.Pub Date: June 20, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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