Marli Weiner challenges much of the received wisdom on the domestic realm         of the nineteenth-century southern plantation--a world in which white         mistresses and female slaves labored together to provide food, clothing,         and medicines to the larger plantation community. Although divided by         race, black and white women were joined by common female experiences and         expectations of behavior. Because work and gender affected them as much         as race, mistresses and female slaves interacted with one another very         differently from the ways they interacted with men.       Supported by the women's own words, Weiner offers fresh interpretations         of the ideology of domesticity that influenced women's race relations         before the Civil War, the gradual manner in which they changed during         the war, and the harsher behaviors that resulted during Reconstruction.       A volume in the series Women in American History, edited by Anne Firor         Scott, Nancy A. Hewitt, and Stephanie Shaw