Southern Mothers, a collection of critical essays by prominent southern
literary scholars, examines the significance of motherhood in southern
fiction. The belle, the mammy, religion, and racism are several of the
distinctive threads with which southern women writers have woven the
fabric of their stories. Bringing southern motherhood into focus -- with
all its peculiarities of attitude and tradition -- the essays speak to
both the established and the unconventional modes of motherhood that are
typical in southern writing and probe the extent to which southern women
writers have rejected or embraced, supported or challenged the
individual, social, and cultural understanding and institution of
motherhood.