Windows into Antebellum Charleston: Caroline Gilman and the Southern Rose Magazine

Caroline Gilman (1794-1888) is a neglected antebellum writer and editor who is of interest from numerous perspectives. Most significantly, from 1832 to 1835 she edited the first magazine for children in the South, the Rose Bud (later the Southern Rose Bud), which from 1835 to 1839 appeared as a women's magazine titled the Southern Rose. This dissertation examines the contents of the Rose magazines as they reflect prominent issues in antebellum Charleston society. The first chapter considers the ways in which the magazine serves as an index of the literary atmosphere of the nineteenth century generally, and of periodicals in the antebellum South specifically. Chapter Two discusses material in the Rose magazines which reveals the South's (and the nation's) lingering attachment to British culture and literary convention. This climate of internationalism is matched by an emerging nationalism that is also reflected in the pages of the Rose. Chapter Three discusses the role of the South (and Charleston, specifically) in this movement toward the development of a burgeoning American nationalism. At the same time, the contents of the Rose magazines suggest a competing and equally insistent impetus toward regionalism, particularly as sectional tensions escalated in the period leading up to the Civil War. The transition from a celebration of regional accomplishment and talent to a defensive sectional stance as reflected in the magazine is the subject of Chapter Four, in which I pay particular attention to the role southern periodicals played in the developing political conflict. Chapters Five, Six, and Seven deal respectively with the Rose magazines' treatment of issues of Race, Class, and Gender. Particularly, I focus on the intersection of these three central sociological areas in the antebellum South, and the difficulties Gilman faced, as both a woman and an intellectual, in reconciling the contradictions implicit in the treatment of such complex issues. This study of Caroline Gilman and her editorship of the Rose magazines provides windows into three important areas of scholarship: the intellectual, social, and political culture of antebellum Charleston; the instrumental role periodicals played in that culture; and the role of women in the antebellum South.