A Rebel Wife in Texas: the Diary and Letters of Elizabeth Scott Neblett, 1852-1864.

Edited by Erika L. Murr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001. Pp. [xvi], 476. $49.95, ISBN 0-8071-2702-7.)

"Lord," demanded Texas plantation mistress Elizabeth Scott ("Lizzie") Neblett in March 1864, "if I was made a woman why were such rebelious, such wicked feelings given to me why cant I feel & think like a poor weak inferior slave should" (p. 356). In this comment, one of many contained in this compelling collection of letters exchanged by a Confederate couple during the Civil War, Lizzie Neblett captured the central contradiction of her life. "God fixed me to have children in pain & sorrow" (p. 355), she reflected, while her temperament suited her for ambition and achievement. The title of this collection hints not so much at the Confederate rebellion against the Union as at Lizzie Neblett's private--and, ultimately, equally unsuccessful--rebellion against the constraints of southern womanhood.

A Rebel Wife in Texas begins with Lizzie's brief diary. Written mostly during her engagement to William Henry ("Will") Neblett, the diary reveals the young Lizzie's desire for love, passion for self-actualization, and ambivalence about the marriage that would fulfill one need at the expense of the other. "My life will be entirely changed," she reflected in May 1852. "I will have much to do, and I hope much happiness, if not, miserable will be my exchange" (p. 44). Eleven years later, when Lizzie and Will began to exchange the letters that make up the bulk of this fascinating collection, Lizzie's prediction had been realized. The mother of four children and pregnant with a fifth--and unwanted--child, Lizzie had sunk into a deep depression. "It seems to me that no martyr bound to the stake ever dreaded the devouring flames worse or more than I do the coming pains of labor," she wrote (p. 114). Yet even after she had passed safely through labor, Lizzie's resentment of motherhood and fear of childbirth pervaded all her letters.

Despite using "preventive[s]" (p. 20) and attempting abstinence, the Nebletts' efforts at birth control were unsuccessful, and Lizzie's deep dissatisfaction with the realities of nineteenth-century marriage drove a wedge between husband and wife. "This constant & never ceasing horror I have of childbearing constantly obtrudes itself between me & my desire & longing to see & clasp you round the neck once more," wrote Lizzie to Will, "& thus my longing wears a curb" (p. 416). While Lizzie's despair saddened and confused her husband, still more distressing are suggestions that Lizzie's bitterness fed a cycle of child abuse. While she nursed her children tenderly through illnesses, Lizzie--whose own father had "cursed" and "cow hided" her (p. 46)--also made it clear that she was "an unwilling mother" (p. 288); she intentionally "mortif[ied]" her sons (p. 428) and often "whipped" all the children, including ten-month-old Bettie, the unwanted war baby (pp. 184, 244, 279, 340, 375). The second-oldest boy, Billy, whom Lizzie described as "a mean, bad child" (p. 184), responded in kind by striking and scratching his siblings until he left scars, while his younger brother Walter vented his rage on pets and other objects.

A Rebel Wife in Texas contains a great deal of information on a wide range of subjects, including mistress-slave relationships, plantation management, slave discipline and rebellion, and even sexual misbehavior, ranging from prostitution to miscegenation. But editor Erika L. Murr is especially to be commended for making available a source that reveals, with brutal honesty, the painful realities of private lives in the nineteenth-century South.

ANYA JABOUR
University of Montana