University of Georgia Press, 1997

What binds the essays in Beyond Image and Convention together is more than simply women pushing on the boundaries of social convention. As the editors rightly conclude, these women “who were at the bottom of the social ladder had little to lose in defying convention.” What drove these women, as in the case of Cynthia Lyerly’s “unruly” Methodist women and Kimberly Schreck’s freed slave who sued for back wages after being kept in servitude for decades after emancipation, was the pursuit of power. The white housekeepers who guarded their positions and privileges in Anya Jabour’s essay and the salve matriarch who ruled the household servants in Norma Mitchell’s article also strove not to change society’s perception of themselves but rather to improve and defend their control over their own social or economic situations. In this regard, the editors sell themselves and the essays short. The editors introduce the collection as a means to give us “a fuller, truer picture of the complexities of life in the South,” but fail to explore the ways in which this picture reshaped the power relations in the region and not just the “moonlight and magnolias” image that has weighed down the field for so long.