Paula Deen, the brash new Southern ideal

LYDIA SHERMAN writes:

In the past, Southern ladies were always looked to as an example of propriety, hospitality, and femininity. It is sad to see them losing their culture. It was a culture that led the way in manners and religion. In the years that the South was referred to as “The Bible Belt,” Southern women led in the teaching of modesty in clothing and behavior to Christian women. It was disappointing to hear Paula Deen speak. On one of her shows, she announced: ” I’m Paula Deen. Y’all want some fried chicken and beer?” On another, she related that she had divorced her first husband, followed by a huge laugh. Perhaps she does not know the enormity of what she represents to the rest of the country. In time of war, it was the Southern women who saved their homes by offering their gentle hospitality to soldiers who might have otherwise burned their property. It was those quiet, gentle, southern women that faithfully taught their children Bible lessons while the men were away. Southern women have always had a strength and determination, and when they use it to preserve the family, and adhere to the principles of the Scriptures, they reach their true glory. The south will never “rise again” until that sweetness and modesty is restored in its women. We recently had a visitor from Louisiana, an elderly man, who said, “You need to stop saying that the western states are a mission field. It is that way in the South, now.”

                                    — Comments —

Brandon writes:

Women who put themselves forward are not real women. Someone who puts chemicals in her hair is trying to imitate the cesspool of Hollywood. She’s presenting a false image of TRUE womanhood, of which there are thousands of in this country. But God NEVER leaves himself without TRUE witnesses of the male and female genders in the earth. Using false images and examples of women like her and saying, “Oh! woe is me! Where are all the old time Southern women of yesteryear!?” No offence meant toward you. Have you ever heard of these folks? The lady, Debi Pearl, has written a book called Created to Be His Helpmeet, which has spread like wildfire across the country. Yes, they have their ungodly, leftwing feminazi detractors, but as I sometimes say, to hell with them and the horse they rode in on. Who cares what they have to say?

They are embodiments of the false female Jezebel, which has the present day government and culture by the throat.

Laura writes:

I guess you believe Jeremiah was wasting his time.

There are some excellent sites on the Internet that present genuine femininity, including Home Living, Ladies Against Feminism, A Wise Woman Builds Her Home, Breathing Grace, and Domestic Felicity. I also highly recommend Traditional Marriage and Full of Grace, Seasoned with Salt.

But I can’t just leave disturbing cultural icons like Paula Deen alone. Too many people I care about are influenced by them.

Brandon replies:

Yes, I understand. Jeremiah had the same problem with the women of Israel in his day. Read Chapter 44 if you haven’t already, particularly vs 15-19 where as usual when the woman gets into error, she blames her husband; “Well, you let me do it!” So Jeremiah had to deal with the feminazi’s too. Yes, the warning must be sounded without equivocation, but then the person must be let go to suffer the consequences of his or her own behavior if they won’t heed the warning. They can’t be forced into understanding. Eyes can only be opened by God, that’s why hard times are upon this country to weed out the goats from among the sheep.

Laura writes:

I agree.

Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:

Thank you for invoking the Southern Woman. I am sending a photograph showing the ladies of the Bertonneau family. The Bertonneaus are “Créoles,” descendants of “Les gens de couleur libres,” the mixed race people, mostly shopkeepers, who fled Haiti when General Dessalines inaugurated that nation with a slaughter of whites and demi-whites; the Bertonneaus settled in New Orleans and were there to help Colonel Jackson fight the British in 1814. “Les gens” are – or were – French speaking, largely Catholic, and the real bearers of the urban society peculiar to the “French Quarter” in New Orleans. The history of “Les gens” is complicated: Not part of black society (never enslaved) yet never part of white society either, but extremely civilized and industrious. My great grandfather Albert and his elder brother Arnold fought as officers in the Civil War, first in the Second Louisiana Native Guards (Confederate Colored Infantry) and then, being the only Confederate soldiers permitted to do so, under Union Colors in Le corps d’Afrique, the first Yankee “Colored” unit. The Bertonneau men were active in politics. In 1864, urging the universal franchise, Arnold Bertonneau made a speech to the Massachusetts Legislature that still has currency. But in the late 1890s, the Bertonneaus moved almost en masse to California, where they settled in Pasadena and adjacent areas of Los Angeles. 

My father’s father Gaston died of influenza in 1918; that was thirty-six years before I was born. My paternal grandparent was therefore my father’s mother, Nellie (née Gayaut) Bertonneau, whose remarried surname was Hamilton. In addition to Nellie, Nellie’s younger sister Hermanie Gayaut was an important presence. Although I grew up in Los Angeles and although on my mother’s side I am of Swedish extraction, the Créole heritage was definitely the strongest influence on my sense of a family context. Nellie and Hermanie were distinctly French, distinctly Catholic, and distinctly Southern. A family custom maintained both by Nellie and Hermanie (and by Hermanie for a number of years after Nellie’s death in 1966) was the Sunday Dinner, usually based on gallons of filay gumbo with seafood served over “dirty rice” (brown rice). There was also stuffed eggplant, hushpuppies, fried chicken, and other Southern and Louisianan dishes. There was wine, always red wine, a sip of which, diluted, even the children got to drink. 

I learned how to make filay gumbo from my Aunt Hermanie; so did my older brother Dan. It remains the custom when I visit him or he visits me that the host makes gumbo. 

Nellie, whose life had been hard (widowed with three children before she was thirty), tended to be reserved in her humor but obviously had great love for her children and grandchildren. Hermanie, the younger of the two and childless, was, without any competition with Nellie, every Bertonneau grandchild’s adoptive grandmother. It was Hermanie who drank the extra glass of wine and who laughed at jokes and generally insured that the good times should roll. 

These women are different in phenotype from the usual image of the Southern Woman, and they are Catholic rather than Protestant, but they belong to the general category. In my memory they were among the most civilized women I have known.

Lisa writes:

In order to HAVE a culture, there must have been some isolation at one point to allow the culture to develop. This is as true for wine, cheese, or yogurt, as it is for southern, or any other, culture.

The Southern Lady has been “Oprahfied.” With the pouring in of alien or Hollywood “culture,” how can an isolated art form in civilization continue to be propagated?

Here in rural America, longtime residents bemoan the sad loss of the old way of life and the abandoning of the area by their children and grandchildren. There was talk of community financial and economic rewards and incentives “if the young folks would just come back to” the agrarian-based lives so dear to their grandparents. It is amazing that none of the people in the community connected the consolidation of the small neighborhood schools into county-wide institutions with sports and extracurricular programs to carry the children even farther from their homes and families, so that by the time the children were adults they considered it normal to be AWAY from their families and communities.

The Paula Deens have always been here, but they were not held up as paragons of success and acceptibility and exploited as such; with no incentive to behave so, the behavior wasn’t magnified.

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