Considering fictional characters and autobiographical reflections of female experience, Minrose C. Gwin explores the volatile, often violent connection between black and white woman of the Old South. She shows that their relationship in American literature offers a paradigm of the Southern racial experience-its antipathy and guilt on the one hand, its very real bonding through common suffering on the other. Gwin's study encompasses a wide range of books, including abolitionist and pro slavery fiction of the mid-nineteenth century, women's slave narratives and journals, and modern fictional treatments of Southern slavery by Faulkner, Cather, and Margaret Walker. She analyzes such diverse works as Mary Chestnut's Civil War and Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Her pioneering interp4etations enable us to understand the Southern past more fully, to identify new critical relationships between works of literature, and to discern fresh implications of female experience. Bibliography and Index