As I constructed this, my newest book, I wove my way through the handwritten letters of my great-grandmother, my grandmother and my grandmother, whose lives span the last half of the nineteenth century through the last years of the twentieth.
I soon realized that my narrative would not only quote these letters and supply the historical context. It would also depend on my ability to read between the lines.
Decorum and denial united to suppress some vital elements of personal and historical truth for these three women. My great-grandmother Sallie (for whom I am named) and my grandmother Helena could never mention or even refer obliquely to the facts of their femaleness, the crises of puberty, childbirth and weaning, the eternal questions about the meaning of sex.
This blanking out is, in my mind, related to the blanking out of inconvenient historical facts: slavery, for Sallie, the African-Americans slaves who waited on the family in their Richmond house and on their two plantations were devoted servants, members of the white family; for Helena, the descendants of these slaves were grotesques, nearly useless as helpers because of their ignorance and what she would have called their shiftlessness; for my mother, in the era of integration, these essential figures were not mentioned at all.
So the heart and soul of my book lies in the vibrant silences I heard between the lines, silences that translated themselves into words as I wrote. The Blue Box does not share the soft glow that softens the details of so many family histories; its light approaches a glare. For, when I chose to write about upper-white women in Virginia, I knew I was making a choice in many ways alien for me; I have always been more interested in the lives of the people, largely women, who according to our culture do not count.
Sallie, Helena and especially my mother Mary believed devoutly that they did count, in their families, and in their communities. Perhaps they could only maintain the stance of privilege by ignoring much of what was happening around them during decades of violence and injustice; perhaps denial seemed worth it or even essential to their social survival.
Now I invite my readers to read what I found between the lines, where I believe the truth exists.
— Sallie Bingham, July 2014
Praise for The Blue Box:
The Blue Box is more than a memoir; it’s an historical account of the legacies, heritages and travails of three generations of Southern women. Contemporary readers may be unable to identify with the attitudes and mores of the women in Bingham’s book (and may, at times, find those beliefs uncomfortable), but in the women’s minds, they were obeying a long-standing system that had been effective for centuries. While the “system” was all they knew, they attempted rebellion through the written word. They were resilient, strong and keenly protective of their families, yet they took liberties prohibited for their class at that time – writing essays and opinions outside the norm. Bingham has woven these words into an accurate portrayal of historical events that encumbered many women of this time and presented them to us in the living language of complex and exquisitely-preserved letters. Sallie Bingham’s meticulous and comprehensive work gives us a glimpse into another world – previously frozen in a “cornflower blue” time capsule.
“Fiction-writer Bingham (Mending, 2011) made waves in her earlier family memoir, Passion and Prejudice (1989). Here she explores the lives and letters of three previous generations of women in less tell-all mode than tribute. She makes wonderful use of primary sources to piece together the lives of her great-grandmother Sallie, born during the Civil War in Virginia; Sallie’s daughter, Helena, who raised numerous daughters herself; and, finally, Mary, whose Radcliffe education and long courtship reflect the changing times of the 1920s. Although this chronicle gets weighed down in detail, Bingham’s fine sentences move the reader along. It is her admiration for the writing of her forebears—and the link that a love of letters provides between generations—that drives this tribute. She also takes time to stress the effects of southern patriarchy on these women, and it’s interesting to see the progression out of those constraints after several long generations. Bingham also appropriately acknowledges the racial and class injustices that these privileged, white women represent or, more likely, espoused. Her mindfulness is further proof of that progress.”
“In the modern world of emails, Skype and a decided lack of handwritten correspondence, Bingham’s box of documents traverses time, offering insights into a world of women who knew their own minds long before the word feminist was ever considered.”
“…replete with domestic detail and provides insight into what hard work it was to be a Southern belle. The author’s family history is easy to read but not frivolous. Issues of race, privilege, and class arise, as does the ugly topic of money (or lack thereof) in this colorful snapshot of Bingham’s family. Fans of women’s history and devotees of Southern family sagas will enjoy taking this detour into nonfiction territory.”
“What if we all opened these hidden ‘blue boxes,’ as Bingham has so expertly done, and read women’s stories not as trivialities but as vital pieces of our country’s history?”
“Sallie Bingham’s newest book, The Blue Box: Three Lives in Letters… is a treasure in every respect.”
– Bonnie Lee Black, author of How to Make an African Quilt
Read more of Sallie’s writing on The Blue Box in her blog.
Listen to Sallie’s talk on The Blue Box at the Filson Historical Society.
3.5 rating based on 22 ratings (all editions)
ISBN-10: 1936747782
ISBN-13: 9781936747788
Goodreads: 18528320
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Perhaps the children of those times really were “to be seen and not heard”. Now …it doesn’t matter. To be a sensitive and alert child perhaps, one both precocious and very ahead of her time is the essence of ones being and the birth of their consciousness.
As a child, I was always a bit bemused by adults…especially the ones who took themselves very seriously. I rather liked the idea of creating people. I was somewhat confused by adults. My paternal grandmother was the editor of a newspaper in a small town in Mississippi . I overheard some saying that if she had been a man, then she may have been the governor of that state. I remember thinking about how unfair that happened to be. I did not understand why the governor had to be a man.