Though the Southern belle tried her best to do her finest with what she had, there was a tremendous amount of struggle in her everyday life. The Southern culture was strongly based on a patriarchal society, in which white men were mainly in charge. This entire foundation of their hierarchy was founded of class, race, and gender. Women were only considered to be above the slave class. The ongoing war called many well-abled men to the battlefields leaving a multitude of women in charge of running large a plantation in desperate times. These women dealt with starving families, insubordinate slaves, and with Federal soldiers, who raided what little food that was available. In Giselle Roberts book, The Confederate Belle, she describes the conditions
