This is a pretty weak sauce essay collection that touches on earnest insight, but always pulls back to a central, and boring conceit.
It’s hard to tell who the audience is for this book. Helen Ellis, author of the short collection American Housewife, repeatedly discusses her identity of Southern Lady, though this belies her status as rich white woman in New York, even if she does admit to it.
Southern Ladiness is laden with off-hand charm of course. Imagine a whole book whose central thesis is “Bless their heart” and then seeded through numerous different stories illustrating this.
So who is the audience here? Southern ladies who want to nod approvingly at the observations they already know about the world? Northern ladies who might or might not know a Southern Lady in their life?
Who knows? What’s annoying about all of this is twofold. First, I grew up in the South and still live there and have spent my life around Southern ladies and read dozens of books doing the same. I know from all of this that Southern Ladies are entirely capable of being the absolute worst, selfish, obnoxious, and regressive garbage people in the world. These are Trump voters.
But I also know that they are capable of being bastions of decency in a sea of filth. And they are capable of everything in between. But this book doesn’t tap into that range, that diversity, and in some cases that paradox. It’s buttery charm that makes someone like Paula Dean so likeable, without exploring how this also allows her to be evil.
Normally, I wouldn’t care that much. Except: Helen Ellis does know all this. She also writes numerous small moments in this already small collection that suggests she does get it. And so a knowing unwillingness to engage with those other issues makes this maybe more offensive, but certainly doesn’t let it off the hook for choosing not to discuss it.
(PHoto: https://www.amazon.com/Southern-Lady-Code-Helen-Ellis/dp/0385543891/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1L60TCT9ES10A&keywords=southern+lady+code&qid=1573130613&sprefix=southern+la%2Caps%2C285&sr=8-1)