Kierner Response

Dr. Kierner’s Scandal at Bizarre is an excellent example of mircohistory because it uses the life of Nancy Randolph to explore the issues of gender, race, and class in colonial and post-revolutionary America. Perhaps more importantly Kierner highlights how these lenses overlapped and how individuals developed and exercised agency in a constrictive and prejudiced slave owning patriarchy. To accomplish this Kierner shifts between the narrative of Nancy’s life and society at large.  Scandal at Bizarre uses newspapers, diaries, personal letters to illustrate how marginalized group, such as African slaves and poor whites used language in the form of gossip to maintain a modicum of power in an otherwise oppressive social system. Similarly, Kierner shows how gendered constructs intersect with language to form the elusive, yet rigidly enforced concept of “honor,” what she refers to as “a precious commodity.” (p 36). Indeed the South’s honor society was one built upon the perceptions and performances of its participants. Both men and women were confined by these narratives and expectations and were expected to act accordingly. While the narrative is driven by the role of individuals the story’s inertia is provided by the amorphous fog that is society and its expectations. Indeed even when our heroine Nancy finds earns societal agency she does it through the societal confines of marriage, inherence and personal relations.  In this sense Scandal at Bizarre is quite Foucaulidan.