Steven M. Stowe examines three types of ritual central to the elite planter culture of the pre-Civil War South: the affair of honor, courtship, and coming of age. Using these rituals as forman maps of Southern culture, Stowe shows how each embodies themes of authority, sexuality, and kinship, and he explores the full significance of such events as duels, cotillions, and the departure of a young person for school. In private lives these social rituals...