![]() ![]() In Behind the Scenes, labor is not only about exploitation and the accumulation of profits, it is, more importantly, about a specific black woman's production and circulation of social value. On the basis of these work relations, moreover, Keckley claimed public legitimacy and authority for herself. ![]() Fastidiously interweaving her skilled dressmaking as a slave and a freedwoman with the meanings and affectivity this work generated, Kec kley insisted on the potential for intimacy and loyalty between white and black women. Her interracial relationships with elite, white women clients, such as First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, were a particular source of pride. Although the "labor of a lifetime had brought nothing in a pecuniary way," she asserted, it had made her "rich in friendships, and," she added, "friends are a recompense for all the woes of the darkest pages of life."' The author was a popular dressmaker, and according to her, work was not simply about the material conditions of production but, more importantly, about the emotions of respect and attachment the production process entailed. ![]() ![]() When Elizabeth Keckley concluded her 1868 autobiography, Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, her parting words made clear to her readers what she had emphasized throughout: she defined success in the form of personal relationships rather than material wealth. ![]()
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