Caroline Gilman's 1852 work provides a fictionalized account of Southern daily life. Although fictional, the work provides fascinating insight into family life in the antebellum South, including slavery, education, religion, and courtship rituals.

Catherine Gilman's 1834 work provides a picture of domestic life and manners in New England. Claiming to take as her source the mingled results of observation and experience, Gilman's work provides insight into the life of a homemaker in nineteenth-century New England and is the precursor to her later Recollections of a Southern Matron. Taken as a pair, the two works provide insight into the regional differences in domestic economy between the North and the South in antebellum America.