Stratford Hall and Agreeing with Feminists

Yesterday I went with a group of students to Stratford Hall, the birthplace of Robert E. Lee. There were four vans that went on this particular group, one van per seminar group. I was expecting to ride along and let the instructor do the driving. But I got asked last minute to drive for one of them. The reason? She (her name is Andrea) had been remiss in doing her reading for the discussion she was supposed to lead that day. Why? She had gotten to the point of no return in the latest Harry Potter book, and had stayed up to finish it! Amazing how even grown adults (I think she's in her thirties) get sucked into the rage. Nevertheless, we had some interesting conversation on the way up. Although Andrea didn't characterize herself as such, it's safe to say she's a strong feminist. We talked about everything from my thesis (of which she was very jealous) to Phantom of the Opera to Britney Spears. In her past life she worked eighty hours a week in Milwaukee. One of her jobs was an usher at a performing arts center there, and Phantom came to town for the summer. So she ended up hearing the show numerous times, and all the ushers had it memorized. Both of us agreed that the show was very dark. She added a comment about it promoting men's power over women, or some such comment only to be expected given her perspective. Yet I couldn't disagree with her. Can someone who is familiar with the show suggest it promotes something other than female submission to a dominating--and male--power?
A student played his ipod through the stereo system on the way, and I had the "pleasure" of listening to a wide variety of music that I am not accustomed to hearing. Ever heard of the hamsterdams? They seem to be a copycat of the Chipmunks, but with more of a rock flair. Quite amusing, if not disturbing. And then Britney Spears came on. Andrea said how much she loved Britney because of the fodder it provides her with, I suppose to show how much popular culture objectifies women. The music was basically promoting something close to abuse. (I won't go into detail.) Andrea made the comment about how 25 percent of teenage girls have been in an abusive relationship, and how you know something is wrong when Britney Spears makes abuse sound attractive. Again, I couldn't disagree with her. It's interesting how popular culture is despised by people coming from such different perspectives.
We finally got to Stratford, and had a nice tour of the building. It's extremely large, about 10,000 square feet. A large brick building, it was shaped like an "H." It had two "widow's peaks" on it, where the inhabitants could sleep or pace when the weather was nice. The interior was set up to look like what it was in the eighteenth century, actually prior to Robert's birth. The wealth of this plantation family was very evident, although ironically Robert's father made poor investments and actually spent some time in debtor's prison. I especially appreciated getting a better idea of what an eighteenth century plantation house looked like, as the subject of my thesis was a plantaton mistress from the same time period. After the tour we had a chance to see the grounds and the outbuildings. One amusing thing pointed out to us by the instructors (not by the tour guides!) there were the reconstructed slave quarters, built in the 1930s or later. They were palatial in nature, built with brick, which would have been extremely expensive. As such they were historically inaccurate. There's no way that the slaves would have had such nice accomodations. This inaccuracy might be the result of some nostalgic southerners in the 1930s wanting people to remember slavery as a more benign institution than it actually was. Or it might have simply been overzealous caretakers wanting to make the outbuildings as majestic as the house. Either way, it's rather deceptive.