| Description |
1 online resource (xii, 354 pages) |
| Contents |
Part I : Race, ethnicity, and gender -- Gender and the longhouse : Iroquois women in a changing culture / Gretchen L. Green -- Women of the New France noblesse / Jan V. Noel -- Princesses, wives, and wenches : White perceptions of Southeastern Indian women in 1770 / Eirlys M. Barker -- Freedom among African women servants and slaves in the seventeenth-century British colonies / Lillian Ashcraft-Eason -- Part II : Religion -- "My dear liberty" : Quaker spinsterhood and female autonomy in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania / Karin A. Wulf -- Women, religion, and freedom in New France / Terrence A. Crowley -- Wise virgins and pious mothers : Spiritual community among Baptist women of the Delaware Valley / Janet More Lindman -- Part III : Work and the colonial economy -- "What Providence has brought them to be" : Widows, work, and the print culture of colonial Charleston -- "To have a sufficient maintenance" : Women and the economics of freedom in frontier Pennsylvania, 1750-1800 / Judith A. Ridner -- Women and economic freedom in the North Carolina backcountry / Johanna Miller Lewis -- Part IV : Marriage and the family -- "Whers gone to she knows not" : Desertion and widowhood in early Pennsylvania / Merril D. Smith -- The marriage metaphor in seventeenth-century Massachusetts / Elizabeth Dale -- "If widow, both housewife and husband may be" : Widows' testamentary freedom in colonial Massachusetts and Maryland / Vivian Bruce Conger -- Part V : Society and the courts -- Women of "No particular home" : Town leaders and female transients in Rhode Island, 1750-1800 / Ruth Wallis Herndon -- The free women of Charles Parish, York County, Virginia, 1630-1740 / Julie Richter -- Mitigating inequality : Women and justice in colonial New York / Deborah A. Rosen |
| Summary |
Annotation It is virtually impossible to generalize about the degree to which women in early America were free. What, if anything, did enslaved black women in the South have in common with powerful female leaders in Iroquois society? Were female tavern keepers in the backcountry of North Carolina any more free than nuns and sisters in New France religious orders? Were the restrictions placed on widows and abandoned wives at all comparable to those experienced by autonomous women or spinsters? Bringing to light the enormous diversity of women's experience, Women and Freedom in Early America centers variously on European-American, African-American, and Native American women from 1400 to 1800. Spanning almost half a millenium, the book ranges the colonial terrain, from New France and the Iroquois Nations down through the mainland British-American colonies. By drawing on a wide array of sources, including church and court records, correspondence, journals, poetry, and newspapers, these essays examine Puritan political writings, white perceptions of Indian women, Quaker spinsterhood, and African and Iroquois mythology, among many other topics |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 331-346) and index |
| Notes |
English |
|
Print version record |
| Subject |
Women -- United States -- History
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Women -- history
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SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Women's Studies.
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Women
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| SUBJECT |
United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140131
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| Subject |
United States
|
| Genre/Form |
History
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| Author |
Eldridge, Larry D.
|
| ISBN |
0585364516 |
|
9780585364513 |
|
0814721931 |
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9780814721933 |
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0814721982 |
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9780814721988 |
|
