Women's Voices, Women's Lives: Documents in Early American HistoryCarol Berkin, Leslie Horowitz Containing A Wealth Of primary sources, this reader offers a rich sampling of women's experiences in colonial America. Carol Berkin and Leslie Horowitz gather together a broad spectrum of documents that crosscuts race, class, and region, presenting the voices of African American, European, and Native American women, the rich and poor, and women in the south, the middle colonies, and New England. The editors draw on diaries, letters, essays, court documents, sermons, wills, plantation records, newspapers, fiction, and advice manuals to reconstruct women's lives and roles during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In addition to sources that convey women's experiences in their own words, the work includes prescriptive and proscriptive materials, most written by men, to further illuminate women's behavior and attitudes. The book is divided into six thematic chapters: sex and reproduction, marriage and family, women's work, religion, politics and the law, and a new gender ideology. Introductory essays by the editors place each section within historical, cultural, and social context, and each source is annotated with information about the document's author and insightful interpretation of its typicality or its special circumstances. This enriching collection fills a major gap in the study of early American women, and it is sure to stimulate further discussions about both the common and diverse aspects of their lives. |
Contents
Introduction | 3 |
CHAPTER TWO Marriage and Family | 48 |
CHAPTER THREE Womens Work | 93 |
Copyright | |
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Women's Voices, Women's Lives: Documents in Early American History Carol Berkin,Leslie Horowitz No preview available - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
Abigail Adams aforesaid African American answer bastard child Benjamin Rush birth body born Boston Brom and Bett brother called childbirth Christianity church colonial society colonial women colonists confession Cotton Mather County Court daughter dear death Deborah Gannett Diary documents duties eighteenth century elite Elizabeth England English excerpted father fear female friends gender give Goodwife hath husband Indian women John Adams John Ashley Judith Sargent Murray labor land of Virginny letter live Lord male Margaret Preston marriage married Mary Mary Dyer Massachusetts master meeting Mercy Otis Warren mother Negro parents Paul Carter person petition petitioner Phillis Wheatley plantations political pounds present Quaker QUEST Records religious role Salem Sarah servants sexual shee slave social things tion tribes University Press unto Virginia white women widow wife William wives woman York Weekly Journal young ladies