Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789Women before the Bar is the first study to investigate changing patterns of women's participation in early American courts across a broad range of legal actions--including proceedings related to debt, divorce, illicit sex, rape, and slander. Weaving the stories of individual women together with systematic analysis of gendered litigation patterns, Cornelia Dayton argues that women's relation to the courtroom scene in early New England shifted from one of integration in the mid-seventeenth century to one of marginality by the eve of the Revolution. Using the court records of New Haven, which originally had the most Puritan-dominated legal regime of all the colonies, Dayton argues that Puritanism's insistence on godly behavior and communal modes of disputing initially created unusual opportunities for women's voices to be heard within the legal system. But women's presence in the courts declined significantly over time as Puritan beliefs lost their status as the organizing principles of society, as legal practice began to adhere more closely to English patriarchal models, as the economy became commercialized, and as middle-class families developed an ethic of privacy. By demonstrating that the early eighteenth century was a crucial locus of change in law, economy, and gender ideology, Dayton's findings argue for a reconceptualization of women's status in colonial New England and for a new periodization of women's history. |
Contents
Early New Haven | 18 |
CHAPTER 2 | 42 |
Women and the Litigated Economy | 69 |
Copyright | |
8 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789 Cornelia Hughes Dayton No preview available - 1995 |
Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789 Cornelia Hughes Dayton No preview available - 1995 |
Common terms and phrases
accused adultery American appeared Archives Assts bench caseload century charges child civil colonial period colony's confessed Conn Connecticut Connecticut Colony convicted Court Records courtroom Crimes and Misdemeanors criminal culture decades defendants desertion divorce petitions early New England Eaton economic eighteenth eighteenth-century Elizabeth English father female fornication gender grand jurors granted guilty Hannah Hartford Hartford County Haven Colony Haven County Court History household husband ibid incest infanticide John judges jury justice Lacy transcript Laurel Thatcher Ulrich magistrates male marriage married Mary Massachusetts men's Merriman Neighbors and Strangers NHCC Files NHCR NHSC NHTR out-of-wedlock plaintiffs plea pleading pregnancy premarital probate punishment Puritan rape Recs Samuel Sarah sentence seventeenth seventeenth-century single women social spouses sued Superior Court Theophilus Eaton Thomas tion town trial whipping widows wife William William Samuel Johnson Windham County wives woman writ York young