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. |
What people are saying - Write a review
We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.
Contents
| 1 | |
| 15 | |
Women and the Litigated Economy | 69 |
The Limits of a Puritan Remedy | 105 |
The EighteenthCentury Double Standard | 157 |
The Problematics of Womans Word | 231 |
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 colonial period confessed Conn Connecticut Connecticut Colony convicted courtroom Crimes and Misdemeanors criminal cruelty culture decades defendants Deposition desertion granted divorce petitions early New England Eaton economic eighteenth eighteenth-century Elizabeth English father female fornication gender grand jurors 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 º º out-of-wedlock plaintiffs plea pleading premarital probate punishment Puritan rape Recs residents Samuel Sarah sentence seventeenth seventeenth-century single women spouses sued Superior Court Theophilus Eaton Thomas tion town trial whipping widows wife William William Samuel Johnson Windham County wives woman writ York young
Bibliographic information
| Title | Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789 Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press |
| Author | Cornelia Hughes Dayton |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | UNC Press Books, 2012 |
| ISBN | 0807838241, 9780807838242 |
| Length | 400 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / United States / Colonial Period (1600-1775) Law / Legal History Social Science / Women's Studies |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |