In Colonial America, the lives of white immigrant, black slave, and American Indian women intersected. Economic, religious, social, and political forces all combined to induce and promote European colonization and the growth of slavery and the slave trade during this period. This volume provides the essential overview of American women's lives in the seventeenth century, as the dominant European settlers established their patriarchy. Women were essential to the existence of a new patriarchal society, most importantly because they were necessary for its reproduction. In addition to their roles as wives and mothers, Colonial women took care of the house and household by cooking, preserving food, sewing, spinning, tending gardens, taking care of sick or injured members of the household, and many other tasks. Students and general readers will learn about women's roles in the family, women and the law, women and immigration, women's work, women and religion, women and war, and women and education. literature, and recreation. The narrative chapters in this volume focus on women, particularly white women, within the eastern region of the current United States, the site of the first colonies. Chapter 1 discusses women's roles within the family and household and how women's experiences in the various colonies differed. Chapter 2 considers women and the law and roles in courts and as victims of crime. Chapter 3 looks at women and immigration—those who came with families or as servants or slaves. Women's work is the subject of Chapter 4. The focus is work within the home, preparing food, sewing, taking care of children, and making household goods, or as businesswomen or midwives. Women and religion are discussed in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 examines women's role in war. Women's education is one focus of Chapter 7. Few Colonial women could read but most women did receive an education in the arts of housewifery. Chapter 7 also looks at women's contributions to literature and their leisure time. Few women were free to pursue literary endeavors, but many expressed their creativity through handiwork. A chronology, selected bibliography, and historical illustrations accompany the text.

Tells the fascinating stories of the myriad women who shaped the early modern North American world from the colonial era through the first years of the Republic Women in Early America, edited by Thomas A. Foster, goes beyond the familiar stories of Pocahontas or Abigail Adams, recovering the lives and experiences of lesser-known women—both ordinary and elite, enslaved and free, Indigenous and immigrant—who lived and worked in not only British mainland America, but also New Spain, New France, New Netherlands, and the West Indies. In these essays we learn about the conditions that women faced during the Salem witchcraft panic and the Spanish Inquisition in New Mexico; as indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland; caught up between warring British and Native Americans; as traders in New Netherlands and Detroit; as slave owners in Jamaica; as Loyalist women during the American Revolution; enslaved in the President’s house; and as students and educators inspired by the air of equality in the young nation. Foster showcases the latest research of junior and senior historians, drawing from recent scholarship informed by women’s and gender history—feminist theory, gender theory, new cultural history, social history, and literary criticism. Collectively, these essays address the need for scholarship on women’s lives and experiences. Women in Early America heeds the call of feminist scholars to not merely reproduce male-centered narratives, “add women, and stir,” but to rethink master narratives themselves so that we may better understand how women and men created and developed our historical past.

This book offers a look at how the lives of women changed in the era when the United States emerged. Spanning the broad spectrum of Colonial-era life, Women's Roles in Eighteenth-Century America is a revealing exploration of how 18-century American women of various races, classes, and religions were affected by conditions of the times—war, slavery, religious awakenings, political change, perceptions about gender—as well as how they influenced the world around them. Women's Roles in Eighteenth-Century America covers the area of North America that became the United States and follows the transformation of the British colonies into a new nation. The book is organized thematically to examine marriage and the family, the law, work, travel, war, religion, and education and the arts. Each chapter combines current research and primary sources to offer authoritative portraits of real lives of the everyday women during this pivotal early era in our history.

Much like A Midwife's Tale and The Unredeemed Captive, this novel is about power relationships in early American society, religion, and politics--with insights into the initial development and operation of government, the maintenance of social order, and the experiences of individual men and women.

Focusing on the experience of English "huswives" and indentured servants, she reveals how their actions and expectations, as well as their relationships with women of other races and cultures, were shaped by Old World perceptions of woman's appropriate role.

Lady Alice Le Strange of Hunstanton in Norfolk kept a continuous series of household accounts from 1610-1654. Jane Whittle and Elizabeth Griffiths have used the Le Stranges' rich archive to reconstruct the material aspects of family life. This involves looking not only at purchases, but also at home production and gifts; and not only at the luxurious, but at the everyday consumption of food and medical care. Consumption is viewed not just as a set of objects owned, but as a process involving household management, acquisition and appropriation, a process that created and reinforced social links with craftsmen, servants, labourers, and the local community. It is argued that the county gentry provide a missing link in histories of consumption: connecting the fashions of London and the royal court, with those of middling strata of rural England. Recent writing has focused upon the transformation of consumption patterns in the eighteenth century. Here the earlier context is illuminated and, instead of tradition and stability, we find constant change and innovation. Issues of gender permeate the study. Consumption is often viewed as a female activity and the book looks in detail at who managed the provisioning, purchases, and work within the household, how spending on sons and daughters differed, and whether men and women attached different cultural values to household goods. This single household's economy provides a window into some of most significant cultural and economic issues of early modern England: innovations in trade, retail and production, the basis of gentry power, social relations in the countryside, and the gendering of family life.

What does American history look like with women at the center of the story? From Pocahantas to military women serving in the Iraqi war, this Very Short Introduction chronicles the contributions that women have made to the American experience from a multicultural perspective that emphasizes how gender shapes women's--and men's--lives.