White Women in Early America


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This article was an interesting take on the lives of women in early america. The debate between if there was truly a golden age for women or not is very fascinating. I particularly liked the discussion on the set up of family and how it carried over to early America. The traditional religious English family believed the father to the head of the house and in charge of all decisions. The mother was under the father and had to defer to him for any real decisions and she was followed by the children and servants. However, this English ideal did not always translate over exactly in the colonies. I think it is interesting that in Chesapeake and New England had such different outcomes on the traditional family. New England had lower death rates, closer man to woman ratios, and more favorable conditions and were therefore, able to keep close to the English ideal of family. Chesapeake had opposite conditions and therefore had different family dynamics. The woman often married twice and men had less control and say over their mixed families (Norton 597-598). This reminded me of many different sections of Atlantic History. There was not always one way of doing things, every colony had their own experience and unique set up depending on the situations they were dealing with. This goes along with what warmturtletank says in their post about colony woman being able to be defined by a wider range. Not all the women had the same experiences because not all colonies treated women the same, there is no one way to define colony women.

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