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Mary Beth Norton’s The Evolution of White Women’s Experience in Early America analyzes the inconsistencies in the status of colonial women according to studies up to the early 20th century and studies of the late 20th century and early 21st century. According to Norton, the dominating theme of colonial women’s history for over fifty years was that these women were better off compared to English women and women of the 19th century: “The high sex ratio also gave women crucial bargaining power in the marriage market, since their productive contributions were vital to the survival of colonial households” (Norton, 593). However, Norton later explains that this picture of women fails to tell the full story of how women were portrayed in colonial America.
Norton points out that the discussion around colonial women needs to be reconstructed in order to properly and accurately address the decline in status of the White, American woman. Three periods of time – the first initial settling (1620-1650), a period of transition (1650-1670), and the American Revolution era (1750-1815)– deeply affected the changing status of American women through a growing emphasis on family and community, altering ideas on society and polity.
In her post, Erin Wroe writes that “across the Atlantic, women’s roles were either restricted or expanded depending on their location. What can be said is women contributed to the growth of their societies, and they set an example for how women could impact their environment despite their place” (Wroe, Not Just Dainty Ladies). This reminds me of Norton’s explanation that the implementation of family and community values in American culture over time deeply impacted the role of women in societal functions. Woe’s argument clearly resonates with Norton’s statement in that Wroe explains that women contributed to social growth by setting an example for the daily acts of women from colonial America into the 19th century. I personally do believe that as time progressed, so did the status and roles of women, as seen with the first migration in the 15th century, the transition from Europe to a new hemisphere, and the war for independence of the 18th and 19th centuries. The changing in time and society contributed to the eventual restriction of American women’s rights throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.