Founding Mothers & Fathers

Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society

Author: Mary Beth Norton
ISBN: 9780679749776

Focusing on the first half-century of English settlement - approximately 1620 to 1670 - Mary Beth Norton looks not only at what colonists actually did but also at the philosophical basis for what they thought they were doing. She weaves theory and reality into a tapestry that reveals colonial life as more varied than we have supposed. She draws our attention to all early dysfunctional family extending over several generations and colonies. The basic worldview of this early period, Norton demonstrates, envisaged family, society, and state as similar institutions. She shows us how, because of that familial analogy, women who wielded power in the household could also wield surprising authority outside the home. We see, for example, Mistress Margaret Brent given authority as attorney for Lord Baltimore, Maryland's Proprietor, and Mistress Anne Hutchinson, who sought and assumed religious authority, causing the greatest political crisis in Massachusetts Bay. Norton also describes the Americ

Publisher: Vintage Books
Publish Date: 1997

Subjects: History / United States / Colonial Period (1600-1775), Social Science / Women's Studies, Social Science / Gender Studies

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Women's Center (Location: History)