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In this pioneering study of the ways in which the first settlers defined the power, prerogatives, and responsibilities of the sexes, one of our most incisive historians opens a window onto the world of Colonial America. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary documents, Mary Beth Norton tells the story of the Pinion clan, whose two-generation record of theft, adultery, and infanticide may have made them our first dysfunctional family. She reopens the case of Mistress Ann Hibbens, whose church excommunicated her for arguing that God had told husbands to listen to their wives. And here is the enigma of Thomas, or Thomasine Hall, who lived comfortably as both a man and a woman in 17th century Virginia. Wonderfully erudite and vastly readable, Founding Mothers & Fathers reveals both the philosophical assumptions and intimate domestic arrangements of our colonial ancestors in all their rigor, strangeness, and unruly passion.
"An important, imaginative book. Norton destroys our nostalgic image of a 'golden age' of family life and re-creates a more complex past whose assumptions and anxieties are still with us."--Raleigh News and Observer
"An important, imaginative book. Norton destroys our nostalgic image of a 'golden age' of family life and re-creates a more complex past whose assumptions and anxieties are still with us."--Raleigh News and Observer
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Review:
Founding Mothers & Fathers is a scholarly study of the responsibilities and rewards New World colonists assigned to adults solely on the basis of gender. Historian Mary Beth Norton asserts that a changing world-view caused the limited power wielded by a handful of early colonial women to trickle away by the time the American Constitution was framed. Since nearly every moment of daily life was subject to intense scrutiny by the entire community, the court records and other public documents Norton diligently combed to make her case are anything but dull, and the offenses and punishments meted out speak loudly to the issues of gendered power.
About the Author:
Crystallizing the inflexibility of gender roles in the American colonies is the tale of a servant known as Thomasine or Thomas Hall, alternately. Raised for two decades as a girl, Hall later switched several times between the clothes and roles of a man and those of a woman. Although outraged townswomen repeatedly assured colonial authorities that Hall was physically male, his feminine mannerisms and skill with a needle and thread so unnerved one regional commander that he demanded Hall "be putt in weomans apparell." Other stories include that of the ne'er-do-well Pinion family, who brawled through two generations of theft, adultery, and domestic squabbles in New England, and a man and woman brought up before a Virginia tribunal accused of "a great bussleling and juggling of the bed" judged unseemly in an unmarried couple. Founding Mothers & Fathers offers a full-bellied, incisive view of a developing social hierarchy and the slim margin of power that women held and lost within it. --Francesca Coltrera
Mary Beth Norton is Mary Donlon Alger, a professor of American history at Cornell University. She is the author of The British-Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in England, 1774–1789 (1972); Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (1980); Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (1996), which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and (with five others) A People and a Nation (6th ed., 2001). She has also edited several works on women’s history and served as the general editor of The AHA Guide to Historical Literature (3rd ed., 1995).
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- PublisherVintage
- Publication date1997
- ISBN 10 0679749772
- ISBN 13 9780679749776
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages512
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Book Description Softcover. Condition: New. 0. In this pioneering study of the ways in which the first settlers defined the power, prerogatives, and responsibilities of the sexes, one of our most incisive historians opens a window onto the world of Colonial America. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary documents, Mary Beth Norton tells the story of the Pinion clan, whose two-generation record of theft, adultery, and infanticide may have made them our first dysfunctional family. She reopens the case of Mistress Ann Hibbens, whose church excommunicated her for arguing that God had told husbands to listen to their wives. And here is the enigma of Thomas, or Thomasine Hall, who lived comfortably as both a man and a woman in 17th century Virginia. Wonderfully erudite and vastly readable, Founding Mothers & Fathers reveals both the philosophical assumptions and intimate domestic arrangements of our colonial ancestors in all their rigor, strangeness, and unruly passion."An important, imaginative book. Norton destroys our nostalgic image of a 'golden age' of family life and re-creates a more complex past whose assumptions and anxieties are still with us."--Raleigh News and Observer. Seller Inventory # DADAX0679749772
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