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    Good Wives

    Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750

    Author Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
    Ebook
    Knopf | Vintage
    On sale Dec 29, 2010 | 336 Pages | 9780307772978
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    This enthralling work of scholarship strips away abstractions to reveal the hidden--and not always stoic--face of the "goodwives" of colonial America. In these pages we encounter the awesome burdens--and the considerable power--of a New England housewife's domestic life and witness her occasional forays into the world of men. We see her borrowing from her neighbors, loving her husband, raising--and, all too often, mourning--her children, and even attaining fame as a heroine of frontier conflicts or notoriety as a murderess. Painstakingly researched, lively with scandal and homely detail, Good Wives is history at its best.

    Part One: Bathsheba
    1. The Ways of Her Household
    2. Deputy Husbands
    3. A Friendly Neighbor
    4. Pretty Gentlewoman

    Part Two: Eve
    5. The Serpent Beguiled Me
    6. Consort
    7. Travail
    8. Mother of All Living

    Part Three: Jael
    9. Blessed Above Women
    10. Viragoes
    11. Captives
    12. Daughters of Zion

    Afterword
    © Stephanie Mitchell

    LAUREL THATCHER ULRICH is the author of numerous works on early American history and women's history, including A Midwife's Tale, which won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in History and became the subject of a PBS documentary film. A former MacArthur Fellow and past President of the American Historical Association, she retired from Harvard University in 2018 as 300th Anniversary University Professor. She now lives in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Her online courses "Tangible Things" and "Women Making History" can be found at HarvardX.

    View titles by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
    "[Ulrich] makes a modern reader understand what it would have been like to have been born female in early New England...a truly remarkable achievement." -- Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University

    A gravestone in northern New England proclaims that a woman was "Eminent for Holiness...Prudence, Sincerity...Meakness...Weanedness From ye World...Publick-Spiritedness ...Faithfulness & Charity."

    "A major addition to our historical understanding of women in colonial New England...a path-breaking depiction of wives and mothers." -- Kathryn Kish Sklar, S.U.N.Y., Binghamton

    About

    This enthralling work of scholarship strips away abstractions to reveal the hidden--and not always stoic--face of the "goodwives" of colonial America. In these pages we encounter the awesome burdens--and the considerable power--of a New England housewife's domestic life and witness her occasional forays into the world of men. We see her borrowing from her neighbors, loving her husband, raising--and, all too often, mourning--her children, and even attaining fame as a heroine of frontier conflicts or notoriety as a murderess. Painstakingly researched, lively with scandal and homely detail, Good Wives is history at its best.

    Table of Contents


    Part One: Bathsheba
    1. The Ways of Her Household
    2. Deputy Husbands
    3. A Friendly Neighbor
    4. Pretty Gentlewoman

    Part Two: Eve
    5. The Serpent Beguiled Me
    6. Consort
    7. Travail
    8. Mother of All Living

    Part Three: Jael
    9. Blessed Above Women
    10. Viragoes
    11. Captives
    12. Daughters of Zion

    Afterword

    Author

    © Stephanie Mitchell

    LAUREL THATCHER ULRICH is the author of numerous works on early American history and women's history, including A Midwife's Tale, which won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in History and became the subject of a PBS documentary film. A former MacArthur Fellow and past President of the American Historical Association, she retired from Harvard University in 2018 as 300th Anniversary University Professor. She now lives in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Her online courses "Tangible Things" and "Women Making History" can be found at HarvardX.

    View titles by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

    Praise

    "[Ulrich] makes a modern reader understand what it would have been like to have been born female in early New England...a truly remarkable achievement." -- Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University

    A gravestone in northern New England proclaims that a woman was "Eminent for Holiness...Prudence, Sincerity...Meakness...Weanedness From ye World...Publick-Spiritedness ...Faithfulness & Charity."

    "A major addition to our historical understanding of women in colonial New England...a path-breaking depiction of wives and mothers." -- Kathryn Kish Sklar, S.U.N.Y., Binghamton

    Additional formats

    • Good Wives
      Good Wives
      Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750
      Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
      9780679732570
      $17.00 US
      Paperback
      Vintage
      Jun 04, 1991
    • Good Wives
      Good Wives
      Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750
      Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
      9780679732570
      $17.00 US
      Paperback
      Vintage
      Jun 04, 1991

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