Maintaining Control Chapter Seven: Patriarchy, Politics, and Government describes an America that is very similar to England, on the other side of the Atlantic, especially in Virginia, and an America that is starting to resemble an early United States. Virginia colony was very similar to England in a number of ways. Elites held the most control in society, wealthy people sent children to Europe for education, and families intermarried. The practice of intermarriage was similar to what occurred in Europe between countries to create alliances. In Virginia, wealthy families intermarried and through intermarriage families were able to create alliance to look out for each other 's political interests. The more of a families relatives that held a seat in the House of Burgesses, the more ability that family would have to look out for their own interests. …show more content…
Law required a plantation with more than 10 slaves to have an overseer to ensure that work was completed. The overseers were outsiders in the system who were temporary, they lacked relationships with both the plantation owners and the slaves. Society was even more hierarchical in New England even though most residents did similar work. Families worked their own farms so unlike the south were the owners of the biggest plantations with the most slaves were the elites, in New England, the families that were oldest, with the best reputations held the highest standing. Founding families with the most holdings were often the town officials who governed. Church seating reflected the hierarchy, the most prominent families sat in the front. Religion played a significant role in New England Society. Everyone in a town attended the same Puritan Church, and that attendance was mandatory. The church building also served as meeting hall and school. The salary of the minister was paid for with taxes, and many of the secular leaders were also church
Slaves were treated like property that plantation owners could do whatever they wanted with. In the south, slaves were a symbol of success ,so, plantation owners wanted as much slaves as they could afford (7). Plantation owners with 20 or more slaves were considered the true upper class (7). When slaves arrived to a plantation they would usually have to build their own houses. Most of the time the houses were made out of wooden shacks with dirt floors (13).
In the 16th the American colonies, governments took three courses, all based on English traditions. The colonies became a testing ground for developing governments, from which the founders drew heavily when they enlisted the United States Constitution. At the base of each colony was its charter, a written agreement between the dependency and the queen of England (or with Parliament in the case of George), which authorized its existence and set up rules of procedure. The three figures of colonial governments were: Royal Colonies, Proprietary Colonies, and Charter Colonies. I will compare and contrast two regions were known as Southerners and the New England areas.
Both New England and the Chesapeake region were colonized by people of English origin, however despite this they developed into two very distinct societies. This difference in development can be rooted back to the geographic features of the respective areas as well as the aspirations of the settlers. New England was primarily devoted to practicing Puritanism while the Chesapeake region was focused on financial gain from gold and, more significantly, tobacco. New England was mostly settled by people who were subjected to religious persecution for practicing English Reformed Protestantism, or more commonly known as Puritanism, in Catholic Europe. These such people, who boarded the Weymouth for example, included families and their servants
One of the most well-known entertainers of the world, Beyoncé, is part of the best singers in the music industry. She is, somehow, considered to be a great example of the Feminist movements for showing off the talents of the femininity. The Feminist Movement started in the 1840’s, but it didn’t really expand until the 1960’s after Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique was published. In that book, Betty encourages women to change the way society view them as the ideal employment for them is to stay at home mom and wife voice their opinions and fight for equality of the sexes.
The Revolutionary War gave reason for America’s unification, but the diversity of America made it impossible for one unified culture to emerge. By 1700, the New England and Chesapeake colonies had evolved into two distinct societies contrary to their predominantly English populations, but these differences did not happen quickly. Rather, they were the result of the colonists’ intentions during colonization, their distinct environments, and their different social and political inequalities. The New England and Chesapeake colonies began to develop into two distinct societies from their very beginnings due to the intentions of their respective colonists during colonization.
One defining feature of democracy is that all people are equals, and America was certainly not displaying that at all. One of colonial America’s works in progress were individual or human rights. While white, Christian males were given rights, many others didn’t share the same privileges. One example of this is how in colonial America during marriage, “...things belonging to the wife, the husband gains possession of in marriage…”(Document 4: Title Page from The Lady’s Law).
In the Northern Colonies religion was a key component in the colonies more so than in the South. Also in the North temperature was cooler therefore the North had more white laborers. On the other hand there was far more slaves in the South than in the North. Most slaves in the South stayed with their masters then, while slaves in the North worked as artesian, shop keepers, messengers, servants, and general labors. During the 1620’s – 1670’s white and black worked and lived together.
The Church was a vital source for them. The Puritans believed that the men were the superior ones. The women were not allowed to attend the town meetings and were also prohibited from making decisions for the church. Attending church for the Puritans was mandatory for the people that missed church had to pay a fine. The church official typically had the ultimate power even above the judge.
Although all the colonists all came from England, the community development, purpose, and societal make-up caused a distinct difference between two distinct societies in New England and the Chesapeake region. The distinctions were obvious, whether it be the volume of religious drive, the need or lack of community, families versus single settlers, the decision on minimal wage, whether or not articles of agreements were drawn for and titles as well as other social matters were drawn, as well as where loyalties lay in leaders. New England was, overall, more religious than the Chesapeake region. Settlers in New England were searching relief for religious persecution in Europe. Puritans, Quakers, and Catholics were coming in droves to America searching for an opportunity to have religious freedom.
Early American social hierarchies differed markedly for women of color—whether free or enslaved—whose relationships to the white regimes of early America were manifold and complex. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, women in the colonies of the English West Indies and Carolinas, particularly women of color, were seen as subordinate by white male slave owners because of race and shared oppression of the female gender. However, these women were a means of economic gain for white slave owners. Taken from Africa to the New World as slave laborers, white slave owners valued these women for their ability in domestic work and fieldwork where they performed primarily unskilled agricultural tasks, as well as their potential to bear children. White slave owners of the Early Americas, driven by greed and opportunism, used political laws, physical characteristics of women, and social constructs of gender roles to appropriate
Surprisingly, Native American women had more freedom than the white women in the Chesapeake, Middle Colonies, or New England region. Some Native American women were given rights such as controlling land, political power, marriage and divorce in choice. There were matrilineal kinship system, in fact, marriage was not the most top rite of passage for them. The author covers around the 1600s- 1800s century time period while focusing on mainly white women but also women of color.
In ancient Indian cultures, women were expected to show respect for their husband by throwing themselves to their own death on their husband’s burning funeral pyre. In the more contemporary Victorian cultures, women were shamed for not spending visible and substantial lengths of time mourning their husband after he died. While acting as a superficially less extreme example, the Lady in Black of Chopin’s The Awakening who only appears briefly and has no lines also emphasizes the arbitrary social expectations put on women and the dire outcomes of systematic oppression. The Lady in Black does not have a proper name in the novel and she only appears wearing all black.
Most of the colonies in America were settled by the English, which makes them similar in many designs. However, there are a few aspects that differentiate between colonies, such as in the Chesapeake and New England regions. Reasons for settlement, religions, and geography all played an important role in the development of colonies in these regions. These conditions were natural and mostly subject to circumstances and conditions that were unchangeable. Nonetheless, no matter the modest causes, the effects were very substantial in helping to develop the uniqueness of each region.
Deniz Kandiyoti, emeritus professor of Development Studies at University of London in her article Bargaining with Patriarchy by means of comparative analyses of different regions namely, the sub-Saharan Africa and South and East Asia and The Muslim Middle East explores different negotiation strategies employed by women within a given set of restrictions set in place by different patriarchal societies which Kandiyoti terms as ‘patriarchal bargains’ and states that female strategies for subsisting in face of oppression changes with different forms of patriarchy in different parts and cultures of the world and this gives a better understanding of patriarchy, a term that Kandiyoti claims is most overused in the contemporary feminism mostly rather
Women and Tradition: Battling Patriarchy With a Pen In the second chapter of their book, The Mad Woman in the Attic, (1979), Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar examine the relationship between female writers and literary tradition. Their central argument posits that female writers experience the “anxiety of authorship,” distress that stems from the lack of female precursors in the literary tradition for contemporary female writers to reference for inspiration and validation in their writing (Gilbert and Gubar 49). This disenfranchisement of female authorship is rooted in a literary tradition dominated by men, a patriarchal system that conforms female characters in literature to masculine desires, such as the poet 's muse or the angel. Enclosing