Women In Colonial America

The history of Jamestown and the early United States has been mostly told through the stories of brave and valiant men. Rarely, in these histories, do we hear of what incredible women also helped to shape and influence the successes in the early United States. This is an incredibly important issue because women played just as a big of a role in the founding of the new world as men did. In May of 1607, around 108 Englishmen made their way to America and landed on the banks of the Chesapeake bay. They called this new place Jamestown, after the reigning English King, James the 1st. This new region was not intended to be their permanent home, but a place they could collect gold and silver from and then return to England. This is where the story

First Generations: Women of Colonial America, written by Carol Berkin, is a novel that took ten years to make. Carol Berkin received her B.A. from Barnard College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. She has worked as a consultant on PBS and History Channel documentaries. Berkin has written several books on the topic of women in America. Some of her publications include: Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence (2004) and Civil War Wives: The Life and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant (2009). The prejudice that the author brings forward strongly is the notion of feminism.

The first colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Many of the people who settled in the New World came to escape religious persecution and various other reasons. In this paper we will explore the many roles both male and female colonists as well as Native Africans played.

For women in the Southern Colonies had very few legal rights such as not being able to vote or preach.

While reading about American history the thing that I found most appealing was the limited rights that women had during this era. Although women gave the early settlers longer life expectancy and brought hope to their future, women still were not considered equal to a man. Women were discriminated against and didn’t play an important role in early American history. Generally, women had fewer legal rights and career opportunity than men because they were considered weak and not able to perform certain tasks. Different women came from different ethnic backgrounds and were all created equal in the eyes of men. Men believed that women served only one purpose which was to take care of the household. Being a wife and a mother was considered

Boydston writes, “But if middle-class women were encased in the image of the nurturant (and non laboring) mother, working-class women found that their visible inability to replicate that model worked equally hard against them.” The standard during the Antebellum period was a woman that didn’t do any kind of laborious task other than housework which was thought as being an enriching and awarding process. However, wage-earning women visibly were unable to live up to these new standards because they were forced out of their own gender sphere of domesticity just to find work. During the Antebellum period, it was believed to be a men’s sphere to work and men masculinity was based on the fact of being the main “breadwinner” for the family. By a woman going into this sphere they went against the formation of the two gender spheres.

In Document C, it shows the Jamestown ship list of 1607 and 1608. Out of the approximate 230 settlers, 82 settlers had known occupations. None of the settlers on the ship from either groups were female. The highest known occupation for both groups was a gentlemen. “A gentlemen was a person of wealth who was not used to working with his hands.”

Discrimination was a huge factor during this time. It went both for African Americans and women. We can see this throughout the book. “Well, you keep you place then, Nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t even funny.

Sally Hemings was a slave on the Monticello plantation in the late 18th century, and her experience helps us to understand that her gender aided the way she was treated versus if they went by the color of her skin (Dilkes Mullins). {Woman during this era were thought of as property, they were objectified, they were treated poorly and had no choice. Their husbands were liable for anything that they did} [Being a female during this era outweighed what one 's social status was. It did not matter what race you were, but if you were a woman, you were treated as such] (Dilkes Mullins). Ms. Hemings was a beautiful sixteen-year-old enslaved girl (Gordon-Reed, 102) who was more than just a slave on the Monticello plantation.

Life for women in the colonial society was determined by their wealth, religion, and statues. Most of the things were similar for the women, they would have to run the house and or farm, raise the children, and maintain. Woman were married in their early twenties and would have large numbers of children. Around eight children were normal but due to sickness and other things, up to five or so of the children would have been dead before reaching their teens. Men held their normal ego and expectations of themselves but woman were looked at differently, unlike Europe where they were the weaker of the two sex.

In the colonies marriage was a bit different than those in England. White women were reserved the same rights as free black women during this time. The legal presence of women did not exist while married. Men controlled everything by law. Women were under the man 's protection and controlled all the finances even if they belonged to the women.

However, it’s a known fact that the majority of enslaved women worked in the fields. In this novel, the enslaved women experiences mostly consisted of having to work in households as cooks, housekeepers; some as sexual slaves, and how some women became so used to the abuse that it was a norm. One of the experiences enslaved women happened to go through was having to work in households as cooks. While living in the Weylin household Dana meets various slaves including one whose name is Sarah. Sarah was a “stocky middle-aged woman” who not only struggled as an enslaved women but also as the cook of the Weylin household (Butler 72).

In addition, they formed the majority of the suburban housewives who were doing far much better compared to the working-class women of color. In her work, Friedan discriminates African-American women to a large extent even in the light that many of them formed the category of working-class women. She actually, entirely underscores their contributions to the economy at the time. The reason why she left them out of the book could be because they never participated in the roles that she deemed “fulfilling” or those that she advocated. While Friedan generalizes the idea that all women were struggling to achieve equality with men at the time, she fails to understand that there were others who were not under the broad “category of Feminine Mystique.”

A woman’s place in Puritan society was very limited during these times. A preface was added to her narrative by a puritan pastor as approval for her to publish her prose. Before her captivity Rowlandson didn’t know what a struggle consisted of. She was the typical housewife in a Puritan society. She never went without food, shelter, or clothing before her captivity.

Two things that were extremely important to the basic societal functions of colonial American society were women and the church. Much different from today’s world, woman’s main purpose in this society was to give birth to children and provide dowries to their husbands at marriage. The church was obviously there to provide a moral compass and rule to the people of this age. How do women and the church relate however? The relationship between these figures however is important to understanding how colonial Latin America worked especially when we discuss marriage and social standing.