| Women's Agency in Early Modern Britain and the American Colonies: Patriarchy, Partnership and Patronage Contributor(s): O'Day, Rosemary (Author) |
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ISBN: 0582294630 ISBN-13: 9780582294639 Publisher: Routledge OUR PRICE: $68.39 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: November 2007 Annotation: 'This is a remarkable achievement, involving [...] a prodigious amount of research in a vast range of printed and unprinted sources, and covering four distinct, if related, worlds: England, Scotland, Ireland and North America....[O'Day's] is surely the fullest and most comprehensive demonstration of what we might mean by agency that has yet seen the light of day.' "Patrick Collinson, Emeritus Regius Professor of History, University of Cambridge" From culture to childbirth, money to marriage and wooing to widowhood, Rosemary O'Day introduces us to the lives of women in early modern Britain and the North American colonies. Dispelling the myth that women during this period were weak characters dominated by husbands and fathers, O'Day reveals these women to be important agents in the social, economic, religious and cultural lives of their societies who exercised considerable influence on the world around them. Strong women, she argues, were not the exception but the norm at this time and in many, even most, cases their menfolk valued and colluded in their strength. These women did not exist in a vacuum. In examining the differing lives of married women in the old and new worlds O'Day challenges the assumption that women of the North American colonies had more agency than those in Britain. She demonstrates that gender is indeed a social construct and that different societies will construct it differently. However, far from leading us into the realms of abstract speculation, O'Day focuses on the real lives of real women, exploring how far their experience was determined by their family roles and to what extent they existed as individuals, expanding their own horizonsand those of future women. Rosemary O'Day is Professor of History at the Open University. She has written and published extensively on the religious and social history of early modern Britain and America. Her earlier publications include: "The Debate on the English Reformation" (1986), "The Family and Family Relationships" (1994), and "The Professions in Early Modern England" (2000).
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| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Women's Studies - History | Europe - Great Britain - General - History | United States - Colonial Period (1600-1775) |
| Dewey: 305.409 |
| Series: Themes in British Social History |
| Physical Information: 1.15" H x 6.55" W x 9.25" (1.65 lbs) 504 pages |
| Themes: - Sex & Gender - Feminine - Cultural Region - British Isles |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Women in early modern Britain and colonial America were not the weak husband- and father-dominated characters of popular myth. Quite the reverse, strong women were the norm. They exercised considerable influence as important agents in the social, economic, religious and cultural life of their societies. This book shows how women on both sides of the Atlantic, while accepting a patriarchal system with all its advantages and disadvantages, contrived to carve out for themselves meaningful lives. Unusually it concentrates not only on the making and meaning of marriage, but also upon the partnership between men and women. It also looks at the varied roles - cultural, religious and educational - that women played both inside and outside marriage during the key period 1500-1760. Women emerge as partners, patrons, matchmakers, investors and network builders. |
