The Colonial Era was an interesting time for women. They were starting to believe they deserve more rights than they were given. Some might say it was a golden age for them, and then others would disagree. In the 5 articles; “Women in Work and Poverty: The Difficulties of Earning a Living” by Lyle Koehler, “The Planters Wife: The Experiment of White Women in SeventeenthCentury Maryland” by Lois Green Carr and Lorena S. Walsh, “Women Before the Bar” by Cornelia Hughes Dayton, “Gender, Work and Wages in Colonia New England” by Gloria L.
Main, and “The Myth of the Golden Age” by Mary Beth Norton, they talk about whether women became more liberated during this time, or if it was a fabrication. Most believe it was considered the golden age for women during the Colonial Era, except Koehler, the author of “Women in Poverty: The Difficulties of Earning a Living”. Koehler proves his opinion by discussing why women were less wealthy, their small amount of opportunities, and about women not being able to do anything without permission.
For example, he mentions that it’s hard for girls to have their own wealth without getting married because fathers leave their property and money to their sons. Girls are then forced to move out of the house and marry a well off man in order to live. Women could get a job, but that usually meant becoming a domestic servant and even then, women made hardly any money. “Their typical annual salary was just $3 or $4, only 50 to 60 percent of the male hired servant’s wage” (Koehler 49). If a woman did not want to become a servant, she could make and sell goods, but only if her husband permitted her to do so.
Most husbands didn’t like the idea of their wife making her own money, so many women were domed to being tied down to their husband’s paycheck. With all of this information, it’s hard to believe how the Colonial Era could be a Golden Age for women, but there are many other circumstances that contributed to women and their rights during this time. Two authors that make great points showing how women had many opportunities that made the Colonial Era so great for them are Carr and Walsh. These women do consider it to be the Golden Age for women because they had the liberty to migrate to Maryland. Women that migrated to Maryland gained freedom.
They didn’t have fathers, husbands or brothers to monitor their behavior. “The absence of kin and the pressures of the sex ratio created conditions of sexual freedom in courtship that were not customary in England” (Carr and Walsh 72). Being able to leave your family and move somewhere alone to make a life for yourself was liberating for women. Women were still expected to marry, but these husbands were usually more trusting in their wives and allowed them the freedoms they desired. For example, in the 1660’s, men were afraid they would die at a young age, so they wrote their wills, leaving everything to their wives instead of their sons.
When the husband passed, it was common, not looked down on, for the widow to remarry. The new husband would take responsibility for his new stepchildren and the new couple would have their own kin. Women that migrated to Maryland were able to do much more than others, but there are still freedoms that have not yet been mentioned for women that chose to stay. Women wanted to be able to make a living for themselves or at least help their husbands and sons. I believe that being able to work was a huge factor in women’s freedoms, and so does Main, the author of “Gender, Work and Wages in Colonia New England”.
Main’s opinion seems to sway regarding how the Colonial Era was liberating for women. She talks about women working in the fields in order to help the family, which is a freedom because usually men would not allow women to do such labor. Then Main begins to discuss s that were geared towards women that stuck them back in the house. These new tools included spinning wheels, firkins, brewing vats, and dye pots. These things separated labor between the sexes and thus separated them physically. Men continued to complete tasks such as paddling canoes, washing or shearing sheep or pressing cider, which women were prohibited from doing.
Even then, they did not mow grass or grain, because most of them did not have the height or upper body strength to handle scythes” (Main 48) Main seems to view the Colonial Era as a time were women were tried to break free from social norms, but men did not seem to notice. She discusses a specific woman, Mrs. Brown, who did a lot of heavy labor that was seen as only a man’s job. She “had sowed rye for its seed. At harvest time she prepared breakfast, nursed her child, walked five or six miles to the field, reaped her rye (finishing before any of the men), and walked back home” (Main 48).
Main has a passion for strong independent women during the Colonial Era, but doesn’t believe it was a golden age for them. Women being strong and independent is a popular topic when talking about whether or not the Colonial Era should be considered the golden age or not. Main discussed these types of women and so does Dayton, the author of the article, “Before the Bar”. Their points are similar and also contracting because while they consider the same personality trait, Dayton believes it was enough to absolve women from the stereotypes.
Dayton touches upon the topic of strong women in court. Many women never took the trip to the courthouse, but it still wasn’t uncommon for a woman to be seen in court. “Onethird of those waiting to plead or to give testimony were women” (Dayton 53). They were normally about fortification or suing to collect a debt. When women were caught in the middle of something illicit, the ones worth admiration were the ones who fought back. Women were more involved in legal work than just being a defendant. Women also contributed by being litigants, witnesses, and criminal defendants.
Although, they didn’t participate too regularly because all residents had access since there were simple laws that didn’t require lawyers. Some women came together to protest against the unjust legal system, such as the group called the legal fraternity. They consisted of “women [who] stood outside the loose group of brokers who coalesced in the early eighteenth century” (Dayton 54). Both Main and Dayton saw the work of single-minded women, but have opposing viewpoints. Even though there were women who did not let men walk all over them, there are many more women that contributed to the social norm because they were too afraid to fight back.
People in general do not tend to participate in activities that shame them from their family and friends, thus making it harder for women to break free of the metaphorical chains men had around them. The last author that will be discussed strongly believed the Colonial Era was far from being the golden age. They discuss the awful lifestyle girls are born into, how women’s health was not a priority, especially during childbirth, and even how being a slave was harder for women than for men.
This is all found in the article, “The Myth of the Golden Age”, by Norton. Norton talks about chores that were made for women and were time consuming and difficult. One of these chores were making clothes by spinning cloth. It was time consuming and hard, considering it demanded more technical skill and bulky loom, and young girls would usually learn early on to relieve their mothers of the chore. Women were forced to do the household chores and care for the children, and when daughters were old enough they would help their mothers.
These young girls were not given a choice, they started to learn these chores early on because they were expected to continue the work when they had a family of their own. Young boys still were expected to help their fathers with hard labor, but they had many more choices than girls did. Women were expected to have a lot of children because the more kin, the more working hands you had around the house. Women were debilitated from constantly having to go through childbirth. Most women were pregnant or nursing a baby during their mature years.
They had poor health, and were exhausted from having to care for all the children and doing all the housework. Present day, we have maternal leave and medicine that helps a woman recover from childbirth, but in the colonial era no one cared as much. Having a child was painful and having to care for a newborn while making sure all the household labor is finished was exhausting. As you can imagine, having to bare children while being a slave was extra excruciating. Slave women were pretty much forced to have as many children as possible from their masters, since any child born from a slave women was now a slave.
Thomas Jefferson even “ordered his overseers to allow pregnant and nursing women special privileges, including lighter workloads and separate houses” (Norton 83) so that women would want to have children. After having a child, your body still needed to recover, but after bearing the child women no longer had these privileges and were forced to go back to work. This made slave women’s lives even harder than male slaves, especially when vou take into account seeing your own child having to go through the same life you are going through at such a young age.
All the authors made excellent points to back up their opinions, but I found some articles to be more persuading than others. The two articles I found the most informative were Main’s and Koehler’s, they had many examples to prove their points and seemed more passionate than the other authors. Dayton’s article was the weakest, it didn’t provide any other information other than women working with legal matters, it did not seem like a strong argument to me. I agree with Main’s article the most because she showed both sides of the argument.
I found it constructive how she mentioned the different jobs women are forced into, how they tried to help with men’s labor in order to liberate themselves and how she mentioned a specific woman that proved that women are just as good as men. All of these articles were informative and broadened my knowledge of women’s lives during these years. I have come to the conclusion from these author’s work that the Colonial Era should not be considered the golden age for women.