Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs by Kathleen M. Brown

Having carefully defined her terms in the introduction, in the first section of her work Brown looks at the degree to which ideas about gender transferred to America. Gender as a social category to delineate women's and men's proper roles had a long tradition in Europe which transferred only in part to the New World, where high death rates and close proximity to Native Americans provided men and women with glimpses of and opportunities to pursue different living patterns.

In a comprehensive, thoughtful, enlightening work, Brown has made gender and race the central modes of analysis in an attempt to understand the societal, political, and legal institutions of colonial Virginia.ĭrawing on every conceivable source on colonial Virginia, from tax rolls, deeds, county court records, government documents, narrative histories of the colony by its early occupants, court minutes, newspapers, statutes, and wills and inventories, and possessing a firm command of the secondary literature on virtually every aspect of colonial Virginia and Chesapeake history from the most traditional to the most current and pathbreaking, Brown has woven a marvelous synthesis of those sources that convincingly explains the way in which the social categories of race and gender were continually redefined by Virginians so that they might better support the patriarchy of elite Virginia society that existed by the Revolution. Brown's brilliant work on race, gender and power in colonial Virginia is far more than inclusive. She did not envision the wonderful work that has been produced here by Kathleen Brown, assistant professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. Years ago, when Joan Scott pointed out the utility of gender as a mode of historical analysis, she most likely had in mind mainly the possibilities of inclusivity. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race and Power in Colonial Virginia.Ĭhapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs by Kathleen M. Brown