Gender Roles In Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's 'Good Wives'

For centuries, society defined women using their generational stereotypes. According to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the woman’s social status progression and digression needs to be investigated. Her book, “Good Wives”, expands on what societal stereotypes created the ideal women in 17th and 18th century New England. Ulrich approached the topic with a virtually unbiased opinion and attempted to explore all socio-economic classes to relay deeper understanding of pre-modern gender roles. To provide readers with an accurate image of the New England wife, Ulrich utilized biblical characters Bathsheba, Eve, and Jael. Each of these archetypes represented a different part the ideal female or “worthy matron” (9). To Ulrich, a woman of the 17th and 18th
The book is broken up into three parts, each part revolving around a biblical character. Ulrich investigated women who existed in a place and time where life revolved around God and the church. It makes sense to articulate her argument based off of biblical characters because, although not intentional, these three characters probably influenced the hierarchical system in the 17th and 18th century. The organization of “Good Wives” is similar to the way a human brain learns. First, it must understand the big idea before discussing the little details. Rather than describing each character and then moving on to their qualities, she gave separate, brief history of her subtopic and then explained the qualities that each archetype represented. However, I believe Ulrich’s book might benefit from discussing the modern stereotype of females in colonial New England. She mentioned in her introduction and forward that modern interpretation of colonial female rights is skewed, but did not expand on her statement. I feel like the Ulrich’s work might benefit from a section dedicated to the modern stereotypes of females in colonial New England and how those stereotypes