Good Wives Book Review
Susan Simmons
Book Review
Good Wives by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
October 3, 2010
This book was written by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and is titled “Good Wives Image and Reality in the lives of Women in Northerner New England 1650-1750”.
The author is giving an account of what life was really like for the women in Northern New England of 1650-1750. The book starts with a letter address from a father to his daughter pertaining to the death of his wife and her mother, Dorothy Dudley. He says he sorrowful but gives his daughter a “list of qualities in a long passage of advice reminding her to imitate her mother virtues to the best of her abilities. Thatcher then goes on in great detail to give many examples of what life was like for these …show more content…
women, good and bad.
She has divided the book into 3 parts that are that were taken from women of the bible times. Within each of these clusters, a woman’s role is defined with a title; such as housewife, deputy husband, concert, mother, mistress, neighbor, heroine and a Christian. Each role is discussed in depth but as the introduction states the roles were not independent of each other, nor did they live in isolation from each other, they each one reacted off the other one.
She points out that the women were defined by roles and the roles were strongly followed because they were so closely tied to the biblical principals taught by the Puritan people of this region. Gender was as important as race, wealth, geography or religion.
The author summarizes her perspective, chapter 12, Daughters of Zion, of the Jael cluster with this; “Women helped to shape religion in northern New England, but is important to recognize that their effectiveness was dependent upon the approval of the men who voted the taxes, called the ministers, and interpreted the visions.
The more successful and dramatic witnesses of female power were also the most short-lived. The women of Chebacco meekly recanted their disobedience. Elizabeth Davis left the Durham church long before the minister she attacked. The visionary young women of Salem and Durham faded into obscurity, while the ministers who supported them soon lost favor with their congregations. The most important story of religion is to be found not on the institutional but on the personal level and especially on the level of belief. For some women, affiliation with a church may have had more social than religious significance, but for others, religion provided a way of ordering the most basic experiences of human life.”(226) this tells the reader how important religion played in the lives of these women and the two cannot be …show more content…
separated.
The negative side I found with this book is that it is very cumbersome in details.
Many times I was lost as to which woman she was discussing and what was actually taking place. I also had hard time deciding if it was her interpretation of the event, from the documents she was using as sources, or were they the actual facts. The area I would consider a weak side of the book was retelling of a story written just as it had been in the records she found. I think she would have made a strong case for thesis had she interpreted it for the readers, such as in the account of John Rolfe leaving his wife Mary with Betty Webster and two strangers from old England sailed in. The events that transpired would have been better understood with some interpretation, the native slate of the English language lost much of the understanding of what was going
on.
In Thatcher attempt to recover the part of history that for many years was neglected and overlooked was very much addressed in this book. Even though I didn’t enjoy reading this book, I understood better why, by reading the last statement in the afterward as it clearly states the reason why, this is difficult material; “Their lives were defined not only by gender but a political structure, a geographic demographic setting, and a matrix of cultural and religious values. If fuller understand of colonial history requires women’s history, then the reverse is also true. To borrow a metaphor from Puritan sermon literature, good social history, like marriage, requires “mutual support.”
Book Review
Good Wives by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
October 3, 2010
This book was written by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and is titled “Good Wives Image and Reality in the lives of Women in Northerner New England 1650-1750”.
The author is giving an account of what life was really like for the women in Northern New England of 1650-1750. The book starts with a letter address from a father to his daughter pertaining to the death of his wife and her mother, Dorothy Dudley. He says he sorrowful but gives his daughter a “list of qualities in a long passage of advice reminding her to imitate her mother virtues to the best of her abilities. Thatcher then goes on in great detail to give many examples of what life was like for these …show more content…
women, good and bad.
She has divided the book into 3 parts that are that were taken from women of the bible times. Within each of these clusters, a woman’s role is defined with a title; such as housewife, deputy husband, concert, mother, mistress, neighbor, heroine and a Christian. Each role is discussed in depth but as the introduction states the roles were not independent of each other, nor did they live in isolation from each other, they each one reacted off the other one.
She points out that the women were defined by roles and the roles were strongly followed because they were so closely tied to the biblical principals taught by the Puritan people of this region. Gender was as important as race, wealth, geography or religion.
The author summarizes her perspective, chapter 12, Daughters of Zion, of the Jael cluster with this; “Women helped to shape religion in northern New England, but is important to recognize that their effectiveness was dependent upon the approval of the men who voted the taxes, called the ministers, and interpreted the visions.
The more successful and dramatic witnesses of female power were also the most short-lived. The women of Chebacco meekly recanted their disobedience. Elizabeth Davis left the Durham church long before the minister she attacked. The visionary young women of Salem and Durham faded into obscurity, while the ministers who supported them soon lost favor with their congregations. The most important story of religion is to be found not on the institutional but on the personal level and especially on the level of belief. For some women, affiliation with a church may have had more social than religious significance, but for others, religion provided a way of ordering the most basic experiences of human life.”(226) this tells the reader how important religion played in the lives of these women and the two cannot be …show more content…
separated.
The negative side I found with this book is that it is very cumbersome in details.
Many times I was lost as to which woman she was discussing and what was actually taking place. I also had hard time deciding if it was her interpretation of the event, from the documents she was using as sources, or were they the actual facts. The area I would consider a weak side of the book was retelling of a story written just as it had been in the records she found. I think she would have made a strong case for thesis had she interpreted it for the readers, such as in the account of John Rolfe leaving his wife Mary with Betty Webster and two strangers from old England sailed in. The events that transpired would have been better understood with some interpretation, the native slate of the English language lost much of the understanding of what was going
on.
In Thatcher attempt to recover the part of history that for many years was neglected and overlooked was very much addressed in this book. Even though I didn’t enjoy reading this book, I understood better why, by reading the last statement in the afterward as it clearly states the reason why, this is difficult material; “Their lives were defined not only by gender but a political structure, a geographic demographic setting, and a matrix of cultural and religious values. If fuller understand of colonial history requires women’s history, then the reverse is also true. To borrow a metaphor from Puritan sermon literature, good social history, like marriage, requires “mutual support.”