Summary Of Liberty's Daughters By Mary Beth Norton
The revolutionary changes that took place in the 1970s lead to many new ways of thinking and new fields of study, one of which was women’s studies. After such a change, the academic world was flooded with new perspectives and studies on the positions of women throughout American history and how that position had changed over time. One such examination was done by Mary Beth Norton in her book Liberty’s Daughters, a detailed examination of the roles of women during colonial times and how their roles were to change due to the American Revolution. To get a full picture of the roles during this period, Norton turns to the women themselves, using their letters, diaries, memoirs, and other such materials in order to get a full grasp as to what their lives were like before and after the war. Norton contends that the lives of women should have been drastically changed after the
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occurrence of the American Revolution, since the revolutionary rhetoric was readily available in their lives at the time, but this is not what happened publically and it was a matter that would long stand unresolved for many generations to come. Norton’s book is broken up into two distinctive parts. The first section discusses the roles and lives of women during the years leading up to the Revolution, with the second shorter part focusing on their lives after one of the most monumental events in American history. The first part of the book focuses on almost every aspect of women’s lives, ranging from their roles as wife, mother, and housekeeper. Norton discusses these different aspects, ranging from all thirteen colonies and including the accounts of women in both rural and urban areas. She contends that in the affairs of money, women often knew nothing about their financial situation other then how much the goods she produced would make at market. In many cases, she did not know how much their estate was worth or what debts their family may have owed. Additionally, women were incredibly valuable to the running of the house for she was responsible for the keeping of chickens, the production of cloth and clothing as well as the production of food products such as butter or cheese, in addition to the traditional household chores like laundry and cleaning. Going off of this notion, Norton discusses the tedious routines of women’s lives, often repeating the same tasks over and over, week to week, with a few new tasks added in accordance to what season it was, with which the women were often discontented. They never voiced this dissatisfaction to their husbands, only sharing these feelings with other women in their families via letter or just kept it to their selves writing in their private diaries.
Moreover, there was also the understandable fear of childbearing on the minds of women at the time due to the high rate of mortality during birth or shortly there after. There was also a very high rate of births at this time, with each fertile women expecting to have another child at the rate of about every two years, adding to the constant fear of death for young women. Norton explains that the only place of happiness and solstice being in child rearing. Norton goes into detail to described the bond between mother and child, with a special emphasis on the bond between mother and daughter, with many pairings thinking of each other as dear friend or companion rather than the traditional mother-daughter dynamic. In conclusion, the role of the women was completely domestic and they were not to be bothered with public life, finances, or other such affairs because that was the husband’s job because they were the public representation of the family where as the wife was the person behind the scenes, keeping the household running. The revolution changed some of this due to the public nature of the rebellion as well as the impositions that it put on colonial women. For example, when the colonists choose to boycott British goods, it was the women who were responsible for finding or produce other goods instead. Additionally, women who just some twenty years prior felt they had no place in politics and public affairs were now well versed on the publications and newspapers promoting revolution, often engaging in debates and participating in activism. Furthermore, due to their husbands being away fighting the war, it was left to women to not only deal with the domestic duties as before, but also the running of the entire estate and other family matters for which she was previously excluded. This change in duty would most certainly change the way that women at the time thought. Before, they may have been resigned to accept their place as wife and mother, but after managing to run entire estates during a time of such hardships, it would be difficult to see a woman going back to they way things are once they were shown just how strong they could truly be. In the postwar era, there was a profound change in the freedom given to daughters, for example in their choice of a spouse. In many instances, the families left the choice up to their daughters, whereas it may have not been so in the years before the war.
Additionally, there was a decrease in the number of children born to couples due to women implementing different forms of the available birth control at the time. This would seem like a smart idea, given the constant fear that prewar women faced and the still dangerous and financially significant aspects of raising such large families. Even the inherent thinking about marriage changed in the minds of women, from the idea that you enter a contract and are beneath your husband in the hierarchy of home life, to the idea that a woman is entering a contract as a partnership to succeed together. This was a drastically changed idea for women at the time, because as war life had shown them, they were indeed able to carry their own weight in the running of the house and family. Even the concept of being a spinster changed. What was once though of as a unwomanly occurrence or a disgrace was more widely accepted, due in part to the changing demographics at the time as well as the belief that it is better to be single than to enter a bad marriage. Even education changed, where as before women were sparsely educated because men believed that it was unneeded for their limited duties, after the war this was to change. It was widely believed that women needed a more formal education in order to provide the type of women the republic wanted, which was an independent thinker and a knowledgeable mother. Norton concludes her book by stating that although there was some change in the ways of a woman’s life by 1800, it was not that drastic of a change from the lives of their grandmothers some fifty years prior. Women had no more freedom to do with their lives then previous generations and they were still subservient in a male dominated society. Of all the literary reviews there are of this book, there seems to be a general consensus that it is a good start for the study of women during the colonial period and the changes that occurred after the Revolution, but all agree that this book is flawed in its evidence and arguments.
Koehler agrees that Norton uses enough evidence from many varying sources to show that the changes that took place were in fact private versus outwardly public, but he claims that she does not pay enough attention to the very diverse colonial populations in her searches for evidence, such as the Irish, Scottish, Germans, Jews, etc. Additionally, Koehler claims that Norton does not pay enough attention to classes and draws too broad a conclusion from the writings of the upper or middling classes of the time and if she had focused solely on those classes her book would have been better for it. In Norton’s defense, it was very likely that attaining written sources from the lower classes or other diverse populations would have been very hard to do considering the era and the lack of education in the lower
classes. The notion that Norton drew too broad a conclusion based on the data she had was a unifying theme in the reviews of the book. Dr. Beeman, a professor here at Penn, stated that some of the conclusions Norton drew were not very well supported by the evidence she had at hand, particularly the localized data that she used on the increase in divorce rate after the revolution to draw a wide spectrum conclusion that this was due to the new notion of republic for all of the colonies at the time. In another review, Barbara Lindeman also claims that many of the conclusions that Norton draws are oversimplified, such as the notion that the changes in women’s roles was due mostly to their wartime experience and the new notion of republican ideology, which it was in fact due to a variety of factors working together. Overall, all of the reviews believed that Norton’s book was a good start to working toward a better understanding of women during the colonial era.
The roles of women are an important study in American history, especially in American law. In the early colonial period, the status of women under the law was pretty much nonexistent. They were treated the same as property in many respects. In Blackstone’s writing on women in the eyes of the law, he talks about how women are one person with their husbands and to harm one is to harm the other. Furthermore, it is said that men have the right to give their wives “moderate correction” just as he would their children or a servant. This slightly changes later, under the rule of Charles II, but this idea of correcting one’s wife was still a widely held concept until well into American history. Nothing in this book was that surprising. I feel like the concept of the slight change after the American Revolution to the status of women, as well as the conditions that women in the colonial era faced are all hammered in pretty well throughout most high school curriculums across America. The concept of “republican motherhood” is something that almost any high school student with a vague grasp on American History can describe, but I suppose that this is due in large part to books like Norton’s. Taken for granted that this book was written almost 35 years ago, it was the studies and publishing of books like this that made the understanding of women’s studies and a better grasp on the history of women possible. Sure, at times the book was a little repetitive and long-winded, but the research that went into this book is valid and the message that it sent to the academic world was fantastic. It is thanks to the work of scholars like Mary Beth Norton that we as American’s can better understand our past and that should definitely not be taken for granted.
occurrence of the American Revolution, since the revolutionary rhetoric was readily available in their lives at the time, but this is not what happened publically and it was a matter that would long stand unresolved for many generations to come. Norton’s book is broken up into two distinctive parts. The first section discusses the roles and lives of women during the years leading up to the Revolution, with the second shorter part focusing on their lives after one of the most monumental events in American history. The first part of the book focuses on almost every aspect of women’s lives, ranging from their roles as wife, mother, and housekeeper. Norton discusses these different aspects, ranging from all thirteen colonies and including the accounts of women in both rural and urban areas. She contends that in the affairs of money, women often knew nothing about their financial situation other then how much the goods she produced would make at market. In many cases, she did not know how much their estate was worth or what debts their family may have owed. Additionally, women were incredibly valuable to the running of the house for she was responsible for the keeping of chickens, the production of cloth and clothing as well as the production of food products such as butter or cheese, in addition to the traditional household chores like laundry and cleaning. Going off of this notion, Norton discusses the tedious routines of women’s lives, often repeating the same tasks over and over, week to week, with a few new tasks added in accordance to what season it was, with which the women were often discontented. They never voiced this dissatisfaction to their husbands, only sharing these feelings with other women in their families via letter or just kept it to their selves writing in their private diaries.
Moreover, there was also the understandable fear of childbearing on the minds of women at the time due to the high rate of mortality during birth or shortly there after. There was also a very high rate of births at this time, with each fertile women expecting to have another child at the rate of about every two years, adding to the constant fear of death for young women. Norton explains that the only place of happiness and solstice being in child rearing. Norton goes into detail to described the bond between mother and child, with a special emphasis on the bond between mother and daughter, with many pairings thinking of each other as dear friend or companion rather than the traditional mother-daughter dynamic. In conclusion, the role of the women was completely domestic and they were not to be bothered with public life, finances, or other such affairs because that was the husband’s job because they were the public representation of the family where as the wife was the person behind the scenes, keeping the household running. The revolution changed some of this due to the public nature of the rebellion as well as the impositions that it put on colonial women. For example, when the colonists choose to boycott British goods, it was the women who were responsible for finding or produce other goods instead. Additionally, women who just some twenty years prior felt they had no place in politics and public affairs were now well versed on the publications and newspapers promoting revolution, often engaging in debates and participating in activism. Furthermore, due to their husbands being away fighting the war, it was left to women to not only deal with the domestic duties as before, but also the running of the entire estate and other family matters for which she was previously excluded. This change in duty would most certainly change the way that women at the time thought. Before, they may have been resigned to accept their place as wife and mother, but after managing to run entire estates during a time of such hardships, it would be difficult to see a woman going back to they way things are once they were shown just how strong they could truly be. In the postwar era, there was a profound change in the freedom given to daughters, for example in their choice of a spouse. In many instances, the families left the choice up to their daughters, whereas it may have not been so in the years before the war.
Additionally, there was a decrease in the number of children born to couples due to women implementing different forms of the available birth control at the time. This would seem like a smart idea, given the constant fear that prewar women faced and the still dangerous and financially significant aspects of raising such large families. Even the inherent thinking about marriage changed in the minds of women, from the idea that you enter a contract and are beneath your husband in the hierarchy of home life, to the idea that a woman is entering a contract as a partnership to succeed together. This was a drastically changed idea for women at the time, because as war life had shown them, they were indeed able to carry their own weight in the running of the house and family. Even the concept of being a spinster changed. What was once though of as a unwomanly occurrence or a disgrace was more widely accepted, due in part to the changing demographics at the time as well as the belief that it is better to be single than to enter a bad marriage. Even education changed, where as before women were sparsely educated because men believed that it was unneeded for their limited duties, after the war this was to change. It was widely believed that women needed a more formal education in order to provide the type of women the republic wanted, which was an independent thinker and a knowledgeable mother. Norton concludes her book by stating that although there was some change in the ways of a woman’s life by 1800, it was not that drastic of a change from the lives of their grandmothers some fifty years prior. Women had no more freedom to do with their lives then previous generations and they were still subservient in a male dominated society. Of all the literary reviews there are of this book, there seems to be a general consensus that it is a good start for the study of women during the colonial period and the changes that occurred after the Revolution, but all agree that this book is flawed in its evidence and arguments.
Koehler agrees that Norton uses enough evidence from many varying sources to show that the changes that took place were in fact private versus outwardly public, but he claims that she does not pay enough attention to the very diverse colonial populations in her searches for evidence, such as the Irish, Scottish, Germans, Jews, etc. Additionally, Koehler claims that Norton does not pay enough attention to classes and draws too broad a conclusion from the writings of the upper or middling classes of the time and if she had focused solely on those classes her book would have been better for it. In Norton’s defense, it was very likely that attaining written sources from the lower classes or other diverse populations would have been very hard to do considering the era and the lack of education in the lower
classes. The notion that Norton drew too broad a conclusion based on the data she had was a unifying theme in the reviews of the book. Dr. Beeman, a professor here at Penn, stated that some of the conclusions Norton drew were not very well supported by the evidence she had at hand, particularly the localized data that she used on the increase in divorce rate after the revolution to draw a wide spectrum conclusion that this was due to the new notion of republic for all of the colonies at the time. In another review, Barbara Lindeman also claims that many of the conclusions that Norton draws are oversimplified, such as the notion that the changes in women’s roles was due mostly to their wartime experience and the new notion of republican ideology, which it was in fact due to a variety of factors working together. Overall, all of the reviews believed that Norton’s book was a good start to working toward a better understanding of women during the colonial era.
The roles of women are an important study in American history, especially in American law. In the early colonial period, the status of women under the law was pretty much nonexistent. They were treated the same as property in many respects. In Blackstone’s writing on women in the eyes of the law, he talks about how women are one person with their husbands and to harm one is to harm the other. Furthermore, it is said that men have the right to give their wives “moderate correction” just as he would their children or a servant. This slightly changes later, under the rule of Charles II, but this idea of correcting one’s wife was still a widely held concept until well into American history. Nothing in this book was that surprising. I feel like the concept of the slight change after the American Revolution to the status of women, as well as the conditions that women in the colonial era faced are all hammered in pretty well throughout most high school curriculums across America. The concept of “republican motherhood” is something that almost any high school student with a vague grasp on American History can describe, but I suppose that this is due in large part to books like Norton’s. Taken for granted that this book was written almost 35 years ago, it was the studies and publishing of books like this that made the understanding of women’s studies and a better grasp on the history of women possible. Sure, at times the book was a little repetitive and long-winded, but the research that went into this book is valid and the message that it sent to the academic world was fantastic. It is thanks to the work of scholars like Mary Beth Norton that we as American’s can better understand our past and that should definitely not be taken for granted.