HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Loading...

No title (1982)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
814726,761 (3.91)42
This enthralling work of scholarship strips away abstractions to reveal the hidden-and not always stoic-face of the "goodwives" of colonial America. In this book we encounter the awesome burdens-and the considerable power-of a New England housewife's domestic life and witness her occasional forays into the world of men. We see her borrowing from her neighbors, loving her husband, raising-and, all too often, mourning-her children, and even attaining fame as a heroine of frontier conflicts or notoriety as a murderess. Painstakingly researched, lively with scandal and homely detail, Good Wives is history at its best.… (more)
Member:
Title:
Authors:
Info:
Collections:
Rating:
Tags:None

Work Information

Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (1982)

Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 42 mentions

Showing 5 of 5
I remember enjoying this book when I read it in graduate school in 1992 or 93, but don't remember much about it. Plan on re-reading it.
  Chris.Wolak | Oct 13, 2022 |
I am currently involved in tracing my family and reading Ulrich's book brought the history alive for me. I recommend this book for any one interested in genealogy because of the way Ulrich opens up the daily lives of these long ago women and delves into their psyches. anyone who enjoys this book should also try her A Midwife's Tale. ( )
  janerules | Sep 28, 2013 |
I bailed out of this about 1/2 way through. It was too much like a dissertation and not enough like a book for me. ( )
  satyridae | Apr 5, 2013 |
I think this is a great book, and not just because a couple of my ancestors are in it! ( )
  auntieknickers | Jan 27, 2009 |
This work has an academic tone, but is better written than most books written by college professors. It provides a fascinating insight into the lives of women in early New England. It shows how the society interpreted women and their roles using three prototypical Biblical women models. Bathsheba, whom the Puritans saw as the virtuous woman of proverbs, exemplified the good wife. Eve provides a focal point of a discussion of both sexual misbehavior, married sexuality, and childbirth. And Jael, who welcomed her enemy, fed him, lulled him to sleep, and then killed him by driving a tent peg into his head, gives a focus to a discussion of female assertiveness and violence. These qualities were sometimes necessary for survival in the frontier of 17th century New England. Laurel Ulrich demonstrates how the society accepted these normally unacceptable behaviors when they could see the woman taking the male role in the place of their husband, and them stepping back into a normal feminine role after. Jael typified this. By the 18th century writers viewed these women and their behavior as unnatural. This section analyses Hannah Dustin's experience in detail. She was enthusiastically welcomed when she returned from captivity with ten scalps of the Indian family she killed in their beds. Whittier saw her as having been driven to insanity in the moment of her attack, and Hawthorne reacted even more strongly, wishing the "bloody old hag had been drowned." Only a hag could have acted in this way, not a true woman. ( )
  footenoter | Jun 20, 2007 |
Showing 5 of 5
no reviews | add a review

» Add other authors (3 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Laurel Thatcher Ulrichprimary authorall editionscalculated
Ericksen, SusanNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Here lyes
A Worthy Matron of unspotted life,
A loving Mother and obedient wife,
A friendly Neighbor, pitiful to poor,
Whom oft she fed, and clothed with her store;
To Servants wisely aweful, but yet kind,
And as they did, so they reward did find:
A true Instructer of her Family,
The which she ordered with dexterity.
The publick meetings ever did frequent,
And in her Closet constant hours she spent;
Religious in all her words and wayes,
Preparing still for death, till end of days:
Of all her Children, Children liv'd to see
Then dying, left a blessed memory.

Anne Bradstreet, 1643
Dedication
FOR
Alice Siddoway Thatcher
First words
[Introduction] On Tuesday morning she had risen in good health.
[Preface] In seventeenth-century New England, women of ordinary status were called Goodwife, usually shortened to Goody, as in Goody Prince or Goody Quilter or Goodly Lee.
By English tradition, a woman's environment was the family dwelling and the yard or yards surrounding it.
[Afterward] In a small burying ground in Keene, New Hampshire, there is a stone commemorating the virtues of Madam Ruth Whitney, who died in November of 1788.
Quotations
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
A portion of the book was first published in Feminist Studies in 1980.
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (1)

This enthralling work of scholarship strips away abstractions to reveal the hidden-and not always stoic-face of the "goodwives" of colonial America. In this book we encounter the awesome burdens-and the considerable power-of a New England housewife's domestic life and witness her occasional forays into the world of men. We see her borrowing from her neighbors, loving her husband, raising-and, all too often, mourning-her children, and even attaining fame as a heroine of frontier conflicts or notoriety as a murderess. Painstakingly researched, lively with scandal and homely detail, Good Wives is history at its best.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.91)
0.5
1 3
1.5
2 3
2.5
3 9
3.5 3
4 42
4.5 1
5 18

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,235,451 books! | Top bar: Always visible