Separated by Their Sex

Women in Public and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World

Nonfiction, History, Americas, United States, Colonial Period (1600-1775), British
Cover of the book Separated by Their Sex by Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Mary Beth Norton ISBN: 9780801461378
Publisher: Cornell University Press Publication: May 16, 2011
Imprint: Cornell University Press Language: English
Author: Mary Beth Norton
ISBN: 9780801461378
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Publication: May 16, 2011
Imprint: Cornell University Press
Language: English

In Separated by Their Sex, Mary Beth Norton offers a bold genealogy that shows how gender came to determine the right of access to the Anglo-American public sphere by the middle of the eighteenth century. Earlier, high-status men and women alike had been recognized as appropriate political actors, as exemplified during and after Bacon’s Rebellion by the actions of—and reactions to—Lady Frances Berkeley, wife of Virginia’s governor. By contrast, when the first ordinary English women to claim a political voice directed group petitions to Parliament during the Civil War of the 1640s, men relentlessly criticized and parodied their efforts. Even so, as late as 1690, Anglo-American women’s political interests and opinions were publicly acknowledged.

Norton traces the profound shift in attitudes toward women’s participation in public affairs to the age’s cultural arbiters, including John Dunton, editor of the Athenian Mercury, a popular 1690s periodical that promoted women’s links to husband, family, and household. Fittingly, Dunton was the first author known to apply the word "private" to women and their domestic lives. Subsequently, the immensely influential authors Richard Steele and Joseph Addison (in the Tatler and the Spectator) advanced the notion that women’s participation in politics—even in political dialogues—was absurd. They and many imitators on both sides of the Atlantic argued that women should confine themselves to home and family, a position that American women themselves had adopted by the 1760s. Colonial women incorporated the novel ideas into their self-conceptions; during such "private" activities as sitting around a table drinking tea, they worked to define their own lives. On the cusp of the American Revolution, Norton concludes, a newly gendered public-private division was firmly in place.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

In Separated by Their Sex, Mary Beth Norton offers a bold genealogy that shows how gender came to determine the right of access to the Anglo-American public sphere by the middle of the eighteenth century. Earlier, high-status men and women alike had been recognized as appropriate political actors, as exemplified during and after Bacon’s Rebellion by the actions of—and reactions to—Lady Frances Berkeley, wife of Virginia’s governor. By contrast, when the first ordinary English women to claim a political voice directed group petitions to Parliament during the Civil War of the 1640s, men relentlessly criticized and parodied their efforts. Even so, as late as 1690, Anglo-American women’s political interests and opinions were publicly acknowledged.

Norton traces the profound shift in attitudes toward women’s participation in public affairs to the age’s cultural arbiters, including John Dunton, editor of the Athenian Mercury, a popular 1690s periodical that promoted women’s links to husband, family, and household. Fittingly, Dunton was the first author known to apply the word "private" to women and their domestic lives. Subsequently, the immensely influential authors Richard Steele and Joseph Addison (in the Tatler and the Spectator) advanced the notion that women’s participation in politics—even in political dialogues—was absurd. They and many imitators on both sides of the Atlantic argued that women should confine themselves to home and family, a position that American women themselves had adopted by the 1760s. Colonial women incorporated the novel ideas into their self-conceptions; during such "private" activities as sitting around a table drinking tea, they worked to define their own lives. On the cusp of the American Revolution, Norton concludes, a newly gendered public-private division was firmly in place.

More books from Cornell University Press

Cover of the book Imperial Eclipse by Mary Beth Norton
Cover of the book The Morning Breaks by Mary Beth Norton
Cover of the book She Was One of Us by Mary Beth Norton
Cover of the book On the Ruins of Babel by Mary Beth Norton
Cover of the book Why France? by Mary Beth Norton
Cover of the book Margery Kempe and the Lonely Reader by Mary Beth Norton
Cover of the book History, Literature, Critical Theory by Mary Beth Norton
Cover of the book Material Beings by Mary Beth Norton
Cover of the book The New Masters of Capital by Mary Beth Norton
Cover of the book Shakespeare's Foreign Worlds by Mary Beth Norton
Cover of the book Everyone Counts by Mary Beth Norton
Cover of the book Working through the Past by Mary Beth Norton
Cover of the book Our Frontier Is the World by Mary Beth Norton
Cover of the book A History of Cornell by Mary Beth Norton
Cover of the book Varietals of Capitalism by Mary Beth Norton
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy