Good Wives : Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750

This enthralling work of scholarship strips away abstractions to reveal the hidden--and not always stoic--face of the "goodwives" of colonial America. In these pages 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. Examines the lives of women in northern New England in the century from 1650 to 1750, discussing issues of housekeeping, childbearing, churchgoing, and other triumphs and tragedies of everyday life