Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early ... and the University of North Carolina Press)

Kathleen Brown examines the origins of racism and slavery in British North America from the perspective of gender. Both a basic social relationship and a model for other social hierarchies, gender helped determine the construction of racial categories and the institution of slavery in Virginia. But the rise of racial slavery also transformed gender relations, including ideals of masculinity. In response to the presence of Indians, the shortage of labor, and the insecurity of social rank, Virginia's colonial government tried to reinforce its authority by regulating the labor and sexuality of English servants and by making legal distinctions between English and African women. This practice, along with making slavery hereditary through the mother, contributed to the cultural shift whereby women of African descent assumed from lower-class English women both the burden of fieldwork and the stigma of moral corruption. Brown's analysis extends through Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, an important juncture in consolidating the colony's white male public culture, and into the eighteenth century. She demonstrates that, despite elite planters' dominance, wives, children, free people of color, and enslaved men and women continued to influence the meaning of race and class in colonial Virginia. "Kathleen Brown examines the origins of racism and slavery in British North America from the perspective of gender. Both a basic social relationship and a model for other social hierarchies, gender helped determine the construction of racial categories and the institution of slavery in Virginia. But the rise of racial slavery also transformed gender relations, including ideals of masculinity. In response to the presence of Indians, the shortage of labor, and the insecurity of social rank, Virginia's colonial government tried to reinforce its authority by regulating the labor and sexuality of English servants and by making legal distinctions between English and African women. This practice, along with making slavery hereditary through the mother, contributed to the cultural shift whereby women of African descent assumed from lower-class English women both the burden of fieldwork and the stigma of moral corruption. Brown's analysis extends through Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, an important juncture in consolidating the colony's white male public culture, and into the eighteenth century. She demonstrates that, despite elite planters' dominance, wives, children, free people of color, and enslaved men and women continued to influence the meaning of race and class in colonial Virginia." -- Publisher's description Cover 1 Contents 12 Acknowledgments 8 Illustrations and Tables 14 Abbreviations and Notes on the Text 16 Introduction 18 PART I. GENDER FRONTIERS 28 1. Gender and English Identity on the Eve of Colonial Settlement 30 2. The Anglo-Indian Gender Frontier 59 3. "Good Wives" and "Nasty Wenches": Gender and Social Order in a Colonial Settlement 92 PART II. ENGENDERING RACIAL DIFFERENCE 122 4. Engendering Racial Difference, 1640-1670 124 5. Vile Rogues and Honorable Men: Nathaniel Bacon and the Dilemma of Colonial Masculinity 154 6. From "Foul Crimes" to "Spurious Issue": Sexual Regulation and the Social Construction of Race 204 7. "Born of a Free Woman": Gender and the Politics of Freedom 229 PART III. CLASS AND POWER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 262 8. Marriage, Class Formation, and the Performance of Male Gentility 264 9. Tea Table Discourses and Slanderous Tongues: The Domestic Choreography of Female Identities 300 10. Anxious Patriarchs 336 Afterword 384 Notes 488 Index 490 A 490 B 491 C 493 D 495 E 495 F 496 G 497 H 497 I 499 J 499 K 500 L 500 M 501 N 503 O 503 P 504 Q 506 R 506 S 507 T 509 U 510 V 510 W 510 Y 513