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Image And Reality In The Lives Of Women In Northern New England

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During the colonial era, women played a large role in the household as well as society. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich provides a monograph Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650-1750, analyzing the role of women. Within her story, the true underlying message is that women were not just the average housewives that cooked and cleaned. Ulrich proves that women have done more during this time period than live a domestic lifestyle. It is evident that Ulrich divides the book into three different themes. By doing so she categorizes the different roles of women between 1650-1750. Ulrich uses biblical figures from the bible to represent that women had a greater role in this world. Each part of the book represents …show more content…

The first sentence of the book immediately stood out because it addresses the stereotype that society put women into at that time, “A woman’s environment was the family dwelling, and the yard or yards surrounding it” (Ulrich 13). The reader now knows that a woman’s duties during this time period were strictly confined to the house and nowhere else. However, it is astounding to realize that a woman can learn most of her trades during this time period from the house. It is true that during this time period women were the epicenter of trade it is even stated in the bible, “She is a skilled manufacturer, ‘She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.’ She is a hard-working agriculturist: ‘With the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.’ She is a resourceful trader: ‘She is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar’” (14). Even in the Bible, Bathsheba is a willful woman that provides trade, food, and clothing, which sets the scene that all women during this time were similar to her. The plants that women grew, the clothes they sewn, and the trade they conducted provided for a strong trade background to start the colony on their feet and create a trade powerhouse. Women during this time are completely underestimated for their hard work and abilities. Some fail to remember that they have to do this, as well as raising their children and maintaining the home and helped

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In her article, “Three Inventories, Three Households”, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich argues that women’s work was crucial not simply for subsistence but that “women were essentials in the seventeenth century for the very same reasons they are essentials today-for the perpetuation of the race” (Ulrich 51). She believes, women were expected to do everything. They were not only to take care of the children, but they were also cook, clean, raise the greens and ranches. Mainly, women plays important role for the survival and continuation of life.

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