Good wives, nasty wenches, and anxious patriarchs : gender, race, and power in colonial Virginia / Kathleen M. Brown.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brown, Kathleen M., 1960- author.

Contributor:

Institute of Early American History and Culture (Williamsburg, Va.)

Series:

Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sex role--Virginia--History.

Sex role.

Women--Virginia--Social conditions.

Women.

Social classes--Virginia--History.

Social classes.

Virginia--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

Virginia.

Virginia--Race relations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (513 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill, [North Carolina] ; London, [England] : Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Cover; Contents; Acknowledgments; Illustrations and Tables; Abbreviations and Notes on the Text; Introduction; PART I. GENDER FRONTIERS; 1. Gender and English Identity on the Eve of Colonial Settlement; 2. The Anglo-Indian Gender Frontier; 3. ""Good Wives"" and ""Nasty Wenches"": Gender and Social Order in a Colonial Settlement; PART II. ENGENDERING RACIAL DIFFERENCE; 4. Engendering Racial Difference, 1640-1670; 5. Vile Rogues and Honorable Men: Nathaniel Bacon and the Dilemma of Colonial Masculinity

6. From ""Foul Crimes"" to ""Spurious Issue"": Sexual Regulation and the Social Construction of Race7. ""Born of a Free Woman"": Gender and the Politics of Freedom; PART III. CLASS AND POWER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY; 8. Marriage, Class Formation, and the Performance of Male Gentility; 9. Tea Table Discourses and Slanderous Tongues: The Domestic Choreography of Female Identities; 10. Anxious Patriarchs; Afterword; Notes; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J; K; L; M; N; O; P; Q; R; S; T; U; V; W; Y

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9798890864611

9780807838297

0807838292

9781469600505

1469600501

OCLC:

966768199