Virtuous and Violent Women of Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts
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A01=Emily C.K. Romeo
Author_Emily C.K. Romeo
Category=JBFK
Category=NHK
Category=NHT
colonial justice and punishment
Colonial Massachusetts
Colonial New England
colonial property disputes
Colonial Studies
Colonial Women
colonial women violence
colonial-era female autonomy
court records colonial women
daily life Puritan Massachusetts
domestic violence Puritan era
early American crime
eighteenth century Massachusetts
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Essex County history
everyday conflict Puritan culture
female aggression colonial America
female criminality early America
female violence in defense of property
Gender and Violence
gender and violence in early America
gendered expectations colonial life
hidden acts of women's defiance
hidden histories of women
history of women's transgression
indigenous conflict colonial women
Massachusetts Bay Colony women
moral boundaries colonial society
Puritan community tensions
Puritan family dynamics
Puritan legal archives
Puritan society gender roles
Puritan women's resistance
secret histories colonial women
seventeenth century New England
social norms colonial Massachusetts
subversive actions colonial women
unspoken priorities colonial society
violence and piety colonial culture
Violence in America
witchcraft and gendered violence
women and authority colonial period
women and community discipline
women and law New England
women and witch trials New England
women challenging expectations
women in frontier conflicts
women in Indian Wars
women negotiating power early America
women protecting family honor
women's reputation and honor
women's role in maintaining order
women's strategies of survival
women's use of force
Product details
- ISBN 9781625345134
- Weight: 365g
- Dimensions: 144 x 218mm
- Publication Date: 28 Aug 2020
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Dismantling the image of the peaceful and serene colonial goodwife and countering the assumption that New England was inherently less violent than other regions of colonial America, Emily C. K. Romeo offers a revealing look at acts of violence by Anglo-American women in colonial Massachusetts, from the everyday to the extraordinary. Using Essex County as a case study, Romeo deftly utilizes seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources to demonstrate that Puritan women, both ""virtuous"" and otherwise, learned to negotiate the shifting boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable violence in their daily lives and communities.
The Virtuous and Violent Women of Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts shows that more dramatic violence by women -- including infanticide, the scalping of captors during the Indian Wars, and even witchcraft accusations -- was not necessarily intended to challenge the structures of authority but often sprung from women's desire to protect property, safety, and standing for themselves and their families. The situations in which women chose to flout powerful social conventions and resort to overt violence expose the underlying, often unspoken, priorities and gendered expectations that shaped this society.
The Virtuous and Violent Women of Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts shows that more dramatic violence by women -- including infanticide, the scalping of captors during the Indian Wars, and even witchcraft accusations -- was not necessarily intended to challenge the structures of authority but often sprung from women's desire to protect property, safety, and standing for themselves and their families. The situations in which women chose to flout powerful social conventions and resort to overt violence expose the underlying, often unspoken, priorities and gendered expectations that shaped this society.
Emily C. K. Romeo is visiting assistant professor of history at DePaul University.
