Colonies and Revolution

The English concept of the ideal colonial woman dominates the modern idea of life in the 1700s. 

She is white. She wears long skirts and covers her hair. She is a housewife, effortlessly caring for home and family. She relies upon her husband to provide what her family needs and to shelter them from the outside world. She is deeply religious and attends services regularly. She is aware of the political and cultural forces that shape the world around her, and she may even have an opinion or two of her own, but she is too modest and well-bred to share her ideas publicly. She submits to the wisdom and authority of the men who run her home, her community, and her colony. She occupies her days with domestic concerns. This ideal, popularized by authors and artists of the period, still influences modern-day thinking about the lives and experiences of colonial women.

The reality as it exists in the historical record is both more complicated and quite fascinating. A closer look at archival materials reveals stories of women of every age, race, class, gender, and sexual identity, all actively engaged in the world around them. Some were activists, political leaders, rebels, philosophers, artists, and business moguls. For those focused on the domestic sphere, their daily tasks were neither easy nor frivolous, and the very survival of their families and communities depended on their mostly unpaid and unacknowledged labor. Women were continuously lectured about their subordination to men, but they found creative and vital ways to subvert these cultural expectations. And when the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, women were as deeply concerned and committed to the cause, on both sides, as the men who are more regularly celebrated in popular history. Women made vital contributions to the war effort, even if they have been regularly overlooked, obscured, or undervalued.

Colonies and Revolution, 1670–1798 is organized into three sections—English Colonies, Spanish and French Colonies, and American Revolution. The first two sections examine the lives of women in colonies across North America, considering how differences in race, class, language, and ethnicity informed individual experience of colonial life. The American Revolution section focuses on women’s experiences in the struggle for independence. The resources in each section have been chosen to illustrate the experiences of a wide range of women, including women who worked in agriculture, participated in politics, ran complex business empires, led their communities through crises, and resisted slavery and colonization with every means at their disposal. Some resources tell inspiring stories of accomplishment and ingenuity, and some force us to confront the oppression and exploitation that women lived with every day. 

This unit works in tandem with Early Encounters, 1492-1734 to offer comprehensive insight into colonial life. Many of the stories explored in this unit have direct antecedents in the preceding unit, and many continue in the next unit, Building a New Nation, 1776-1831. The point here is not to suggest that this century was separate from what came before or what followed but rather that it was a critical turning point, one whose events and ideals came to shape not only American womanhood but American identity and culture more broadly.