This enthralling work of scholarship strips away abstractions to reveal the hidden--and not always stoic--face of the goodwives of colonial America. In these pages we encounter the awesome burdens--and the considerable power--of a New England housewife's domestic life and witness...
Good Wives rescues our Puritan foremothers from anonymity by telling their astonishing real life stories. Idealized as meek, patient, prayerful, and other-worldly, these New England women emerge from Ulrich's study as hard-working traders, diplomatic negotiators in the Indian...