Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789

by Cornelia Hughes Dayton

Book Overview

Women before the Bar is the first study to investigate changing patterns of women's participation in early American courts across a broad range of legal actions--including proceedings related to debt, divorce, illicit sex, rape, and slander. Weaving the stories of individual women together with systematic analysis of gendered litigation patterns, Cornelia Dayton argues that women's relation to the courtroom scene in early New England shifted...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807845612
• ISBN13: 9780807845615
• Release Date: December 1995
• Publisher: Omohundro Institute and Unc Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Unique study with great argument

Dayton's book argues that, in terms of courtroom cases, women in colonial Connecticut fared better under Puritan legal ideas than later when the laws became more like those in England. She takes the reader through five kinds of cases that involved women to show the changes in the law over time. Her style is easy to read, and she uses anecdotes about specific cases to illustrate her points. A very unique study, unlike any that I have encountered in colonial American history.