Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750

This enthralling work of scholarship strips away abstractions to reveal the hidden-and not always stoic-face of the 'goodwives' of colonial America. In this book we encounter the awesome burdens-and the considerable power-of a New England housewife's domestic life and witness her occasional forays into the world of men. We see her borrowing from her neighbors, loving her husband, raising-and, all too often, mourning-her children, and even attaining fame as a heroine of frontier conflicts or notoriety as a murderess. Painstakingly researched, lively with scandal and homely detail, Good Wives is history at its best.