The Woman’s Role in American Colonial Society: Religion and Family

Two noted women’s historians Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Elaine Forman Crane analyze the role of women in colonial society and explore the gender issues present in colonial society in their books Good Wives: Images and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650-1750 and Ebb Tide in New England: Women, Seaports, and Social Change, 1630-1800 respectively. Crane, as suggested by the title of her book, views the colonial time period as one of regression, whereas Ulrich’s perspective on the woman’s role is positive. Ulrich argues that women held a significant purpose in colonial towns through the numerous roles they maintained. Through close analysis of religion, the family, and the relation they have in the patriarchal hierarchy, both authors identify and explain the function women held in New England colonial culture.

Colonial society is undeniably patriarchal. "Males exercised the ultimate authority" in the public sphere that prohibited women from experiencing eq...