Short Synopsis
Assesses the roles and status of women of early New England in terms of family and community organization, the structure of daily life and work, responsibilities and authority, and more.

Full Synopsis
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.