American Women: Dolls, Drudges, Heroines and Helpmates

I read zillions of books each year, and most pass by with only a momentary notice.  However, I'm reading one now which keeps revealing new gems each day.  It's Gail Collins book, "American Women, 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines".  Here are just a few highlights of what I've gleaned from the book:

Don't emigrate to the New World in the 17th century if you're a woman, even though every colony tried every means to attract woman emigrants.  Your survival rate was dismal.  Here's an example:  Of 6000 emigrants to the Chesapeake Bay area, after a year only 1200 were alive.  The good news is if you are one of the lucky survivors, you could be a full partner with your husband, father, uncle or brother because it took everyone pulling 100% to survive.   The odds were you would outlive your husband and inherit all his property since your children were still minors.  Thus, American women gained unheard of economic clout.

Most women's backs never had any support in the 1600s - most American households had one chair with a back - reserved, of course, for the head of the household. This is where the term 'chairman' comes from.  It only took 300 years for us to change that designation to 'chairperson'.  
  
If you wait until the 18th century to emigrate, survival rates are actually better for American women than in the old country, but, alas, the wide open opportunities for women shut down.  Husbands are no longer dying quite so young, and properties instead of passing into the hands of surviving wives are passing directly to grown children.  Women are relegated back to the kitchen from the fields, the woods, and commerce.

18th century woman still worked themselves to death on a regular basis.  While most no longer worked in the fields (except poor Southern women), the domestic chores were actually harder, more repetitive, and endless.  In addition to regular housework, women bore children, nursed them, cared for them, made candles, bread, soap, made clothes, cooked, butchered, gardened, but the most hated domestic chore of the 18th century?  Spinning.  Imagine your life without cloth.  Every thread of every cloth garment especially in America had to be 'spun' from usually wool or flax.  A woman who spent a day 'spinning' could easily walk 20 miles doing the chore.  Imported pre-made cloth was an instant success.  Duh.

The most dominate factor in a colonial woman's life was child bearing.  The average woman married before the age of 20 and had seven children.  The most important woman in any colonial community was a midwife.  A skillful midwife could easily mean the difference between life and death for a woman.  Even so, in the 1700's roughly 20% of New England women died in childbirth with that figure higher in the South.  Gail Collins comments, "In an era when masculine bravery was celebrated, it was actually the women who stared down death on a regular basis."

How colonial women handled their menstruation  is still a mystery.  Talking about this was a huge colonial taboo.  We know women didn't wear underpants, and cloth was such a premium, it's possible they either used moss like the Indians to catch their monthly flow, or just cleaned up as the day progressed.  Colonial women didn't menstruate as frequently as modern women due to almost constant pregnancy, nursing, and poor diets. Still, what mess!

18th century, upper class women are being transformed from the hard working, fecund partners to slender, pretty gentlewoman.  I loved this poem by an 18th century physician:  "They braced my aunt against a board to make her straight and tall.  They laced her up, starved her down, to make her light and small.

Clothing in the 1700s became more and more restrictive among upper class women:  Corsets, hoops, many layers of clothes, wood high heel shoes mounted on "patterns" (wooden or metal blocks to keep the shoes out of the mud).  Wearing patterns on your shoes became tantamount to walking on stilts.  In addition, for outdoor wear there were gloves and masks or veils over the face.

An interesting point the author makes:  American society is sending two messages to women in the 1700s:  Marry, and be a super efficient household manager, and do it without your husband ever noticing that you are working constantly.  However, to prepare for this life of labor upper class young women lead a life of refined restricted leisure almost to the point of immobility.  The late 18th century female ideal was fragile, fair, not very bright, and certainly not interested in public affairs.  Then, as always, comes a war (The Revolutionary War) and women have to be part of the struggle or the colonies won't win.  All the 'rules' are suddenly suspended.  As men went off to fight, survival of the family is dependent on these 'not very bright' women taking over farms, businesses, and learning how to make do as the flow of pre-manufactured goods ceases.  

As always, American women rise to the occasion, and at the cessation of hostilities, their gains in personal freedom and economic power wither away.  

Next time:  The 19th century.  

I know some of you just suffer through my American history lectures, but this is my blog and American history is something I've intensely interested in.  Buck up.....There are only two more centuries to go.