DOC NCO Guide by Robert S. Rush USA in History

Description

Marital status was a fundamental legal and cultural feature of women's identity in the eighteenth century. Free women who were not married could own property and make wills; contracts; and court appearances; rights that the law of coverture prevented their married sisters from enjoying. Karin Wulf explores the significance of marital status in this account of unmarried women in Philadelphia; the largest city in the British colonies. In a major act of historical reconstruction; Wulf draws upon sources ranging from tax lists; censuses; poor relief records; and wills to almanacs; newspapers; correspondence; and poetry in order to recreate the daily experiences of women who were never-married; widowed; divorced; or separated. With its substantial population of unmarried women; eighteenth-century Philadelphia was much like other early modern cities; but it became a distinctive proving ground for cultural debate and social experimentation involving those women. Arguing that unmarried women shaped the city as much as it shaped them; Wulf examines popular literary representations of marriage; the economic hardships faced by women; and the decisive impact of a newly masculine public culture in the late colonial period.