Reference no: EM133351888

First Generations: Women in Colonial America

By Carol Berkin

1. What were enslaved women's family lives like? To what extent was there a "slave community"?

2. What was the "Lower South"? What was life like for enslaved women there, and how was it different than in the Chesapeake?

3. What was slavery like in the North? How was it different? In what ways did enslaved people resist their oppressors?

4. What was Eliza Lucas' life like? How was it both similar to and different from colonial women of the previous century? How does Berkin use her example throughout this chapter?

5. What developments, or "shared experiences," helped bring the colonies closer together in the eighteenth century?

6. How did women's class status affect the way they experienced things like the consumer revolution, courtship and marriage, childbirth and infant care, and work?

7. Explain women's relationships with property and wealth. What were dowry and dower, and how did fathers, husbands, and state laws and courts address these issues?

8. What was Grace Growden Galloway's life like? How does Berkin use her story throughout this chapter?

9. Explain women's involvement in each of the "four battlefields" that Berkin says led to revolution--in colonial governments, propaganda, economic sanctions, and street protests.

10. How did the war affect women and how did they respond to the hardships brought about by the war? What about Loyalist women?

11. How and why did "reformers" question women's gender roles after the Revolution? Why was education so important?

12. What was "republican womanhood"? Who created it, what purpose did it serve, who did it apply to, etc.? 32) What did you think of this book overall? What did you learn from it? Would you recommend I use it again? Why?