A. What were the rights of English colonial women before the American Revolution? How did factors such as age, marital status, and parenthood alter these rights? In your answer describe how and why did the rights of English colonial women in Massachusetts Bay, the Chesapeake Bay, and Pennsylvania colonies differed. How did Puritanism’s emphasis on an orderly society (happy families, fathers with authority, and male inheritance) affect the lives of women specifically in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (you may wish to mention Ann Hutchinson and Ann Hibbins as examples)? How did parallel concerns in the Chesapeake Bay colonies (the needs to define the rules of orderly inheritance, to control slave populations, and to protect the authority of landed men) affect women in the Chesapeake? How did Quaker beliefs about the inherent equality ow women’s souls to men’s affect woman’s experiences in Pennsylvania?
B. Linda Brent wrote. “Slavery is terrible for men, but it is far more terrible for women, “Describe the lives of women slaves in the United States, focusing on their work in house, field and factory; family life; and resistance. How did gender shape their experiences? What was the main impact of the United States Congress’s passage of the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 on the lives of women slaves and free women of color in the American states which had not by then abolished slavery? How does Linda Brent/ Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl illustrate this impact? (Be sure to mention and define partus sequitur ventrem or partus in your answer.
C. What were the differences between a family or household economy and a wage economy? How did Martha Ballard’s family reflect the family economy? What caused the transition from a family economy to a wage economy, and how did this change affect the lives of these women? In order to examine the impact of industrialization on women, describe the lives of working women in Lowell Mills. Why did women choose to go to Lowell? How were their lives regulated there? How did the experience of the “Lowell Plan” affect their lives? How did the “Speed- Up lead to the emergence of labor radicalism among the workers at Lowell? How do these workers use liberty rhetoric to support their cause in the strikes of 1834 and 1836? What were the legacies of those strikes
