Colonial Error: The Colonial Family

The plantation owners (normally rich white men) relied on their wife, daughters and a person of color (normally a Native American/African American person) to do their work for them to work and manage while the owners were gone. One of the most remarkable women of this time was a woman named Margaret Brent. In America’s Women, Collins states: “Virtually all the colonial women wanted to marry but when they did, they were automatically stripped of their legal rights. Brent was an unmarried woman who “virtually ran the colony of Maryland during a crisis” (12). Brent and her sister were unmarried, so they could own all the land that they wanted.

Plantations were spread out from each other along the regions rivers, and with every plantation conducting its own manufacture, sales and distribution, there was very little chance for the Virginians to create a more communal society. Plantation owners controlled large groups of bondsmen working in the fields controlled by overseers, and women served as house servants for the plantation masters. Most of these women were sexually abused by their masters and penalized with longer terms of service if they happen to bare illegitimate children. Because of disease, living conditions and harsh treatment 40% of the servants did not survive their terms of service. 1.

Despite the stigma of the wives to be extra mouths to feed, ¬many of these wives would make the food, soap, clothes, and even shoes for not only her family, but also to sell to other families in the area. Alongside this, the wives were employed to take care of the dairies, teach the slave women and girls how to spin thread, make cloth, and act as midwives and nurses to any and all peoples on the plantation. Because of this extra activity and larger role on the plantation, many of the women worked alongside their husbands, rather than beneath. (Sandy 488). For many of these couples, the role of both the man and the women created the perfect training period before they could save up enough money to buy their own land and hire their own slaves.

When one considers historical development from 1607-1865 in what eventually became the United States of America, it is though the unraveling of a detrimental marriage was being enforced with people. In this marriage Great Britain is the groom, The thirteen colonies is the wife, indentured servants is the wife’s child, and Native Americans are the towns peopleeople of African descent are the foster children. The colonial (chiefs) are the marriage counselors. North Atlantic ocean is the land they occupied.

Most women that were captured by the Natives prized their new lifestyle and the way they were treated. The Natives’ lifestyle was different from the Chesapeakes’ and the Puritans’ lifestyle. Essentially, females spent most of their time with other females and their children in

Colonial Women, North & South As the settlements in the North and South began to develop throughout the colonial period (seventeenth century), the experiences of northern women and southern women began to differentiate due to contrasting economic systems, survival imbalances, and dissimilar prominence of religion. Despite the differences between the North and South, some themes remained similar and consistent throughout the colonies, such as gender imbalance and the importance of marital status. One main factor that differentiated northern women’s lives from southern women’s lives was the significant differences between their northern and southern economic systems.

The southern and mid-Atlantic colonies varied in different was that included the methods and reasons in which they were founded, their economic systems and their family life. “The methods and reasons for founding” The colonies all shared certain elements. Colonies formed in America to bring in revenue to England. Success depended on harmonious relationships with the Native Americans or the elimination of said individuals.

Surprisingly, Native American women had more freedom than the white women in the Chesapeake, Middle Colonies, or New England region. Some Native American women were given rights such as controlling land, political power, marriage and divorce in choice. There were matrilineal kinship system, in fact, marriage was not the most top rite of passage for them. The author covers around the 1600s- 1800s century time period while focusing on mainly white women but also women of color.

On March 25, 1584, Queen Elizabeth of England, granted Sir Walter Raleigh a charter for the colonization of North America. Raleigh created an expedition led by Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe to explore the east coast of North America. They did not know that the next month would be something that stayed in the history books, for years to come. Over the next year they would travel the Atlantic in search of the new land. At the time they arrived it had come several months later on the 4th of July.

A colonial wife had no legal rights but for single women or widows they could run their own business. They were normally married by the age of 13 or 14. They were treated as the inside caretakers.

Slaves were views as property and in the Southern States property could not enter into a contract, and marriage is a well known contract. The fact that they could not legally marry meant that a permanent family could not be guaranteed under the American Slave life. Enslave black couples used old African traditions to unite the families. One of the most well known acts of pledging their love for one another was “Jumping the Broom”. (Braddy 1)

Because of this, many women were able to become more involved in domestic family matters: cooking, cleaning, and caring for children (Digital History 1). They were able to spend as much time in the field as they wanted and work as hard as they felt necessary without fearing punishment (McPherson 104). Their only punishment in this situation would be crops not succeeding as much as possible. This would lead to the family not receiving as much money from the landowner. This system was also beneficial to blacks because it did allow them to make money, even if it was not really enough (Macy 32).

In the colonies marriage was a bit different than those in England. White women were reserved the same rights as free black women during this time. The legal presence of women did not exist while married. Men controlled everything by law. Women were under the man 's protection and controlled all the finances even if they belonged to the women.

The development of slavery and self-government in the Americas from the colonial to the revolutionary period presents two main contradictions which are important not in setting the stage for the American Revolution but also help to establish division between the colonies after the Revolution leading into the Civil War. While one contradiction applies exclusively to the Northern colonies, the other applies to all the colonies and is a key factor leading up to the American Revolution. For the New England colonies, the contradiction between the development of slavery and self-government lies behind the reason these colonies were developed. Around 1608, the Separatists, beginning to receive more hostility from the Anglican Church and government

If Things Fall Apart had been written is a different time, how and why might it differ? Chinua Achebe, the author of the post-colonial novel Things Fall Apart, founded a Nigerian literary movement which wrote about the traditional oral culture of its indigenous peoples in the 1950’s. Achebe sought to convey understanding of this culture in response to novels, such as Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, which portray native Africans as primitive, socially backward and language-less. In his novel, Achebe shatters the stereotypical European litera-ture in which Africans are described as primitive and mindless savages. "The writer cannot be excused from the task of re-education and regeneration that must be done.