Common Whores, Vertuous Women, and Loveing Wives: Free Will Christian Women in Colonial Maryland

Religion in North America

by Debra Meyers

Religious conflicts had a pronounced effect on women and their families in early modern England, but our understanding of that impact is limited by the restrictions that prevented the open expression of religious beliefs in the post-Reformation years. More can be gleaned by shifting our focus to the New World, where gender relations and family formations were largely unhampered by the unsettling political and religious climate of England. In Maryland, English Arminian Catholics, Particular Baptists, Presbyterians, Puritans, Quakers, and Roman Catholics lived and worked together for most of the 17th century. By closely examining thousands of wills and other personal documents, as well as early Maryland's material culture, this transatlantic study depicts women's place in society and the ways religious values and social arrangements shaped their lives. Common Whores, Vertuous Women, and Loveing Wives takes a revisionist approach to the study of women and religion in colonial Maryland and adds considerably to our understanding of the social and cultural importance of religion in early America.

264 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2003

Reviews

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Straight-forward, interesting argument, and quite short. However, I dislike the title. Mostly because the title implies association with Kathleen Brown's Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs, and yet the book has nothing to do with it in style or content. It's also quite limited in time and place. Nowhere does Meyers explain which counties she's using, and it's not until the end of the book that the timespan become clear. It's a clear argument, but it raised too many questions for me to give it five stars. She compares Maryland to England- but includes lots of non-English Marylanders in her study, were they English in culture? She argues for the development of ties between Free-Willers and Predestinarians, but doesn't allow for change over time. So, were these ties inherent, or were they new? I don't wish this was a separate book, I just wish she had explored the implications of her own work more.

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looks at differing views of women and their roles in society based n differences in religious beliefs. To wit: pre-destinarian Calvinists (incl. Presbyterians, et al.) thought of women as the weaker vessel and similar to children. Free will believers, Armenian Anglicans, Quakers, Roman Catholics, generally thought of women as "yoke mates" and equal to the task of asset management. 1st half of book mainly about religion. most of info based on wills and last testaments.