Women and Social Change in the 18th Century

I. Major shifts

  • Weakening of patriarchal, communal authority
  • Influence of Enlightenment thought; gradual decline of magical thinking, belief in witches, etc.
  • Growth of fledging cities
  • South: rise of a slave economy
  • Rise of mercantilism/trade/consumer culture
  • For affluent, more leisure time
  • Beginning of remarkable decline in fertility

II. Emergence of cities

  • Boston: 16,000
  • Newport: 11,000
  • NYC: 25,000
  • Philly, 30,000
  • Charleston: 12,000
  • Emergence of stately buildings, banks, etc
  • New elites were importers of manufactured goods

III. Women and urbanization

  • More opportunities for self-sufficiency
    • Jobs such as seamstress, milliner, domestic servant, tavern keeper
    • Though still very difficult
      • Women tailors/seamstresses: Made just over 1/3rd what male tailors made
  • Rise in single women
    • Both never married and widowed but not remarried
      • 20% elite women in Philadelphia unmarried—unusually high rate
    • But not always women’s choice
      • Sex ratio now balanced out
      • And some places lack young men because of warfare with Indians, relocating to frontier

IV. South: Growth of a slave economy

  • Expansion of slavery
    • 1708: 4,000 slaves in SC; by 1740: 40,000
    • Ban on slavery lifted in Georgia: 16,000 slaves by 1700
    • Clearly becoming a region system in this period
      • Southern states had ¾ of all slaves by 1750
  • Decline of indentured servitude
    • Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) raised fears of poor whites and blacks making common cause
  • Slaves in 18th century generally coming straight from Africa (not Caribbean)
  • Intensification of labor; larger plantations
  • Slow beginnings of a slave community with shared culture

V. Rise of a consumer economy

  • “Pretty gentlewoman”
  • Leisure time
    • Growing emphasis on feminine refinement; acquiring ornamental skills
  • More stuff!
    • Homes now have multiple rooms, distinct functions
    • Individual glasses/tankards
    • Furniture; mirrors; portraits; clocks
      • In some ways, increased women’s work.
  • Colonists highly ambivalent about the rise of a more refined society
    • Ambivalence expressed in gendered terms
    • “Genteel”
    • “luxury”
  • Cooking became more complicated; publication of first American cookbooks

VI. Demographic transition

  • Birthrate in the colonies peaks 1740-60
  • Thereafter begins to decline
  • Why? Susan Klepp argues: women drive this “revolution”
    • Embracing revolutionary language of independence, self-determination
  • –Men slow to get on board

VII. Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820)

Born in Gloucester, MA, into a well-off, mercantile family. (Her privilege made her less radical on issue of class than the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft would be.)

Became aware of sexual inequality when she saw how much more care her parents’ paid to her brother’s education. He had a tutor; she was taught basic reading and writing, needlework, domestic skills. But the family owned a good library, and she pursued self-education from a young age.

Raised as a Congregationalist, but as a young woman, she came under the influence of John Murray, a Universalist preacher who embraced a much more liberal, optimistic and forgiving interpretation of Christianity.

Married the merchant John Stevens at 18. In 1773 or 1774, when she was around 23, Murray began to keep her own “letter books,” in which she copied all of her outgoing correspondence. Only such collection we have from an American woman in this period. Shows that she took herself seriously, and that she understood she was living in historically important times. But after her death she was forgotten, and this remarkable collection did not come to light until 1984, when it was discovered by a Universalist minister on an old plantation in Mississippi.

Family fortunes disrupted by the Revolution; she would never again be so affluent as when she had been young. Husband died when she was just 35.

Married Murray in 1788. Pregnant for the first time at 39; child was stillborn, and she almost died. Finally gave birth to a daughter at 41. Fact that she was not constantly caring for children as a young woman probably helps to explain her productivity as a writer of essays, poems, plays, etc. But she did not publish until 1784, when she was 33.

Wrote under pseudonyms, including male ones. Published a book of her collected essays in 1790, The Gleaner, at least in part for the money. First self-published female author in the U.S. Widely read and praised. Shows the influence of Enlightenment thinking. Echoed John Locke in some respects.

Essay “On the Equality of the Sexes” was actually written in 1779, but not published until 1790. Often viewed as the first feminist writing produced by an American woman.

She would later (in 1792-94) argue that women should be educated to support themselves, should this become a necessity. May well have been prompted by her second husband’s death and her increasingly precarious economic circumstances.

Murray spent her last years in Natchez, MS, where her daughter went to live after (secretly) marrying the son of a wealthy planter. The plantation had over 250 slaves—a very different culture than that of New England.