Details

Subject(s)

• Women—United States—History [Browse]
• Women colonists—United States—History [Browse]
• Sex role—United States—History [Browse]
• Ethics—United States—History [Browse]
• United States—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 [Browse]

Summary note

Ruth Bloch's stellar essays on the origins of Anglo-American conceptions of gender and morality are brought together in this valuable book, which collects six of her most influential pieces in one place for the first time and includes two new essays. The volume illuminates the overarching theme of her work by addressing a basic historical question: Why did the attitudes toward gender and family relations that we now consider traditional values emerge when they did? Bloch looks deeply into eighteenth-century culture to answer this question, highlighting long-term developments in religion, intellectual history, law, and literature, showing that the eighteenth century was a time of profound transformation for women's roles as wives and mothers, for ideas about sexuality, and for notions of female moral authority. She engages topics from British moral philosophy to colonial laws regarding courtship, and from the popularity of the sentimental novel to the psychology of religious revivalism. Lucid, provocative, and wide-ranging, these eight essays bring a revisionist challenge to both women's studies and cultural studies as they ask us to reconsider the origins of the system of gender relations that has dominated American culture for two hundred years.

Notes

Description based upon print version of record.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-215) and index.

Source of description

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

Language note

English

Contents

• Overviews. Theory : culturalist critique of feminist theory (1993). History : untangling the roots of modern sex roles₃ (1978)
• Colonial transitions. Revaluing motherhood : American feminine ideals in transition : the rise of the moral mother, 1785-1815 (1978). Regulating courtship : women and the law of courtship in eighteenth century America (2001). Utilitarian vs. evangelical perspectives : women, love, and virtue in the thought of Edwards and Franklin (1993)
• Revolutionary synthesis. Religion and sentimentalism : religion, literary sentimentalism, and popular revolutionary ideology (1994). Republican virtue : the gendered meanings of virtue in revolutionary America (1987). Public/private : gender and the public/private dichotomy in revolutionary thought.

ISBN

• 1-282-76269-9
• 9786612762697
• 0-520-93647-7
• 1-59734-628-4

OCLC

• 437143968
• 52996716

Doi

• 10.1525/9780520936478

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