Description
Book SynopsisThe year 2000 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of A Little Commonwealth by Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar John Demos. This groundbreaking study examines the family in the context of the colony founded by the Pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower. Basing his work on physical artifacts, wills, estate inventories, and a variety of legal and official enactments, Demos portrays the family as a structure of roles and relationships,emphasizing those of husband and wife, parent and child, and master and servant. Through the use of a life cycle perspective, he shows the familys influence upon the development of individual personality. The books most startling insights come from a reconsideration of commonly-held views of American Puritans and of theways in which they dealt with one another. Demos concludes that Puritan repression was not as strongly directed against sexuality as against the expression of hostile and aggressive impulses, and he shows how this pattern reflecte
Trade Review"[A Little Commonwealth makes] our forebears come alive, not as cute, little democratic wind-up toys useful for indoctrinating children and Fourth of July speeches, but as irascible, intolerant, undemocratic, but real and fascinating human beings."--Commonweal "Demos writes with great charm, his easy, relaxed style having much muscle underneath."--National Review "One of the finest pieces of local history that I have read in years....Because Demos writes clear, terse, flowing prose, his book will be a delight to the general reader as well as the scholar....[His] portrait of family life is captivating."--Saturday Review
