Description
Book SynopsisAn enlightening look at American women's work in the late eighteenth century. What was women's work truly like in late eighteenth-century America, and what does it tell us about the gendered social relations of labor in the early republic? In Entangled Lives, Marla R. Miller examines the lives of Anglo-, African, and Native American women in one rural New England communityHadley, Massachusettsduring the town's slow transformation following the Revolutionary War. Peering into the homes, taverns, and farmyards of Hadley, Miller offers readers an intimate history of the working lives of these women and their vital role in the local economy. Miller, a longtime resident of Hadley, follows a handful of eighteenth-century women working in a variety of occupations: domestic service, cloth making, health and healing, and hospitality. She asks about the social openings and opportunities this work createdand the limitations it placed on ordinary lives. Her compelling stories about women's every
Table of ContentsList of Figures
Foreword, by Cathy Matson
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Placings
Part I: Women, Work, and Community
Chapter 1: From Nolwotogg to Hadley
Chapter 2: Women, Work, and the Business of Gentility: The View from Forty Acres
Chapter 3: Women, Work, and "Economies of Makeshifts": The View from the Back Street
Part II: Livelihoods
Chapter 4: Domestic Service
Chapter 5: Making Cloth
Chapter 6: Hospitality Work
Chapter 7: Healing and Caregiving
Part III: Topographies of Change
Chapter 8: Working Women and the Domestic Landscapes of Forty Acres
Chapter 9: New Labor, New Landscapes
Coda: Remembering Women and Work
Abbreviations
Notes
Index
