Women, Gender, Families, and Households in the Southern Colonies

r AMILY, GENDER, AND HOUSEHOLD RELATIONSHIPS ASSUME CENTER STAGE in fictional portrayals of southern life from Absalom, Absalom to Steel Magnolias. By contrast, historians showed little interest in these topics until recently, and good work was especially wanting for the colonial era. Julia Cherry Spruill's landmark book, Women*s Life and Work in the Southern Colonies, and Edmund S. Morgan's brief Virginians at Home were isolated early attempts to address this deficiency. Largely descriptive, both books offered useful and often compelling portraits of women and domestic life, particularly among the gentry, but neither elicited scholarly debate or further study.1 Happily the historiography of women, gender, family, and house holds now is flourishing, and the contributions of historians of the southern colonies have been especially valuable. Three trends are par ticularly noteworthy. First, recent historians, informed by the quanti tative social histories of the 1970s and 1980s, increasingly have gravitated toward the more qualitative methodologies and approaches of what was once called the new cultural history. Second, because cultural historians seek to discern meaning in texts, actions, and social exchanges, the study of gender?a cultural construct that shapes the identities and lived experiences of women and men alike?has increas ingly complemented and, in some instances, displaced social histori ans' more specific focus on women's history.2 Third, while historians

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• Bibliography of Books and Articles Published in English on Colonialism and Imperialism in 2007

  Marcella Fultz•Journal of Colonialism and…•2008

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• The Price of Nationhood

  Gary B Nash, Jean B Lee•The William and Mary Quarterly•1995

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