Regulating Passion

In this book, Kelly A. Ryan offers a carefully researched analysis of the category of patriarchy across a broad sweep of American history. Ryan broadly defines patriarchy to include ‘the authority of men in households, government, economics, sexuality, and religion, and culture’, which permits her to conduct an ‘intersectional analysis’ that uncovers ‘the ways patriarchal practices ordered women, men, poor whites, African American, and Indians as subordinates of gender, class, and race in early America’ (p. 2). Divided into two sections, covering the late colonial and revolutionary and early republican periods respectively, Ryan relies on court and church records from the eastern half of Massachusetts to sketch out the practice of patriarchy in New England’s leading state. The resulting book contributes to a new understanding of the continued divisions created by the regulation of gender and sexuality in early America. In Part One, the author examines the late colonial period for evidence of the regulations that informed patriarchy in Massachusetts. She examines how punishments for fornication and adultery unduly affected women, thus proving a gendered imbalance in the treatment of these particular offences. Ryan stresses the race- and class-based aspects of these disparities to demonstrate a variety of factors in their societal management. In addition to elaborating upon these striations in patriarchy, Ryan complicates the analysis further through the introduction of ‘racialized patriarchy’ (p. 59) among Indians and African Americans as a way for elites to ensure stability, stagnancy, and control over subalterns. In short, patriarchy in colonial Massachusetts reigned supreme

Colonialism · Human sexuality · Patriarchy · Political science · Race (biology · Sociology · Supreme court · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Gender Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law