Liberty's Daughters

Mary Beth Norton is Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History at Cornell University. She is the author of In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 and the coeditor of 'To Toil the Livelong Day': America's Women at Work, 1780–1980, also from Cornell.

[An] excellent book.... [Norton's] first concern... is to trace the decline of patriarchy; the growth of free choice of a spouse; the rise of marital equality... the greater equality in educational attainments; the more intense concern of parents for the proper education of children; the greater permissiveness in child-rearing; and the increased cooperation between spouses in birth control.... [Her] fascinating documentation, drawn from a vast range of manuscript sources, establishes the facts beyond any reasonable doubt.... Norton suggests that the change resulted from... two factors. The first was the practical experience of women during the long years of revolutionary upheaval.... The second... was the impact of egalitarian and republican ideology.

• PART I: THE CONSTANT PATTERNS OF WOMEN'S LIVES1. The Small Circle of Domestic Concerns2. The Important Crisis upon Which Our Fate Depends3. Fair Flowers, If Rightly Cultivated4. In What Would You Shew Your Activity?5. As Independent as Circumstances Will AdmitPART II: THE CHANGING PATTERNS OF WOMEN'S LIVES6. We Commenced Perfect Statesmen7. Necessity Taught Us 195 8. A Reverence of Self9. Vindicating the Equality of Female IntellectConclusion: A New Era of Female HistoryAbbreviations Appearing in the Sources and ReferencesGlossary of Major Families and SourcesEssay on SourcesChapter ReferencesIndex