Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia

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Summary: An interesting perspective on gender analysis
Review: An insightful approach to gender analysis in colonial virginia, which questions our contemporary categories of race, gender and orientation. A bit longwinded at times, but still worth reading. A good companion for understanding race, religion and gender in the American South.

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Summary: Ambitious...but...
Review: Covering an impressive range of materials, Brown offers an ambitious treatment of later 17th- and 18th- century colonial Virginia from the point of view of the marxist-feminist tetrad: race, gender, sexuality, class. As the book's title tends to suggest, the work is strongest when dealing with the connections between discourses of gender and race (and to a lesser extent, sexuality). The wide scope of the book means, however, that some of the nuances and complexities of these discourses and their connections (and this is particularly true in terms of 'class') remain untraced. A second weakness is that the text lacks wider direction. Perhaps we can excuse the absence of explicit discussion of the study's theoretical assumptions. Less so the failure to engage directly with previous historiography and to 'signpost' clearly the argument being made over 375-odd pp. Subheadings help but only when descriptive; those drawn from primary sources are of little value in guiding the reader.

Rating:
Summary: too much jargon, too far beyond the evidence
Review: Kathleen Brown's examination of 17th and early 18th century Virginia is a commendable attempt to further our understanding of gender and race relations in early American history. "Gender and race," Brown finds, "became intertwined components of the social order in colonial Virginia." (1) Although this study makes significant strides in unearthing the world of free and bonded men and women in early Virginia, many of Brown's conclusions go far beyond the evidence she can muster.
This story is primarily one of definitions, structured so that one can see clearly the gradual but steady consolidation of power by elite white men. These "anxious patriarchs" delineated social relations among whites, blacks and Indians by associating Indians and Africans with field labor and slavery, and by associating women with dependency. "Good wives" were respectable, chaste and dependent members of a male-dominated society. As time went on, planters engendered field work with race, by disassociating white women from it. As the number of enslaved Africans increased, black women became "nasty wenches" who, because of their condition of servitude, could not avoid the labor and sexual exploitation that defined their status. By the 1680s, she shows, taxation of African (but not white) women became the "cornerstone of a concept of womanhood that became less class-specific and increasingly race specific," which allowed for a "more exclusive definition of English womanhood." (128) This concept was further buttressed when Virginia lawmakers in 1662 decreed that children born of unfree mothers were slaves. "The notion that enslaved women could pass their bound condition on to their children," she writes, "strengthened the appearance that slavery was a natural condition for" Africans." (135)
Brown is persuasive in her discussion of Virginia patriarchs, who by the first half of the 18th century had subordinated women to secondary public and private roles. "Outspoken women" of any race were threats to masculine authority, particularly in the form of slander and public immorality. Male power was based not only on "rights to the labor of slaves and servants," (323) but on domination of their wives and daughters as well. "Control over sexual access to women" (323) and a managerial role in marriage arrangements exemplify their position of power, which Brown points out was solidified by slave ownership.
Brown provides many intriguing glimpses into the lives of men and women, slaves and freemen in colonial Virginia, especially with the numerous vignettes unearthed in court records, newspapers and diaries. In a number of instances she makes excellent use of her evidence, such as the case of William Bass, Sr.'s will (242-3), in which Brown finds that an unusual inheritance provision reveals much about how one family self-identified in terms of race. In another case, she uses a sharp decline in white servant court appearances to suggest the rapid expansion of slave labor in Lancaster County. (251)
Nevertheless, several factors combine to make Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs unsatisfying. Many of Brown's chapter introductions are jargon-filled, lack clarity and should have been used as conclusions instead. Furthermore, she bases her thesis primarily on only three Virginia counties (York, Lancaster and Norfolk) and just two planters (William Byrd II and Landon Carter), which perhaps makes for too few resources from which to make many of her often sweeping generalizations. For example, her suggestion that "skin color had yet to acquire much of its moral and political freight" (215) during the late 16th century is based solely on one councilor's commentary in one county.
More troubling is Brown's frequent willingness to make conclusions beyond what the evidence will bear. Her regular use of "may have" in her prose warns of this problem. African females' field work "possibly may have" affected a slave woman's chances for marriage, Brown claims with little support. (126) She bases part of her discussion of 17th century bastardy court cases on "a few shards of evidence." (191) When describing free women and their families, she points to "West African matrifocal residence patterns" in explaining the absence of black males from households-yet fails to elaborate or provide evidence of this alleged trend. (229) Did enslaved women resent serving tea to "young white ladies" in fine homes? (286) Possibly, but Brown produces no documentary evidence to make such a suggestion. Finally, that "English women appear to have managed their sexual activities carefully with an eye toward the future," is unfortunately an all-too-typical speculation. (100)
In addition to making a number of questionable assertions based on limited evidence, Brown also includes enough overly-speculative claims to weaken the book's overall credibility. The contention that women appearing alone in public "threatened to disturb the scripting of male hierarchies" (281) is of debatable veracity, as is the assertion that only when gentlewomen could no longer bear children could they "be granted the freedom to leave the house" as they wished." (282) Her assertion that a newspaper report of a giant cucumber constitutes "implicit phallic imagery" of "colonial masculinity" (329) is not only absurd but is a lapse of historical professionalism as well.
Brown's inventive effort to study colonial Virginia in terms of gender and race is a valuable attempt to look at social constructions in an innovative light and raises as many questions as it answers.