okay so let's look at the major overarching themes of this time period of the early modern world in relation to women so we have this idea of the gender Frontier from Kathleen Brown that this is the meeting of two or or more culturally specific systems of knowledge about gender and nature so you have different cultures meeting and maybe not their systems are different right and so they don't maybe don't understand each other right and so they may they and those cultures might understand women in different ways that they might have different roles for women right so that's kind of a really high level theme so a more specific theme for example is marriage right so Europeans in general at this time the early modern period negotiated at least among Elite people uh negotiated marriage for family Advantage right there was an economic Advantage the bride brings a dowry and brings wealth to the husband who then has control over that wealth um wasn't necessarily marriage for love even though that had been sort of an elite ideal in the medieval period and certainly still existed in this period but it was less of a of a important aspect of marriage among Elite people um generally speaking Europeans uh enforced monogamy through the law the eldest male son inherited the most of the property of the family so it's patrilineal the father is what matters in that structure right um there was um laws there were laws against bigamy a plural marriage or spousal abandonment that really enforced this idea of two people in a monogamous marriage um similarly divorce was uncommon right so there was a cultural social emphasis on the stability of marriage in the colonies the European colonies there was lack of access to this kind of formal marriage structure for everyday people you might have um the bands being called for the public announcing of Mayor of plan to marriage so that anyone could come and say nope that person is actually already married or there's some other reason why they shouldn't marry so specifically in England if we think about those that culture that society and their colonies women could not hold property generally speaking um there's this idea of coverture right that women are legally subsumed they're they are when they marry or or even with their father before they're married he has that legal control over her and she is not a legal individual in a certain sense um and so that's control as well not just legally but over economically over their property um for example a widow her husband dies she because she brought a dowry into the marriage so a dowry is this money and property that she then brings to the marriage she gets a third of her husband's estate because of that Dowry that supports her the rest of her life right so women do get some property but generally speaking um anything that they own is typically given to the man right so for example in the Virginia Company which settled the colony of Virginia women got a dowry right um or women with a dowry rather got free transportation to that colony from England that she could choose a husband um and this Dowry this this transportation and this situation was paid back by her husband um Virginia in Virginia women could own land as an incentive to get women to come and colonize and widows in that Colony typically inherited more than women did in England right so the colony you get to study this picture that the colonies are a little more free for women in in these terms um if Spain is sort of a counter example to England where women really kept their own property um uh if they were married their New Wealth was held jointly right they had more legal rights so it's a it's a it's a two contrasting cultures of societies in Europe among indigenous people and West Africans very generally um marriages was negotiated by individuals it was not this sort of elite family um uh structure there was polygamy or plural marriage among Elite people Everyday People typically were monogamous um a lot of the societies were matrilineal so it matters who your mother is not the father being in control of of uh the family line um there was more flexibility in terms of being separate right uh not really a divorce but something similar right very generally speaking West enslaved Africans in North America had no access to marriage legally they would carry on their own ceremonies where we get this Jumping the Broom custom um they could not intermarry with other races um although we'll see an exception to that with the Spanish they really had no legal protection for their families children wives husbands could all be separated sold to other enslavers and they could not own property so they couldn't inherit anything right um and we'll see there's some exceptions to their status but typically if your mother was enslaved you were born enslaved in the context of North America another sort of broad theme from the early modern period that we're looking at is labor right so there's a very big contrast again between European women in the colonies and Indigenous and African women so European women ideally were domestic people they did work but it was um taking care of the home creating food child rearing gardening but not farming right they did participate in the market economy so for example women would often be Brewers and would sell beer or cheese that they created right and the reality is that they did perform farm work when it was needed right so this we have we have to be careful to distinguish between the ideals of the society and the reality and then indigenous and African women generally speaking um did a lot of agricultural labor as well as that domestic work and child rearing and then the men engaged in hunting and fishing um that's typical with the indigenous groups in particular and so to Europeans this is one of those um Frontiers that conflict and World Views right Europeans thought hunting was for fun it was not for food as much right so they were eating domesticated animals and hunting was an elite luxury sort of um Recreation so they looked at indigenous men doing this hunting and fishing and said well they're not doing any work right and look at these women who were doing all of this farm work right so they were um using these disgendered divisions of labor to make um to judge and differentiate People based on race and status they took this to an even farther degree when they looked at especially women's bodies so English writers and explorers and colonizers are interacting with native women and saying Well they um their bodies are different than European women right so they thought that they typically had no pain in childbirth and they the reality of this is that they were for example the Algonquian women in the northeast of North America would seclude themselves to give birth and their culture may have focused on emotional control of not showing um pain and suffering and so to the English that made them look different you know this idea of pain and childbirth um was an interpretation from the Christian Bible that it was the curse of Eve right and so these women are not showing that curse of pain so maybe they are not the same as maybe they're not even human women right so the thinking kind of was othering them um maybe they are monstrous right so there was this focus on women's breasts and you can see this image where a woman is moving her breast up so that the baby can suckle over her shoulder right um so there's they're thinking that this is wrong right this is very weird to them men's bodies look different too Native American men's bodies you know indigenous men didn't typically have beards right and that was a sign of being a man and being a mature man in European culture so they had different ideas of masculinity and femininity and again distinguishing people racially through their physicality and then of course religion was a big theme it's always been a theme in human existence right and I won't go all over all these details in the slide but generally speaking Europeans at this point are Christian uh the Europeans that are colonizing in North America I mean we can talk about examples of Jews and Muslims that came to North America but the vast majority are Christian um their World Views involve the biblical stories of Adam and Eve in terms of people right and human existence women are again punished from Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden with pain and childbirth but yet you have this picture of Mary among Catholics uh being highly idealized um you have uh protestantism having some a level of more spiritual equality between men and women women Puritan women typically had high literacy rates and we'll talk about that more in another lecture but all of these Christian religions are very um patriarchal right the men are in charge so they have they control the views of women indigenous Americans and West Africans typically had polytheistic religions where there are multiple forms of deities um and many of those deities are are women right so there's a role for women in their religions as well in ceremonies and being priestesses for example so a very different um perspective on religion among these groups that are meeting at this colonial Frontier so to sum up right we have big themes of of marriage of Labor religion ideas about bodies and what they symbolize and and their and how they're used and these are ways that Europeans Drew lines of difference between them and these others that they were interacting with from North America and Native people in North America and from enslaved Africans being brought to North America