Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789 [Hardcover]

Cornelia Hughes Dayton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1995

Women before the Bar is the first study to investigate changing patterns of women's participation in early American courts across a broad range of legal actions—including proceedings related to debt, divorce, illicit sex, rape, and slander. Weaving the stories of individual women together with systematic analysis of gendered litigation patterns, Cornelia Dayton argues that women's relation to the courtroom scene in early New England shifted from one of integration in the mid-seventeenth century to one of marginality by the eve of the Revolution.

Using the court records of New Haven, which originally had the most Puritan-dominated legal regime of all the colonies, Dayton argues that Puritanism's insistence on godly behavior and communal modes of disputing initially created unusual opportunities for women's voices to be heard within the legal system. But women's presence in the courts declined significantly over time as Puritan beliefs lost their status as the organizing principles of society, as legal practice began to adhere more closely to English patriarchal models, as the economy became commercialized, and as middle-class families developed an ethic of privacy. By demonstrating that the early eighteenth century was a crucial locus of change in law, economy, and gender ideology, Dayton's findings argue for a reconceptualization of women's status in colonial New England and for a new periodization of women's history.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Finely crafted. . . . Tackles questions that have long engaged feminist historians and other scholars interested in women and the law.

Signs

A book that will engage readers for a long time to come.

Law and History Review

An ambitious, well-written, meticulously researched, and tremendously successful book.

Reviews in American History

Women Before the Bar is already indispensable in my women's history courses.

Linda K. Kerber, author of Toward an Intellectual History of Women

One of the most insightful accounts of early American legal culture in years.

Choice --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press; 1st edition, edition (December 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807822442
• ISBN-13: 978-0807822449
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,985,976 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unique study with great argument, March 12, 2001

By 

"nuclearmse" (Oxford, OH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789 (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American Hist) (Paperback)

Dayton's book argues that, in terms of courtroom cases, women in colonial Connecticut fared better under Puritan legal ideas than later when the laws became more like those in England. She takes the reader through five kinds of cases that involved women to show the changes in the law over time. Her style is easy to read, and she uses anecdotes about specific cases to illustrate her points. A very unique study, unlike any that I have encountered in colonial American history.