Womans Life in Colonial Days

Woman's Life in Colonial Days

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Title: Woman's Life in Colonial Days
Author: Carl Holliday
Release Date: March 28, 2005 [EBook #15488]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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WOMAN'S LIFE IN COLONIAL DAYS
CARL HOLLIDAY

Professor of English _San Jose State College, California_
AUTHOR OF
THE WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS, ENGLISH
FICTION FROM THE FIFTH TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, A
HISTORY OF SOUTHERN LITERATURE, THE WRITINGS OF
COLONIAL VIRGINIA, THE CAVALIER POETS, THREE
CENTURIES OF SOUTHERN POETRY, ETC.
CORNER HOUSE PUBLISHERS WILLIAMSTOWN,
MASSACHUSETTS
_First Printed in 1922_ _Reprinted in 1968_ by CORNER HOUSE
PUBLISHERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE
This book is an attempt to portray by means of the writings of colonial
days the life of the women of that period,--how they lived, what their
work and their play, what and how they thought and felt, their strength
and their weakness, the joys and the sorrows of their everyday
existence. Through such an attempt perhaps we can more nearly
understand how and why the American woman is what she is to-day.
For a long time to come, one of the principal reasons for the study of
the writings of America will lie, not in their intrinsic merit alone, but in
their revelations of American life, ideals, aspirations, and social and
intellectual endeavors. We Americans need what Professor Shorey has
called "the controlling consciousness of tradition." We have not
sufficiently regarded the bond that connects our present institutions
with their origins in the days of our forefathers. That is one of the main
purposes of this study, and the author believes that through
contributions of such a character he can render the national intellectual
spirit at least as valuable a service as he could through a study of some

legend of ancient Britain or some epic of an extinct race. As Mr. Percy
Boynton has said, "To foster in a whole generation some clear
recognition of other qualities in America than its bigness, and of other
distinctions between the past and the present than that they are far apart
is to contribute towards the consciousness of a national individuality
which is the first essential of national life.... We must put our minds
upon ourselves, we must look to our past and to our present, and then
intelligently to our future."
The author has endeavored to follow such advice by bringing forward
those qualities of colonial womanhood which have made for the
refinement, the intellectuality, the spirit, the aggressiveness, and withal
the genuine womanliness of the present-day American woman. As the
book is not intended for scholars alone, the author has felt free when he
had not original source material before him to quote now and then from
the studies of writers on other phases of colonial life--such as the
valuable books by Dr. Philip Alexander Bruce, Dr. John Bassett, Dr.
George Sydney Fisher, Charles C. Coffin, Alice Brown, Alice Morse
Earle, Anna Hollingsworth Wharton, and Geraldine Brooks.
The author believes that many misconceptions have crept into the mind
of the average reader concerning the life of colonial women--ideas, for
instance, of unending long-faced gloom, constant fear of pleasure,
repression of all normal emotions. It is hoped that this book will go far
toward clearing the mind of the reader of such misconceptions, by
showing that woman in colonial days knew love and passion, felt
longing and aspiration, used the heart and the brain, very much as does
her descendant of to-day.
For permission to quote from the works mentioned hereafter, the author
wishes to express his gratitude to Sydney G. Fisher and the J.B.
Lippincott Company (_Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Days_),
Ralph L. Bartlett, executor for Charles C. Coffin, (_Old Times in
Colonial Days_), Alice Brown and Charles Scribner's Sons (_Mercy
Warren_), Philip Alexander Bruce and the Macmillan Company
(_Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_), Anne
H. Wharton (_Martha Washington_), John Spencer Bassett (_Writings

of Colonel Byrd_), Alice Earle Hyde (_Alice Morse Earl's Child Life in
Colonial Days_), Geraldine Brooks and Thomas Y. Crowell Company
(_Dames and Daughters of Colonial Days_). The author wishes to
acknowledge his deep indebtedness