Womans Life in Colonial Days

쑸Woman'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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[Transcriber's Note: In the original text, some footnotes were referenced more than once in the text. For clarity, these references have had a letter added to the number, for example, 26a.]

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 to the late Sylvia Brady Holliday, whose untiring investigations of the subject while a student under him contributed much to this book.
C.H.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
--COLONIAL WOMAN AND