Women in the Era of the American Revolution: The Case of Norwich, Connecticut

Abstract

W TAS the condition of women in eighteenth-century America or deteriorating? Did the Revolution change women's status? One answer emphasizes patriotic activities, contrasting them to worsening legal and household oppression; another is that women's domestic drudgery was lessening and the ideology of the Revolution was a liberating influence.' These questions, and their one-sided answers, remain unresolved. This essay documents the principal trends in women's condition in a single community, Norwich, the second largest Connecticut town at midcentury, where women were benefiting in some aspects of domestic and economic life and suffering in others. While the Revolution accelerated changes which had been in progress for decades, it also contributed to a new self-awareness of women as a group. Rather than improving or deteriorating, the lives of women in Connecticut were growing more complex. A study of eighteenth-century American women begins with the household, the focal point of most women's lives. Mehetabel Coit of Norwich, for example, records in her journal family events-the births of her children, visits of friends, and various domestic recipes.2 The composition of the colonial household-age, sex, and number of members-