Not All Wives - by Karin Wulf (Paperback)

About the Book

A gracefully written, extensively researched account of unmarried women's experiences in colonial Philadelphia.--Reviews in American History

Book Synopsis

Marital status was a fundamental legal and cultural feature of women's identity in the eighteenth century. Free women who were not married could own property and make wills, contracts, and court appearances, rights that the law of coverture prevented their married sisters from enjoying. Karin Wulf explores the significance of marital status in this account of unmarried women in Philadelphia, the largest city in the British colonies.

In a major act of historical reconstruction, Wulf draws upon sources ranging from tax lists, censuses, poor relief records, and wills to almanacs, newspapers, correspondence, and poetry in order to recreate the daily experiences of women who were never-married, widowed, divorced, or separated. With its substantial population of unmarried women, eighteenth-century Philadelphia was much like other early modern cities, but it became a distinctive proving ground for cultural debate and social experimentation involving those women. Arguing that unmarried women shaped the city as much as it shaped them, Wulf examines popular literary representations of marriage, the economic hardships faced by women, and the decisive impact of a newly masculine public culture in the late colonial period.

Review Quotes

"Karin Wulf has made an important contribution to early American women's history. Not All Wives is a gracefully written, extensively researched account of unmarried women's experiences in colonial Philadelphia."-- "Reviews in American History"

"Wulf organizes her book around a series of elegantly intertwined essays, each centered on the experiences of a particular woman and touching on a different aspect of women's lives, from their attitudes towards marriage or their sense of self, to their commercial transactions or their political activities. This approach allows Wulf to create brief but vivid sketches of the lives of individual single women even as she discusses the broader implications of their experiences."-- "Journal of Social History"

About the Author

Karin Wulf is Associate Professor of History at American University. She is the coeditor of Milcah Martha Moore's Book: A Commonplace Book from Revolutionary America.