A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New Edition Thirtieth Anniversary, Paperback)

Condition

VERY GOOD: The book's spine, covers, and pages are in very good condition. The pages are clean and free of writing; however, they are beginning to tan with age (1999).

Product Details

From the back cover: "The classic study of colonial family life, now in a new edition commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of its original publication. "The year 2000 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the publication ofA Little Commonwealth by Bancroft Prize-winning author John Demos. This ground-breaking study examines the family in the context of the colony founded by the Pilgrims who came over on theMayflower . Basing his work on physical artifacts, wills, estate inventories, and a variety of legal and official enactments, Demos portrays the family as a structure of roles and relationships, emphasizing those of husband and wife, parent and child, and master and servant.

"The book's most startling insights come from a reconsideration of commonly-held views of American Puritans and of the ways in which they dealt with one another. Demos concludes that Puritan 'repression' was not as strongly directed against sexuality as against the expression of hostile and aggressive impulses, and he shows how this pattern reflected prevalent modes of family life and child-rearing. The result is an in-depth study of the ordinary life of a colonial community, located in the broader environment of seventeenth-century America."

Contents

Front Matter

• Foreword to the Second Edition
• Foreword to the First Edition
• Introduction: An Historical Survey of Plymouth Colony

Part One: The Physical Setting

• Chapter One: Housing
• Chapter Two: Furnishings
• Chapter Three: Clothing

Part Two: The Structure of the Household

• Chapter Four: Membership
• Chapter Five: Husbands and Wives
• Chapter Six: Parents and Children
• Chapter Seven: Masters and Servants
• Chapter Eight: Wider Kin Connections

Part Three: Themes of Individual Development

• Chapter Nine: Infancy and Childhood
• Chapter Ten: Coming of Age
• Chapter Eleven: Later Years

Back Matter

• Conclusion: The Family in Comparative Perspective
• Appendix: Demographic Tables
• Index
• Illustrations follow page 108