Overview

George Washington lived in an age of revolutions, during which he faced political upheaval, war, economic change, and social shifts. These revolutions affected American women in profound ways, and the women Washington knew—personally, professionally, and politically—lived lives that reveal these multifaceted transformations. Although Washington often operated in male-dominated arenas, he participated in complex and meaningful relationships with women from across society. A lively and accessibly written volume, Women in George Washington’s World highlights some of the women—Black and white, free and enslaved—whom Washington knew. Women who admired and memorialized him, women who provided him love and solace, women who frustrated him, and women who worked for or against him—all of these women are chronicled through their own experiences and identities. The essays, written by established and emerging historians of gender, reveal the lives of a diverse group of women, including plantation mistresses and enslaved workers, Loyalists and Patriots, poets and socialites, as well as mothers, wives, and sisters. Collectively, women emerge as strong actors during the American Revolution and its aftermath, not merely passive spectators or occasional participants. Although usually not on battlefields or in government offices, women made choices and acted in ways that affected their own, their families’, and sometimes even the nation’s future.

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9780813947440

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Reviews

This stunning collection of essays is a valuable study of George Washington and the women who inhabited his world. Based on the best work of contemporary historians and sound archival research, the book is also engagingly written. A substantial contribution to the field. - Barbara Oberg, Princeton University, author of Women in the American Revolution: Gender, Politics, and the Domestic World

This stunning collection of essays is a valuable study of George Washington and the women who inhabited his world. Based on the best work of contemporary historians and sound archival research, the book is also engagingly written. A substantial contribution to the field. - Barbara Oberg, Princeton University, author of Women in the American Revolution: Gender, Politics, and the Domestic World

Author Information

Charlene M. Boyer Lewis, Professor of History at Kalamazoo College, is author of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte: An American Aristocrat in the Early Republic. George W. Boudreau, Senior Research Associate at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, is coeditor of A Material World: Culture, Society, and the Life of Things in Early Anglo-America and author of Independence: A Guide to Historic Philadelphia.

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