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Reviews of Books and Films
glass did not translate into regular association with
those on lower rungs of the social ladder.
The taverns were also strictly gendered places. Salinger offers an incisive analysis (in fact, one of the best
in the literature) of the extent and conditions of female
tavern proprietorship-it was more widespread than
we have suspected, although not often a path to
wealth-but women were virtually absent from the
ranks of tavern patrons. Certainly they were absent
from the political discussions that marked the taverns
frequented by colonial elites. Blacks, free and slave,
who drank regularly despite laws to the contrary, were
only a minor part of the tavern scene as well. Free
white males predominated as patrons, and to the
extent that taverns were public places, they were a
reflection of the extent to which white men dominated
public life in early America.
Salinger's work is compelling throughout. Her writing is fine and her organization clear, and she has an
eye for anecdotal material that adds to the reader's
enjoyment without straying from her interpretive
thread (see her wonderful account of the woes of early
travelers coping with truly egregious local tavern accommodations). Her scholarship is thorough and
sound and combines a superb command of the existing
literature with genuinely impressive original research.
These attributes inspire confidence in her conclusions
and in the merit of this significant and satisfying book.
MARK EDWARD LENDER
Kean University,
Union, New Jersey
ANNE S. LOMBARD. Making Manhood: Growing Up Male
in Colonial New England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2003. Pp. xii, 244. $45.00.
Anne S. Lombard examines "what did it mean to be a
man" (p. 2) in colonial New England in the century
after the end of King Philip's War in 1676. In particular, she develops the prescriptive ideal that adult men
should exhibit rationality, moderation, and self-control. They should also competently perform the roles
of provider, family head, husband, and father. Like
most historians of gender writing today, Lombard
emphasizes manhood as a historical and cultural construct and correspondingly downplays its biological or
essentialist aspects. Unlike contemporary scholars of
gender, however, New England colonists did not focus
on the relational dimension of masculinity. Authors
were more concerned to define what it meant to be an
exemplary member of a Christian community. Further,
to the extent that manhood was defined rclationally,
the "other" category was more likely to refer to boys
than to women.
The changing roles marked by the life cycleinfancy and early childhood, boyhood, youth, and
maturity-provide the organizational framework for
four of the chapters of this volume. Mothers were the
primary caregivers in infancy and early childhood. At
the age of reason, around age six or seven, fathers
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
became more active parents and models for their sons
to emulate. Beginning about age fourteen, boys became youths, and in this life stage they began to have
the possibility of interacting with others-male peers
and youthful females-beyond the bounds of the family. In separate chapters, Lombard contrasts the stage
of youth before and after 1700. In the seventeenth
century, young men attempted to maintain rationality
and self-control. They were also more controlled by
society than they were later, and their reference group
was elders rather than peers. In this period, Lombard
argues, expressing emotion during courtship was regarded as effeminate. Many historians, and Lawrence
Stone most prominently among historians of the family, have argued that the eighteenth century witnessed
the rise of affection. Rather than primarily meaning a
relationship to a sponsor or patron, friendship more
commonly meant an emotional tie to an equal belonging to the same age cohort. At the same time, young
men were not so guarded in controlling their emotions
in courtship. Increasingly in the eighteenth century,
both friendship and courtship evoked intense emotion.
Lombard's interpretations of the stages in the cycle
are generally consistent with those of other historians
of the Anglo-American family. Maturity meant marrying and becoming a father (numerous times), a householder, and a provider. She does not deal with the
transition into old age and retirement, but in her social
history, Ye Heart of a Man: The Domestic Life of Men in
Colonial New England (1999), Lisa Wilson has recently
covered this final stage of the life cycle.
To study the connections between masculinity and
the use of force, Lombard examines assault cases from
the court records of Middlesex County, Massachusetts,
between 1680 and 1760. Since there were only seventytwo such cases with sufficient detail about the participants, firm conclusions about patterns and change
over time are not possible. Lombard emphasizes the
surprising incidence of conflicts between neighboring
property holders in the period before 1710. Sixteen of
the twenty-one private disputes involved disputes over
property. The use of force in the defense of property
rights, she argues, was controlled and rational rather
than violent. In the eighteenth century, by contrast, she
discerns a tendency toward more uncontrolled violence inflicted by young men bent on asserting an
aggressive masculinity in confrontations with other
young males. As in many studies of colonial New
England, increasing commercialization and the expansion of markets are the causes invoked to account for
change over time.
Another chapter explores the use of metaphors of
masculinity in three episodes in the political history of
Massachusetts, culminating with the revolt against the
parent country in the 1760s and 1770s. Instead of a
rebeIlion against patriarchal authority, Lombard suggests that the gendered language, when employed by
participants in the conflict, represents a reaffirmation
of long-standing ideals about responsible fatherhood.
In her epilogue, Lombard looks forward in time,
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Canada and the United States
speculatively contrasting the ideal of the rational,
moderate male of colonial New England with the
stereotype of the autonomous, self-made man of nineteenth-century America.
Studying masculinity in this period is challenging
because of the need to discern the elements of gender
that are embedded and obscured in other discourses.
While Lombard's interpretations in this concise volume are not especially novel, her book nicely complements Wilson's.
DANIEL SCOTT SMITH
University of Illinois,
Chicago
JOHN RUSTON PAGAN. Anne Orthwood's Bastard: Sex
and Law in Early Virginia. New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. Pp. 222. Cloth $50.00, paper $19.95.
John Ruston Pagan's book is a concise and readable
study of lust, law, social climbing, and society in
seventeenth-century Virginia. These themes overlap
and merge in the four legal cases discussed, cases that
began with the pregnancy of Anne Orthwood. Twentythree-year-old Orthwood emigrated from England in
1662 as an indentured servant. In November 1663, she
became pregnant with twins, fathered by the nephew
of her former master. The situation of a single female
servant, seduced with promises of marriage and left
pregnant, was not an unusual story in this time and
place. What is unusual is that this particular incident,
Orthwood's pregnancy, led to four separate but interrelated court cases. The extant documentation permits
Pagan to reconstruct the lives of the participants and
analyze the transformations of English legal traditions
and practice in seventeenth-century Virginia.
Pagan notes that case studies are valuable "because
they facilitate the exploration of large themes through
specific examples" (p. 8). In this book, the four court
suits serve as windows into the workings of colonial
Virginia social and political life, and "the process by
which Virginians created their own legal identity" (p.
10).
The first case, Waters v. Bishopp, was a breach of
contract action brought about after Orthwood's fourth
master, William Waters, discovered she was pregnant.
William Kendall bought Orthwood's contract after she
arrived in Virginia and then sold her indenture to
another planter, Jacob Bishopp, in order to keep her
and his nephew apart, since he expected his nephew to
marry an heiress and continue the family's social
ascension. Orthwood and John Kendall managed to
find time to become intimate, however, changing both
their lives forever. A short time after Anne's weekend
encounter with her lover, Bishopp, possibly suspecting
that Anne was pregnant, sold her indenture to Waters.
The jury in this civil case determined that Bishopp had
misrepresented what he was selling-a healthy, virgin
servant-and ordered him to repay Waters, plus pay
the costs of the suit. By this time, Orthwood had died
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
in childbirth. One of her infant twins also died; the
remaining one was named Jasper.
The next case, Ex Parte Kendall found Kendall
"morally innocent yet legally guilty" (p. 105). Despite
Orthwood's testimony to the midwife, Eleanor Gething, naming Kendall as the father of her children, the
magistrates did not believe that he was. This was
because Gething declared that the twins were born full
term and thus could not have been conceived when
Orthwood claimed they were. At the same time, the
law held Kendall responsible due to Orthwood's declaration during childbirth. Pagan determines that this
verdict departed from English practice, which favored
the woman's allegations but allowed for rebuttals by
the named father. Magistrates in seventeenth-century
Virginia were interested in speedy resolutions, and
they adjudicated cases in an area where servants were
highly desired. Men found guilty of fathering bastard
children were ordered to support them until they were
indentured as servants, but the children were usually
indentured in infancy.
Despite the verdict in Ex Parte Kendall, Kendall was
still prosecuted for fornication in Rex v. Kendall, the
third case covered in the book. This case was ultimately dismissed. The final case resulting from Orthwood's pregnancy came many years later, when Jasper
Orthwood sought, and ultimately won, his freedom in
Orthwood v. Warren.
Each chapter focuses on a participant in the story,
including not only Orthwood and the Kendalls but also
the presiding justice, John Stringer, the clerk of the
court, Robert Hutchinson, the midwife Gething, and
others. I found particularly effective Pagan's descriptions of the court and the behind-the-scenes social!
political connections of the various participants. As the
book is based mainly on legal proceedings, we hear the
voices of participants only as they appear in court
records. I would like to have known in particular what
the women along the eastern shore thought about the
various people and events discussed here. Except for
Orthwood and the midwife, women seem strangely
absent, mentioned mainly as a means by which men
gained property and cemented alliances. It may be that
sources are lacking to give them voice, or it may be
that Pagan is simply more concerned with how English
law was modified and transformed in early Virginia. In
this, his well-written narrative succeeds very well.
MERRIL D. SMITH
Independent Scholar
TERRI L. SNYDER. Brabbling Women: Disorderly Speech
and the Law in Early Virginia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2003. Pp. xi, 182. $34.95.
Until recently, the history of women in colonial British
America stopped somewhere near the southern border
of Connecticut, while the history of women in the
southern United States began around 1830. Julia
Cherry Spruill's antiquated classic, Women's Life and
Work in the Southern Colonies (1938), found a place in
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