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A review by lukescalone
Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society by Mary Beth Norton
5.0
This is an utterly fascinating piece of history that vindicates gender history in its totality. Not only is gender history important to placing women back into the historical narrative, as it always should have been, but to make sense of the very nature of power. I'm not convinced that a non-gendered study of colonial American power could achieve anywhere near the successes that Norton has here. In addition, I absolutely love Norton's writing--it's so lucid and is well-argued.
Essentially, Norton argues that there are two forms of political power in colonial North America. The first, "Filmerian" power, is named after Robert Filmer, who argued that state structures emerge out of family structures, and the family is the basic unit of human society. In his view, a Filmerian worldview requires that hierarchies exist in all aspects of social life--in the family, this is represented by a husband or father's rule over his wife and children; in "public" life, this is represented by the authority of leaders (there is no interest in consensus here). As a top-down society, early colonial America was thoroughly Filmerian and this played an important role in all aspects of colonial society.
The second form of political power is named after John Locke. To Norton, "Lockean" power is one that suggests that families have little role in the creation of states. Instead, a state is a compact between a group of men, and the nature of the compact requires some degree of consensus. Although there may be hierarchies, Lockean power is essentially "horizontal" in nature (at least, for men).
In many ways, this text is a comparative work examining the nature of both New England and the Anglo-American Chesapeake Bay. Filmerianism affected every single aspect of New England life, in large part due to the number of women who lived there (colonists came as family units, unlike in the Chesapeake Bay where many came as single men interested in cultivating tobacco, or worked as indentured servants). This gave the Chesapeake region a much more contractual nature in the first fifty years of English colonization (1620-1670ish). To me, this was eye-opening because I have always thought of New England as the more consensus-based society, but this may well come as a later innovation. Because Norton ends the text in 1670, we don't have the opportunity to analyze the transition to a Lockean worldview (which thoroughly dominated Anglo-America a century later, on the eve of the Revolution). I do wonder why, then, New England would have more democratic characteristics than the Chesapeake Bay in the 18th century. I know that this is covered elsewhere, but I'd love further analysis that takes the Filmerian/Lockean dichotomy as its starting point.
If that isn't enough, Norton's anecdotes in the prologue of Section 2 are some of the most gripping descriptions and analyses of a colonial American non-binary person I've ever come across. The analysis seems sound to me, and I was astounded at the lack of rigidity surrounding gender in the 17th century--neither men nor women, "masters" nor public officials could determine if T Hall was a man or woman, their accounts conflicted with one another despite seeing T Hall's genitalia and self-expression.
Norton is a master at gender history, and I deeply admire her work.
Essentially, Norton argues that there are two forms of political power in colonial North America. The first, "Filmerian" power, is named after Robert Filmer, who argued that state structures emerge out of family structures, and the family is the basic unit of human society. In his view, a Filmerian worldview requires that hierarchies exist in all aspects of social life--in the family, this is represented by a husband or father's rule over his wife and children; in "public" life, this is represented by the authority of leaders (there is no interest in consensus here). As a top-down society, early colonial America was thoroughly Filmerian and this played an important role in all aspects of colonial society.
The second form of political power is named after John Locke. To Norton, "Lockean" power is one that suggests that families have little role in the creation of states. Instead, a state is a compact between a group of men, and the nature of the compact requires some degree of consensus. Although there may be hierarchies, Lockean power is essentially "horizontal" in nature (at least, for men).
In many ways, this text is a comparative work examining the nature of both New England and the Anglo-American Chesapeake Bay. Filmerianism affected every single aspect of New England life, in large part due to the number of women who lived there (colonists came as family units, unlike in the Chesapeake Bay where many came as single men interested in cultivating tobacco, or worked as indentured servants). This gave the Chesapeake region a much more contractual nature in the first fifty years of English colonization (1620-1670ish). To me, this was eye-opening because I have always thought of New England as the more consensus-based society, but this may well come as a later innovation. Because Norton ends the text in 1670, we don't have the opportunity to analyze the transition to a Lockean worldview (which thoroughly dominated Anglo-America a century later, on the eve of the Revolution). I do wonder why, then, New England would have more democratic characteristics than the Chesapeake Bay in the 18th century. I know that this is covered elsewhere, but I'd love further analysis that takes the Filmerian/Lockean dichotomy as its starting point.
If that isn't enough, Norton's anecdotes in the prologue of Section 2 are some of the most gripping descriptions and analyses of a colonial American non-binary person I've ever come across. The analysis seems sound to me, and I was astounded at the lack of rigidity surrounding gender in the 17th century--neither men nor women, "masters" nor public officials could determine if T Hall was a man or woman, their accounts conflicted with one another despite seeing T Hall's genitalia and self-expression.
Norton is a master at gender history, and I deeply admire her work.