The Role of Women in New England and Chesapeake

In this essay I'm going to give you a brief introduction and comparison of the role of a woman in New England and in Chesapeake.

Women’s roles in early New England, where dictated by their strong Puritan religious values. The wives never did any of the hard labor. They weren’t even educated as much as the men. A typical woman in the colony where expected to run and maintain the households. They were also expected to attend domestic duties such as spinning, sewing, preserving food husbandry, cooking, cleaning and raising the children. Women had to be extremely resourceful with the family’s budget. Women had to be conscientious, complaint, and faithful to their husbands.

Women in Chesapeake had an extremely hard time. Chesapeake had a high mortality rate and an imbalanced sex ratio. This led to a membership in families to change frequently because adults and males alike high mortality rate. Under these conditions, it was hard for men to exercise much sustained power. This relatively lack of women meant few men could marry any one woman at a certain time. Those widowed women would frequently remarry to a unmarried males. With this native-born Chesapeake women were more likely to marry at young ages. This left many young native women widowed at young ages. These circumstances led Maryland to grant widowed women more legal independence.

To sum up, there are many differences between the roles of women in early New England and women in Chesapeake. New England had a healthy environment. Marriage lasted longer and produced more children. New England women were widowed more later in their lives and were extremely unlikely to remarry. Chesapeake had an extremely harsh living condition. The high mortality rate and imbalanced sex ratio led to more men than women. This meant more men needed to be wedded than women were available. Chesapeake women were frequently widowed and had to remarry frequently.