Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers.

Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers. New York: First Vintage, 1996. 512 pp., bibliography, index.

Mary Beth Norton is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History at Cornell University. In addition to Founding Mothers and Fathers, Norton has also published In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. These two books are part of Norton's ongoing scholarly examination of the intersection between gender and politics in pre-Revolutionary America. In the 1996 publication Founding Mothers and Fathers, Norton argues that power manifested in gendered ways, in multiple spheres of colonial American life including the family, the community, and the government. The author's goal is to show how gendered power impacted the social, economic, and political development of the colonies and the early United States. With an in-depth examination of the private, public, and family spheres, Norton explains how founding females were as influential as males in shaping early American social, cultural, and political life. The analysis addresses the maintenance of Anglo-European hegemony with regards to the Native Americans and the African slaves, and also delineates the differences between the European cultures within the colonies. In particular, Norton emphasizes the difference between the Chesapeake colony and the New England and Massachusetts Bay colony.

Providing firm support for the book's central thesis, Norton draws from a plethora of mainly primary sources. Given the relative paucity of primary source documents related to Native Americans and African slaves, however, Norton does draw inferences regarding the ethnic stratification in colonial America. Norton relies heavily on court cases and other legal documents, because court cases and legal documents address matters related to private and family life as well as public and community life. A total of more than eight thousand court cases are cited as being included in the core database of Norton's research. For example, the trial of Anne Hutchinson has been well documented in official sources and therefore allows for a cogent argument in Chapter Eight of Founding Mothers and Fathers. In the case of Hutchinson and any other subject of interest for Norton, court cases provide crucial information that highlights the patriarchal hegemony in public and private spheres. Judges' rulings speak of social norms, social structures, social hierarchies, and especially power differentials with regards to gender and ethnicity.

Other types of sources that Norton uses to bolster the central theses of Founding Mothers and Fathers include church-related documents, political essays, and private letters. However, these other primary sources are of secondary concern for Norton because they reflect the perspective of the author only and not of the state. The difference is a crucial one. A court case illustrates the many layers at which gender politics manifest in society. For example, Norton points out that the subordinate status of women was highlighted in their often being represented by husbands in a court of law. Many women in fact would passively participate in the judicial system behind the veil of a male family member.

Occasionally, but only when necessary, Norton cites secondary sources to enhance the central thesis of Founding Mothers and Fathers. The use of secondary sources is judicious, allowing Norton to connect her own ideas with those from broader scholarly inquiry. The research that underwrites Founding Mothers and Fathers is almost overwhelming in terms of its scope and depth, making the book tightly academic. Yet in spite of its rigorous scholasticism, Founding Mothers and Fathers reads like a trade book. Individual characters come to life with Norton's deft ability at storytelling, without the author ever straying from the central historical arguments. The language Norton uses is natural and lacking in too much jargon, making Founding Mothers and Fathers equally at home on the shelves of a home or university library. As a historian, Norton does rely on some terminology that would seem out of place on popular bookshelves such as the repeated references to the "Filmerian world." By this phrase, Norton only means the vigorous Crown loyalty that became an important issue in evolving colonial culture and identity.