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"In This Time Of Close Trial": An Examination Of Quaker Women's Roles And Political Activism In Philadelphia, September 1777-April 1778, Kimberly Ann Stinedurf

History Theses & Dissertations

This study examines the flexibility of Quaker women's roles in their domestic, sacred, and secular communities. It traces the experiences of a group of Philadelphia Quaker wives and mothers who were forced to support their families when revolutionary authorities arrested and banished their husbands to Virginia during the American Revolution. First, it investigates Quaker women's duties in their households and suggests that gendered responsibilities overlapped significantly for eighteenth-century Quaker men and women. By considering the Quaker husband-wife relationship and the Quaker parent-child relationship, one may conclude that Quaker gendered tasks were not rigid. Chapter Three proposes the idea that Quaker …