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"Crane, Elaine Forman"
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The poison plot : a tale of adultery and murder in colonial Newport
\"Explores in colonial Newport, Rhode Island, the tumultuous marriage of Benedict and Mary Arnold in the 1720s and 1730s. In and through their sordid and possibly criminal marital story, in which Mary is accused of poisoning Benedict, Crane sheds light on the liabilities and possibilities for women under couverture, the complex social and economic networks that bound together the elite and laboring classes of Newport, and the trans-oceanic cultures of trade, consumption, and sociability that came to shape expectations for marital satisfaction on both sides of the Atlantic\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Witches, Wife Beaters, and Whores
The early American legal system permeated the lives of colonists and reflected their sense of what was right and wrong, honorable and dishonorable, moral and immoral. In a compelling book full of the extraordinary stories of ordinary people, Elaine Forman Crane reveals the ways in which early Americans clashed with or conformed to the social norms established by the law. As trials throughout the country reveal, alleged malefactors such as witches, wife beaters, and whores, as well as debtors, rapists, and fornicators, were as much a part of the social landscape as farmers, merchants, and ministers. Ordinary people \"made\" law by establishing and enforcing informal rules of conduct. Codified by a handshake or over a mug of ale, such agreements became custom and custom became \"law.\" Furthermore, by submitting to formal laws initiated from above, common folk legitimized a government that depended on popular consent to rule with authority.
In this book we meet Marretie Joris, a New Amsterdam entrepreneur who sues Gabriel de Haes for calling her a whore; peer cautiously at Christian Stevenson, a Bermudian witch as bad \"as any in the world;\" and learn that Hannah Dyre feared to be alone with her husband-and subsequently died after a beating. We travel with Comfort Taylor as she crosses Narragansett Bay with Cuff, an enslaved ferry captain, whom she accuses of attempted rape, and watch as Samuel Banister pulls the trigger of a gun that kills the sheriff's deputy who tried to evict Banister from his home. And finally, we consider the promiscuous Marylanders Thomas Harris and Ann Goldsborough, who parented four illegitimate children, ran afoul of inheritance laws, and resolved matters only with the assistance of a ghost. Through the six trials she skillfully reconstructs here, Crane offers a surprising new look at how early American society defined and punished aberrant behavior, even as it defined itself through its legal system.
eBook
Political Dialogue and the Spring of Abigail's Discontent
Abigail Adams recognized the correlation between contemporary politics and gender, and her willingness to engage in theoretical debate was tempered by the radical nature of the subject and the boundaries of permissible female behavior.
Journal Article
