To be Useful to the World: Women in Revolutionary America, 1740-1790

Gundersen's analysis benefits from two decades of scholarly research into the lives of colonial women. Her vivid account synthesizes the work of her colleagues and brings an essential multicultural perspective to the discussion. She examines the lives of African women brought as slaves to the colonies and their American-born descendants, as well as of Native American women. Gundersen also extends the parameters of her study to include the decades that bracketed the Revolution, framing her argument around three generations of women in three households. To be Useful to the World opens with engaging accounts of three women: Elizabeth Porter, a Virginian of the small-planter class whose household includes her extended family and several slaves; Deborah Franklin, the Philadelphian wife of Benjamin Franklin; and Margaret Brant, an Iroquois woman whose family became British allies during the Revolutionary War. Through her examination of these women's lives, Gundersen illustrates the diversity of the colonial experience for women as well as the trends that crossed ethnic and class boundaries. She then follows the lives of these women's daughters through the years of the Revolution and closes her account with their granddaughters, who began their lives in post Revolutionary America. In presenting these daughters of the Revolution, Gundersen finds that while the Revolution provided opportunities for some women it also restricted the lives of others in a give and take resulting from the integrated yet divergent communities that made up the new world. This lucid account brings to life the experience of women during a period of war and profound change, a period that continues to shape Americanthought and culture to the present.