| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Kathleen M. Brown. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia. 1996. Pp. xvi, 496. Cloth $49.95, paper $19.95.

Race and gender, Kathleen M. Brown contends in this book, provided the building blocks for the construction of political authority by elite white men in colonial Virginia. English women gradually became "good wives," African women became "nasty wenches," and elite white men claimed as their prerogative the domination of both. Rich with anecdotes that humanize the process, this book vividly illustrates the deepening horror of slavery as well as the attempts by free Africans to secure their legal status. It charts the gradual suppression of white women, their challenges to male domestic authority, and the anxiety that pervaded the masculinity of elite Virginians. Meticulously researched, carefully reasoned, and gracefully written, this book should be on the reading list of every historian—particularly those who have no interest in race or gender. . . .

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