Reviewed by Elizabeth Reis | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.2

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Reviewed by Elizabeth Reis | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.2 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Brabbling Women: Disorderly Speech and the Law in Early Virginia. By Terri L. Snyder. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. xiv, 182. $34.95.)

Reviewed by Elizabeth Reis , University of Oregon

Do not look for women who conformed to seventeenth-century models of polite decorum in this absorbing book. Terri L. Snyder offers us a close reading of early Virginians' attitudes toward women's speech along with a fresh look at how women earned men's displeasure in this regard. The women we are introduced to here were unruly according to their society's ideals. If popular culture, including ballads, broadside verse, and early novels reproved such women, Snyder suggests that such warnings were well grounded; brabbling and unruly women were familiar figures in real life as much as they were cautioned against in song and story. Outspoken women, women who refused to obey husbands or fathers, and women who challenged men's claims to mastery on a variety of levels emerge from the sources through careful attention to their reported verbal expression. Examining court documents from Virginia's county courts, depositions, petitions, and declarations, Snyder has analyzed the agency of women's speech in the political, social, and legal contexts from which it emerged.

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