Rebecca Dickinson
Independence for a New England Woman
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- $49.99
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- $49.99
Publisher Description
Rebecca Dickinson's powerful voice, captured through excerpts from the pages of her journal, allows colonial and revolutionary-era New England to come alive. Dickinson's life illustrates the dilemmas faced by many Americans in the decades before, during, and after the American Revolution, as well as the paradoxes presented by an unmarried woman who earned her own living and made her own way in the small town where she was born. Rebecca Dickinson: Independence for a New England Woman, uses Dickinson's world as a lens to introduce readers to the everyday experience of living in the colonial era and the social, cultural, and economic challenges faced in the transformative decades surrounding the American Revolution.
About the Lives of American Women series: selected and edited by renowned women's historian Carol Berkin, these brief biographies are designed for use in undergraduate courses. Rather than a comprehensive approach, each biography focuses instead on a particular aspect of a women's life that is emblematic of her time, or which made her a pivotal figure in the era. The emphasis is on a 'good read', featuring accessible writing and compelling narratives, without sacrificing sound scholarship and academic integrity. Primary sources at the end of each biography reveal the subject's perspective in her own words. Study questions and an annotated bibliography support the student reader.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Working at the intersection of the history of the American Revolution and women's history, Miller, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, adds to the Lives of American Women series (edited by Carol Berkin) this effective biography of Massachusetts seamstress and "ordinary woman" Rebecca Dickinson. Born in the farming village of Hatfield in 1738, Dickinson received a basic education and at the age of 12 took an apprenticeship with a gownmaker work that would provide her with decades of economic independence. As an adult working woman, Dickinson couldn't and didn't ignore the growing rift between the colonies and England. During the 1760s, patriots launched boycotts on British-made cloth, and as a seamstress she understood the impact they would have on her livelihood. Miller (Betsy Ross and the Making of America) makes good use of the documents Dickinson left behind, portraying her as an intelligent woman who knew what was at stake in the Revolution, who was drawn in to the cause, and who remained thoroughly independent till the end: unable to find a man who suited her and unwilling to lower her standards, Dickinson lived her life as a bachelorette. She was a realist, not a romantic, and knew her choice meant that others would always consider her odd. Luckily, the lives of odd folks make for interesting stories.
