Family Life in Plymouth Colony - Book Report/Review Example

A Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony little “A little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony” Introduction “A little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony” is a book by Demos, John. It can be termed as a groundbreaking study that examines the family in the colony context. It was founded by the founded by the pilgrims who came on Mayflower. Demos based his work on wills, physical artifacts, estate inventories as well as various official and legal enactments. These aspects that were used by Demos in basing his work helped him portray the family as a structure of relationships and roles. He clearly emphasized the roles of husbands and wives, of parents and children as well as of masters and servants. The book’s insight that can be termed as startling came from a reconsideration of the views of the America Puritans as well as of the ways they were dealing with one another. According to Demos, the Puritan repression was directed strongly against the expression of aggressive and hostile impulses more that it was against sexuality. He also revealed the repression reflected the modes of child-rearing and family life. The book can be termed as an in-depth study of a colonial community’s ordinary life that is located in a broad environment of the seventeenth-century America (Demos, 1999). The book “A little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony” revolves around the family citing its importance in the society as the document expounds. Discussion Demos structured the book “A Commonwealth” to become a micro-history of the family life in the seventeenth century Plymouth Colony. The book was literary attempting to unearth the vignettes of the typical families in the seminal colonial settlement. The book’s title can be referred from William Gouge’s quote whose argument was that an ideal family is a little commonwealth and a little church (Heimert & Delbanco, 1985). This implies that all the potential leaders of the community hone their skills in the family. In other words, the society is shaped by the family. A good leader or a bad leader will be determined by the nature of their family where they have originated. Demos have used the family as a little commonwealth as a metaphor arguing that a family is a miniature model of the Plymouth’s larger society as well as a basic unit of the pilgrim society. The Plymouth family acted as a church by the fact that parents provided the basic teachings of morality in their homes. Meditation and daily prayers were a crucial complement of the family to the church (Ryan, 1983). The book also indicated that the Plymouth family played a role of correction and hence can also be termed as a house of correction. Discipline was meted out in the Plymouth house. The local criminals and idlers would receive their sentence in this house whereby they were usually sentenced to labor. In Plymouth, the family also served as a kind of welfare institution. According to the author of the book, it is from this family where orphans were assigned, the poor members of the society were housed, and the elderly rested. All the materials examined by the author are home or family based. Demos made a thorough examination of the physical artifacts. The artifacts include the tools, buildings, cooking utensils and clothing. In several chapters, these physical artifacts have been used in defining the typical Plymouth family’s physical environment (Heimert & Delbanco, 1985). The possessions of deceased members of the society’s inventories, wills, and official records of the town were examined in the book. The church sermons meant for gleaning information for the author’s demographic analysis were also examined in the book. Excerpts that were offering the everyday life’s insightful glimpses were also offered. All these are the family based events that were influencing the entire community in one way or the other. The community of that period understood the influence the family had to the society. Various inferences are citable in the book. For example in 1679, there was a case of a young man was facing a charge of disobeying his parents. He was known as Edward Bumpus. He had stricken and abused his parents. He was supposed to be either put to death or punished sharply. This is a clear indication of how cases of indiscipline especially at the family level were regarded as serious offenses (Stratton, 1986). They had a notion that any person who was disrespectful to his or her parents was also a problem to the society. It is hence believable that the main reason as to why one of the charges was the execution of this person is that he will be just a problem to the society. It hence conforms to the fact that the family had great significance to the society. The discipline of the society was being molded in the family. In the book, the author reveals that the nuclear family was kept together by the forces of social as well as the economy. The book also revealed that after the death of one of the spouses, the surviving member of the family was taking less than a year before remarrying. This indicates how the family was meaningful in this community. All the members of the Society found it necessary to live as a family. This resulted from the value they had given the family. Home or family was the backbone of the society. They hence believed that staying single will alter the smooth running of the society. However, in the year 1689 the author two Bristol families there were headed by single adults (Godbeer, 2004). These marked the only families that were headed by single parents in the entire Plymouth. The book was well structured, and the author expressed and supported his theme excellently. Family is explained very well in the book alongside with its significance in the community. The behaviors of any member of the society including leaders were being molded in the family. However, some parts of the book are worth critics due to various reasons. Demos indicated that the Plymouth colony’s women had greater rights than those they would have experienced when operating under the British common law (Steele & Rhoden, 1999). He indicated that they women in this colony were receiving the favor of for example having the will altered if his husband made an unrighteous will. An unrighteous will was a will that was denying the widow becoming the will’s beneficiary. He also noted that women were given the right of making particular contracts like sorting the prenuptial agreement. This agreement was giving the widow and the new husband an opportunity of specifying any form of future disposition of their properties. Finally, he indicated that women in Plymouth Colony had a legal recourse in all the cases of domestic abuse and spousal dissertation (Demos, 1999). This was contrary to their England’s counterparts. This was a high degree of femininity since he believed that these rights the Plymouth’s women were given were much for them. In other words, they did not deserve them. He also went ahead and compared the Plymouth’s women with those of England where the rights of women were not regarded at all. This shows that the real wishes of the author was the women to be denied their rights and freedom which they were enjoying and may be live like their Britain’s counterparts. This is simply discrimination in the gender stereotyping context. The author gave this book a scholarly work that was simple and easily understandable to general readers. In other words, someone does not need to be a historian to follow through the books context. This means that the book possessed an excellent, literal work clear and easily understandable by any reader. However, if the book provided more information on the colonial New England’s history, the book would have been gained more relevance especially historically (Kleijkamp, 1999). The readers would have been given a golden opportunity of learning the unique characters of the Puritan families while at the same time they are discovering the manner in which the Puritan households resembled the contemporary American families. Similarly, the book outdid most the books in that it looked like the narration of the daily life in the Plymouth’s homes. Most of the other books are stories which seem to rely on the produced documents by the social elites. This helped the authors of this book to come up with a book that encompasses demographic analysis possessing thoughtful interpretations which are well woven together and skillfully to produce a work of its kind (Stratton, 1986). Since its production, it has taken more than three decades but its vitality has been maintained all along. This implies that it was an excellent piece of art irrespective of the few inconsistencies that were present. I believe this was an excellent historical work. Similarly, there is a lot to be learned from it since the family has not lost its essentiality in the society. How disciplined or undisciplined the members of the societies might be, their respective families tend to contribute either fully or partially. Conclusion The discussion above has revealed how essential the family was in the Plymouth colony. It was the society’s backbone and the maker of its leaders. It acted as both the Commonwealth and the Church. This implies that it led to discipline and other virtues in the society serving the church’s role. As a commonwealth, he argued that the family was the basic unit of the entire society. However, a sense of discrimination featured in the story where he seemed to advocate for the violation of the women’s rights. However, the book turns to be an excellent historical book of all the time. References Demos, J. (1999). A little commonwealth: Family life in Plymouth Colony. New York: Oxford University Press. Godbeer, R. (2004). Sexual revolution in early America. Baltimore [u.a.: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. Heimert, A., & Delbanco, A. (1985). The Puritans in America: A narrative anthology. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Kleijkamp, G. A. (1999). Family life and family interests: A comparative study on the influence of the European Convention of Human Rights on Dutch family law and the influence of the United States Constitution on American family law. The Hague: Kluwer Law Internat. Ryan, M. P. (1983). Cradle of the middle class: The family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865. Cambridge, Eng: Cambridge University Press. Steele, I. K., & Rhoden, N. L. (1999). The human tradition in colonial America. Wilmington, Del: SR Books/Scholarly Resources, Inc. Stratton, E. A. (1986). Plymouth Colony, its history & people, 1620-1691. Salt Lake City, UT: Ancestry Pub. Read More