Review of Stephanie McCurry's book MAsters of Small Worlds - Essay Example

McCurry’s thesis stresses quite frequently on the significance of the role of gender and the patriarchal nature of the yeoman society, which she portrayed as being almost characteristic to the low country yeoman society. McCurry’s thesis is well argued and some of her sources are well researched as well. But not all of McCurry’s arguments are convincing. In fact, in most cases McCurry provided very little pertinent evidence for her arguments. The concepts of political and social unity however have been presented with some well examined evidence such that they seem more plausible than McCurry’s other arguments which are not only based on insufficient data but are argued such that the concepts themselves are open to several interpretations.

McCurry bases most of her arguments concerning the yeoman society on the Low Country’s geographical factors. However, one finds that McCurry, in her aim to explore the principles of the culture and structure of the yeoman society has attempted to broaden the geographical precincts of the low country. Perhaps McCurry felt compelled to do so in order to present pertinent data for her arguments. It might be that McCurry did not find enough data to back up her thesis and arguments. Extending the geographical area of the low country (to cover certain areas believed to be in the “Middle Country”) might have given McCurry the possibility to explore more evidence from those areas, thereby making her thesis a tad richer with weightier data.

The extending of geographical boundaries also gave McCurry the opportunity of exploring the similarities and connections of the working relationships between wealthy slave owning families and the farming families with no slaves. The ideal example to justify the hypothesis that the extending of the low country topography gave McCurry more data to work with is the instance when McCurry used the personal diary of a woman (believed to be