Description

Popular belief and a particular conception of colonial history holds that women in New France had more opportunity to act in society. Josette Brun's analysis of married life and widowhood in eighteenth-century Quebec City and Louisbourg reveals another reality. Brun considers the division of rights and responsibilities between spouses, issues of morality and succession surrounding second marriages, strategies of economic survival, family support systems, and aid policies toward widowed individuals. She argues that husbands were lords and masters at home, a position legitimized by the state and the law, and officially assumed responsibility for dealing with succession and work. Following the death of their husbands, widows exploited a range of possible female roles, their professional experience, or a generous dower - assuming responsibility alone or with the help of their sons, sons-in-law, or nephews."

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