ABSTRACT
At the time that I considered writing a paper for the International Conference on Women’s History, I was deeply immersed in my research on the friendship between Sarah Prince and Esther Burr, two New England young ladies from prominent clerical families who lived around the middle of the eighteenth century. In fact, I had just finished a chapter on Sarah Prince’s spiritual journal and her tormented dealings with a marriage proposal. Some basic questions were still puzzling me, namely: why did she tenaciously refuse to marry, and why did she yield only after her father’s death? 1
