ABSTRACT
Laurel Ulrich focuses upon an individual life, and a single diary, and yet manages to illumine a larger world. Family labor was central to the New England economy and to the early American economy more generally, but Ulrich demonstrates that family labor was far more complex than previously thought. In fact, she argues, there were two family economies, simultaneously independent and interdependent, one managed by women, and the other by men. Men and women worked together, but at the same time labor was divided along gender lines. The separate female economy was vibrant and varied and rested on the work of daughters, female relatives, and servant girls. The rhythms of an individual life were intimately bound up with larger concerns: Martha Ballard, .for instance, could devote herself to the rigorous demands of midwifery only after her own childbearing years were over, and life became far more arduous for her after her own daughters had married. One woman’s life intersected with that of many others. Indeed, a complex web of social and economic exchange enmeshed women and propelled them far beyond their own households. In this separate world of female exchange, work had a social as well as economic value and was more often cooperative than competitive. While men tended to work alone and focused more on profit, women tended to work in groups and focused more on neighborliness. In short, even though private and public worlds or inner and outer realms of experience were vastly different for the two sexes, the relationship was just as important for women as for men. Women may have had no formal political life but they had a rich community life.
