Study Guide - Context Documents

So over the next couple of weeks I will be developing a study guide towards teaching undergraduate college students the material presented in my final paper. Tonight, I've found some documents that provide a little context for that material. And heeeeeeeeere they are:

Campbell, Helen Stuart. “Anne Bradstreet and Her Time.” New York: Public Domain Books. 1890. eBook (Kindle Edition).

This provides great context for Anne Bradstreet as a woman and as a writer. I suspect I’m going to use Anne Bradstreet’s poems to support my primary document, so this will be a perfect source to provide background. I’m not sure how much of it I would assign, but the entire book isn’t very long.


McGill, Kathy. “The Most Industrious Sex: John Lawson’s Carolina Women Domesticate the Land.” North Carolina Historical Review. 88.3 (2011): 280-297. Web. 23 Oct. 2011. <http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.ucf.edu>.

This is a particularly relevant article regarding ecofeminism, though that’s not primarily what I would use it for. I would like to use it to give my readers an idea of how British people thought of American women, in order to place my primary document (British in origin) in relation to the American colonists. This will help my students understand the transition of mentality from Britain to America.


The Holy Bible: King James Version. Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible Publishers, 2001.

Specifically, I’d use Proverbs Chapter 31. This chapter relates to marriage directly, because it is all about how the ideal wife would behave. Christians in the seventeenth century would have used this chapter for reference all the time in determining how wives should act, so it’s a great indicator of what men looked for in their spouse.

This is an illustration, from scottish-wedding-dreams.com, of a 1672 wedding dress of the style currently popular in England and Scotland. Apparently the bindings and bows represent a particular dressmaking technique that would have been characteristic of the era. This picture will give my students something to think of when they picture a seventeenth century wedding.