Who Was Madam Knight?

 

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/growth/text1/connecticutknight.pdf

a woman's viewpoint of early New England

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2008

For historical reasons, this book is interesting. The author was a woman who wrote in 1704 of her travels in the New England region of North America. When this was largely still raw frontier.

We get a first hand account of colonial life, apparently uncensored. Many aspects come thru her narrative. Including the presence of slaves. Her descriptions of them and their experiences and duties, at least as perceived by her, are rather neutral. She does not condemn slavery but accepts it as a natural order of things. It is perhaps this casual acceptance that can be the most jarring feature of the book, to the contemporary reader.

In passing, you might also appreciate that white women then had a fair amount of freedom. Less than white men, but not oppressed or constricted as some women today are, in some Muslim nations.