History Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

History - Article Example ich changed milk into cheese, meal into bread, malt into beer, and flesh into bacon.† (Ulrich, p.48) Further, â€Å"preparing the simplest of meals required both judgment and skill...The most basic of housewifes skills was building and regulating fires – a task so fundamental thtat it must have appeared more as habit than craft. Summer and winter, day and night, she kept a few brands smoldering, ready to stir into flame as needed.† (Ulrich, p,47) Simple as these activities might sound, one becomes an expert in them through long and arduous training during their formative years. Often times, women use intuition and common sense to supplement the skills they leart from their mothers and aunts to carry out these complex and challenging household tasks. Given that the colonial society was an agrarian society, the housewifes domain extended â€Å"from the kitchen and its appendages, the cellars, pantries, brewhouses, mikhouses, washhouses, and butteries which appear in various combinations in household inventories, to the exterior of the house, where, even in the city, a melange of animal and vegetable life flourished among the straw, husks, clutter and muck†. (Ulrich, pg. 45) In order to handle all of these places on an everyday basis and single-handedly requires high skilfulness and presence of mind – both qualities women in colonial America possessed in abundance. How did colonial American women participate in economic activities that helped sustain their families, even if they did not have a job outside the home? In other words, what sort of things did they do? The importance and complexity of womens contributions were not acknowledged due to the subordinate status assigned them by society and also due to the fact that their activities were confined within household limits. Whereas men, by virtue of involving themselves in more conspicuous labor activity in the open farms were easily recognized as the breadwinners and providers for their families.