Question 1
Farmwives throughout the colonies contributed to their families by
a) Establishing strict control of the family’s economic decisions; thus husbands provided labor at the wives’ direction.
b) Performing a wide range of duties both inside the house and in the family’s fields; they were subordinate yet essential contributors to the family’s welfare.
c) Working only within the farmhouse; colonial sensibilities forbade women from performing field work.
d) Working in factories but providing little labor around the household.

Question 2
Which of the following statements most accurately characterizes women’s property rights in the English colonies?
a) Any land a woman owned before her marriage reverted to her ownership at her husband’s death.
b) A widow gained control over her late husband’s estate and retained it even if she remarried.
c) Upon marriage, sons and daughters usually received equal shares of the family property.
d) When a woman married, legal ownership of all her personal property passed to her husband.

Question 3
With linen and woolen cloth in short supply during the war years, Patriot women responded by
a) Enlisting in local militias in large numbers.
b) Increasing their output of homespun cloth.
c) Encouraging their men to abandon their arms and return to their fields and families.
d) Boycotting merchants and traders who refused to sell material to the Patriot fighters.

Question 4
In the early republic, Benjamin Rush and other leaders argued that women should be educated so they could
a) Oversee the instruction of their sons in principles of liberty and government.
b) Take an active role in entrepreneurial decision with men.
c) Vote and take an active role in public life.
d) Follow whatever careers they wished and have the option of remaining single and economically independent.

Question 5
One reason women took charge of religious and charitable enterprises during and after the Second Great Awakening was because
a) Their husbands ordered them to do so.
b) They had more talent for church administration than men.
c) They were excluded from other public roles.
d) They were naturally more pious and spiritual than men.

Question 6
By the 1820s, more women were becoming teachers because
a) School authorities could pay women less than they paid men.
b) State legislatures were pressured by women’s rights advocates into broadening women’s employment opportunities
c) Men scorned teaching as “women’s work.”
d) They were demonstrably more intelligent than male candidates.

Question 7
The young women who worked in New England textile mills in the 1820s and 1830s
a) Lived regimented lives with scarcely any personal independence.
b) Were able to save their wages for later personal use or to help out their families back on the farm.
c) Accounted for less than a third of all textile workers.
d) Often ended up as prostitutes because of the demoralization and irregularity of mill work.

Question 8
Publications such as Godey’s Lady’s Book and Catharine Beecher’s Treatise on Domestic Economy
a) Instructed women on how to make their homes more moral and efficient and reinforced middle-class domesticity.
b) Promoted the right of women to an education equal to that given to men.
c) Promoted the dress-reform movement so that women would be presentable in the work world when they secured jobs outside the home.
d) Advocated the right to vote and to hold office for women.

Question 9
In her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
a) Depicted slavery as a destroyer of slave families and degrader of slave women.
b) Urged women to join abolitionist societies.
c) Urged women to leave any church that did not preach against slavery.
d) Promoted African colonization as the best solution to the evils of slavery.

Question 10
Angelina and Sarah Grimké
a) Became famous—and widely criticized—for delivering antislavery lectures before mixed male-female meetings.
b) Disagreed about the broader questions of women’s rights.
c) Denied Catherine Beecher’s contention that traditional gender roles bound women to “domestic slavery.”
d) Left their father’s slave plantation in South Carolina and moved to Boston, where they converted to Congregationalism and joined the temperance movement.