Sarah Kemble Knight

Sarah Kemble Knight possessed character traits that were rare in women of her time. She was, unlike most women, an independent, strong, and self-confident person. She was humorous and adventurous. Her strengths included the fact that. although rare, she was not afraid to travel without a male relative as was the custom of her day. She devoted little of her journal to her fears, but focused on the humor she encountered daily on her travels. She was terrified of the river crossings, but wrote sparingly

Throughout very early American life, the roles of women were to promptly overcome the pressure to marry, and strictly uphold the standards of homemaking and motherhood. Women eventually began to diverge from the traditional roles of their previous female ancestors when tension became the norm with common experience in love, marriage, religion, independence, and family relations. Early American life presented women with overwhelming demands to marry. Marriage was in such high favor for economical

In the 17th century, colonial America, defined as the colonies along the Eastern seaboard, was rapidly growing and changing. During this time of great expansion and settlement, travel journals, like the one written by Sarah Kemble Knight, was the literary genre in the New World. The journal writings reflected man's journeys to new lands and centered upon the people and adventures encountered along the way. Sarah's journal, was one of the first woman's account, of her un-chaperoned, roundtrip journey

Puritan Women: Friend or Prisoner Imagine for a second that woman today in the United States of America have no say in which religion she wants to follow; it is just thrown on her by men. A United States where women have little say about the laws in a town in which she should be treated like a citizen; she’s just forced to follow them. Pushing men to follow their dreams; but she is deemed to the norms of the ‘American’ woman life style. Imagine if women aren’t allowed to be travelers, lawyers, or

Woman had many restrictions in colonial America compared to the freedoms women enjoy in the 21st century. The religious beliefs of Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Sarah Kemble Knight, and Phillis Wheatley put restrictions upon them. Woman were expected to marry young, have plenty of children, teach scripture, and manage the household. For some reason, these tasks that are similar to owning a business, teaching at an academy, or holding office were considered to be the wrong occupation for a woman

The Puritans were a group of religious reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. They left England to settle in New England in the mid-1600s. Many authors have come from this specific group and their literature has been rightfully classified under the Puritanism movement. Puritan life can be analyzed and view through the various authors, and their respective writings, of the time. Anne Bradstreet was the first woman in the colonies to be published, which is made more remarkable because

Conclusion: Although Knight is an important and early woman figure in colonial American literature, she is inseparable from her wealthy and advantaged background. She is a well-educated woman who partially proves her independence to her husband and her neighborhood back at home. However, she is unable to escape from her prejudices towards Native Americans and working-class people, despite her observations and her close experiences with the group of the people mentioned above. She has a hard time

The Degradation of Women in American Scholar      In "The American Scholar," Ralph Waldo Emerson characterizes the nature of the American scholar in three categories: nature, books, and action.  The scholar is one who nature mystifies, because one must be engrossed with nature before he can appreciate it.  In nature, man learns to tie things together; trees sprout from roots, leaves grow on trees, and so on.  Man learns how to classify the things in nature, which simplifies things in his mind

instances of women that were able to call attention to themselves, whether negative or positive. The girls involved in the Salem Witch Trials, for example, were able to draw an awareness to themselves and become a significant heated topic. Sarah Kemble Knight gained a reputation for herself by being knowledgeable in

Lady Macduff of Macbeth       In reading Shakespeare's tragic drama Macbeth, one meets only one good woman - Lady Macduff. The remaining female characters are basically evil. Let's consider mainly Lady Macduff and only briefly the three witches.   Blanche Coles states in Shakespeare's Four Giants that Macbeth's wife had considerable leverage over her husband's mind:   This was her opportunity to do as she had promised herself she would do after she had read the letter - to pour