Description
What was 18th century sex like? What was marriage like back then? What about sexuality, gender roles, and women’s rights? To answer these questions, we’re going to look first at what sexual culture and sexual freedom looked like in colonial Philadelphia. Then, we’ll look at a peculiar feature of many 18th century marriages: the fact that wives who felt mistreated sometimes deserted their husbands, forcing their estranged and abandoned spouses to use newspaper advertisements to try to disown their wives or suspend their credit in local stores. Finally, we’ll look at all the women in colonial British America who were not married—and what their lives were like as a result of their independence.
