The colonists who came over on the Mayflower believed that women were morally as well as intellectually and physically inferior, and that they should be married off as early as possible so their husbands could keep them on the straight and narrow . . . But it was occasionally difficult to wring the proper degree of deference out of women who had crossed the ocean in small boats, helped carve settlements out of the wilderness, and spent their days alone in isolated farmhouses surrounded by increasingly ticked-off Indians.
from When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins
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