The Life of a late 16th-century English laborer and his wife followed a predictable path. Once a woman married in Elizabethan England, she passed from the protection of her father’s home to that of her new husband. She mainly looked after the household’s domestic affairs, and her spouse became the main income provider. Each of them had a clearly defined role to fulfill, something that provided a measure of stability in an age when disease could suddenly claim a life, or economic or political conditions change one’s fortunes with no prior warning.
When Eleanor White married Ananias Dare as a young woman, she agreed to be an obedient spouse who faithfully served her husband’s interests, but she never could have imagined the course their lives would take or that she would have an impact on history as she lived out her vows. If her life had followed the usual path of a woman of her time and place, she would have lived and died in obscurity. As it happened, she and her family played a major role in America’s earliest founding.
Listen to the story at Anchor.fm/rebeccapricejanney
P.S. My book is out of print but still available from online booksellers.
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