Berkin has touched on many demographics in her story to show the role of women the struggle to attain freedom from slavery. Her use of different demographics has given her story an added advantage to explain precisely the role women played during this period. Berkin is not discriminative to explain that the Native American women who sided by the colonists faced a lot of challenges such as rejection from the patriots. This is one area that most authors always fail to mention as they will choose on a single demography such as race to explain the role of women in the struggle to liberate the United States from the slave trade.
The role of women in Native American society was bigger than that of the white women prior to colonial rule. During the colonial time, the Native American women sided with the British to preserve their ways of life. However, after the British lost to the Americans and independence gained, the Native American women lost their ways of life and became equal with the white women. I believe that the chapters about the Native Americans and the Slave women talk about the plights these two sects had. The chapters are well guided and show the real trouble slaves faced in the United States and how they struggled to liberate themselves to an extent of working together with the colonists.
The title “Revolutionary Mothers” is a good indicator of what happens in the book. Berkin chose the best title for the book bearing in mind that it talks totally about the role of women in Revolutionary Era. Reading the book changed my opinion about the role of women during the revolutionary era. Most of the books I have read talked mostly about the role of men. Those that mentioned women did not indicate precisely the struggle they underwent and how they risked their lives. Additionally, I have learned that not all women during the struggle for independence fought alongside the patriots. There were those who sided with the British so as to retain their social status in the society such as the Native American women. That revelation made me have a very different view on the role some women played during the revolutionary era.
Work cited
Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for Independence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print.
