"Is marriage a privilege or a right? A sacrament or a contract? Is it a public or a private matter? Where does ultimate jurisdiction over it lie? And when a marriage goes wrong, how do we adjudicate marital disputes-particularly in the usual circumstance, where men and women do not have equal access to power, justice, or even voice? These questions have long been with us because they defy easy, concrete answers. Kirsten Sword here reveals that contestation over such questions in early America drove debates over the roles and rights not only of women but of all unfree people. Sword shows how and why gendered hierarchies change-and why, frustratingly, they don't"--

Kirsten Sword is a historian of early American and women's history affiliated with Indiana University Bloomington.