This is probably the most discussed person and court case of early Virginia, especially for women's historians. The story has been in multiple books, multiple articles, and is a standard part of talking about gender in colonial America.
What do you think about Kathy Brown's interpretation?
Do you think that it's a good thing, historically speaking, to use such a unique case to draw broader conclusions about English society?
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In discussing gender relations in early Virginia, Brown frames her argument with the notion that the precarious, fledgling socio-economic conditions under which the settlers existed led to a general anxiety among authoritarian structures who sought to establish a greater civil stability in the region. The case of Thomas/ine reflects this overall unease with the uncertainty of the social structure. By insisting upon repeated inspections of the subject's body in order to bestow upon him a final gender indentity, both the men and the women of the settlement (Thomas/ine's master and the local matrons) exercised a sort of power struggle that exemplified the tension that arose from the traditional male dominance and effectual female scarcity of the era.
This particular case does "get at" certain themes present in the particular context of early America, given the economic and political conditions of the period. However, inferring from this case conclusions upon the whole of English society ignores the particular conditions of the early Virginian societies which engendered the anxiety which characterized the deciding of Thomas/ine's fate.
Perhaps a more prudent analysis might compare the relative freedom Thomas/ine experienced regarding the performance and choosing of his gender in England as opposed to in Virginia, wherein the latter the relatively new authoritarian structure imposed upon him a signifier of their inability to mark his gender, with the strange half-man half-woman costume.
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