I read this directly before reading Nancy Brown's piece and I thought it was interesting the way that the two communities dealt with the disproportionate gender ratios, which (from what I can tell), seem to be about the same. In the Jamestown colony, there was approximately one woman for every four men, and in the community of St. George, the discrepancy seems similar, if not larger. However, due to different living conditions and religious beliefs within the communities, the two groups went about solving their problem in different ways.
The Jamestown colony, as an agricultural society thriving almost entirely on cash crops, needed as many workers as they could support in order to develop their infant economy. The advertisements which the company put out for women to go and live in the colony was not only a means of lessening the discrepancies, but a way to balance the vocational roles; with so many men, some of them would be relegated to women's tasks, something which many found emasculating and couldn't stand, as in the case of John Verone, "who maintained the household he shared with six other men... [and who] had ample opportunity (and perhaps some motive) to hang himself" (Brown, 85). By trying to recruit more women to come, they were growing their community and solidifying the social norms upon which they were raised in England.
The community on the Utah/Arizona border, however, has a more destructive solution to its gender discrepancy issue. Instead of building the social structures by finding more people to live in the community, they send away hundreds of young men in their quest to have what they feel is a social balance. Their community, as it is not based on agriculture - from what I could tell from the article, it appears most of the young men have experience in construction and carpentry - does not have the need for as many hands as they can sustain the way Jamestown did to survive. Their reasons for sending the boys away are religious, very different from the capitalist reasons of Jamestown.
I would be interested in what people think a polygamist community, such as that of St. George, would be like if it was in a similar situation to Jamestown - where everything is based on agriculture and working in the fields, and the community is almost entirely cut off from the outside world. Would they still send young men away, or would they keep them in the community and find another way to deal with the imbalance of men to women?
This is mostly a hypothetical question, as Mormonism did not exist in the early 1600's.
1 comment:
I read this directly before reading Nancy Brown's piece and I thought it was interesting the way that the two communities dealt with the disproportionate gender ratios, which (from what I can tell), seem to be about the same. In the Jamestown colony, there was approximately one woman for every four men, and in the community of St. George, the discrepancy seems similar, if not larger. However, due to different living conditions and religious beliefs within the communities, the two groups went about solving their problem in different ways.
The Jamestown colony, as an agricultural society thriving almost entirely on cash crops, needed as many workers as they could support in order to develop their infant economy. The advertisements which the company put out for women to go and live in the colony was not only a means of lessening the discrepancies, but a way to balance the vocational roles; with so many men, some of them would be relegated to women's tasks, something which many found emasculating and couldn't stand, as in the case of John Verone, "who maintained the household he shared with six other men... [and who] had ample opportunity (and perhaps some motive) to hang himself" (Brown, 85). By trying to recruit more women to come, they were growing their community and solidifying the social norms upon which they were raised in England.
The community on the Utah/Arizona border, however, has a more destructive solution to its gender discrepancy issue. Instead of building the social structures by finding more people to live in the community, they send away hundreds of young men in their quest to have what they feel is a social balance. Their community, as it is not based on agriculture - from what I could tell from the article, it appears most of the young men have experience in construction and carpentry - does not have the need for as many hands as they can sustain the way Jamestown did to survive. Their reasons for sending the boys away are religious, very different from the capitalist reasons of Jamestown.
I would be interested in what people think a polygamist community, such as that of St. George, would be like if it was in a similar situation to Jamestown - where everything is based on agriculture and working in the fields, and the community is almost entirely cut off from the outside world. Would they still send young men away, or would they keep them in the community and find another way to deal with the imbalance of men to women?
This is mostly a hypothetical question, as Mormonism did not exist in the early 1600's.
Post a Comment