The Coquette Gender Roles

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The American Revolution was a great political disturbance that started with the Stamp Act in 1765. The colonists were outraged by the taxes and authority that the British monarchy kept declaring on them. Many battles took place between the British on Colonies before the Treaty of Paris was signed and the war was officially over in 1783 (Tindall and Shi, 2013).
The British monarchy was the source of legal authority in America throughout the colonial period. Parliament passed taxes including the Molasses Act, the Sugar Act, the Currency Act, the Stamp Act, and the Townshend Acts. According to Tindall and Shi (2013), these taxes stirred up a storm of protests because the free colonists wanted self-government, religious freedom, economic opportunity, …show more content…
This was a story of a socially elite Connecticut woman named Eliza Wharton. She was engaged to one man that died before they married and then she was pursued by two very different suitors. She could not make up her mind between the two and they both ended up marring other women. She ended up having an affair with one of her married suitors (Stanford) and became pregnant. Her guilt for the affair was so great that she ran away from her friends and family. “The various emotions of shame, and remorse, penitence and regret, which torture and distract my guilty breast, exceed description.” She died after giving birth to a stillborn, illegitimate child at a roadside tavern. This story seems to act as a warning to both men and women about extramarital affairs because Eliza died alone and Stanford lost all of his fortune (Brown and Foster, 1996). This story definitely does not promote a women’s independence from men and depicts them as being weak and easily coerced.
In conclusion, the American Revolution fundamentally changed American society because it awarded the white men of the colonies to self-govern. According to Tindall and Shi (2013), the Revolution helped to excite a sense of a common nationality. It produced a new outlook among its people that would have significant effects in the future. Groups excluded from immediate equality such as women, slaves, and Native Americans would later draw their motivations from the same revolutionary ideas. Other democracies have modeled their governments from the United
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