Two works published in 1984 demonstrate contrasting

Two works published in 1984 demonstrate
contrasting approaches to writing the history of
United States women. Buel and Buel’s biography of
Mary Fish (1736–1818) makes little effort to place
her story in the context of recent historiography on
women. Lebsock, meanwhile, attempts not only to
write the history of women in one southern
community, but also to redirect two decades of
historiographical debate as to whether women
gained or lost status in the nineteenth century as
compared with the eighteenth century. Although
both books offer the reader the opportunity to
assess this controversy regarding women’s status,
only Lebsock’s deals with it directly. She examines
several different aspects of women’s status, helping
to refi ne and resolve the issues. She concludes that
while women gained autonomy in some areas,
especially in the private sphere, they lost it in many
aspects of the economic sphere. More importantly,
she shows that the debate itself depends on frame
of reference: in many respects, women lost power
in relation to men, for example, as certain jobs
(delivering babies, supervising schools) were taken
over by men. Yet women also gained power in
comparison with their previous status, owning a
higher proportion of real estate, for example. In
contrast, Buel and Buel’s biography provides ample
raw material for questioning the myth, fostered by
some historians, of a colonial golden age in the
eighteenth century but does not give the reader
much guidance in analyzing the controversy over
women’s status.


According to the passage, Lebsock’s work differs from Buel and Buel’s work in that Lebsock’s work
(A) uses a large number of primary sources
(B) ignores issues of women’s legal status
(C) refuses to take a position on women’s status in the eighteenth century
(D) addresses larger historiographical issues
(E) fails to provide suffi cient material to support its claims