Fierce Communion: Family and Community in Early America by Helena M. Wall (review)

BookReviews 247 Helena M. Wall. Fierce Communion: Family and Community in EarlyAmerica. Cambridge , Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 1990.Pp. xii + 243. This book begins byproposing a clear and simple model of colonial America's essential social characteristic and development. "Colonial society," Helena Wall argues, "began by deferring to the rights of the individual" (vii).In this process, the colonial family was initially subordinated to broader communal needs-and thus subject to nervous intervention from governments, courts, and churches-but later became characterized by what Lawrence Stone has defined as "affective individualism .""Families cast in [this] mold," says Wall, "gave greater scope for expression of theself, emphasized affection and autonomy, and sought privacyfor both individuals and families" (130). The first part of Wall's thesis-the priority of perceived communal needs-is pursued with gusto and amply supported by documentation fromcolonial records as well as by a welcome synthesis of the recent outpouring of familyand community studies. Toe second part of the thesis-the shift to a conception of the "private" family-is terse and derivative. Much of it is contained in an "Afterword" which might have been better described as an afterthought. Toe concluding argument, moreover, contains internal contradictions. Wall refers to the emergence of "republican motherhood" as part of the redefinition of familyvalues. But that concept in itself suggests that at an ideological level there remained a continued subordination of the family, and of woman's role within it, to the larger needs of society. It is in its depiction of community intervention in familylife that the value of the book clearly rests. Wall showshow this involvement often exhibited ambiguities whichthreatened hannony instead of supporting it. Colonial authorities proceeded fromthe assumption that the support of patriarchy was crucial to the preservation of tranquillity within the family and hence good order in society. But, in defending the authority of fathers and husbands, colonial authorities often turned a blind eye to the disorder of family violence: wife-beating and child abuse. One of Wall's more interesting, and contestable, assertions isthat communal norms and practices with respect to the family exhibited no significant regional variations. Local government in the Chesapeake operated from the same standards of"order'' and "quiet rule" in their scattered communities as the Puritan authorities didin the clustered towns of New England. Wall's approach has the merit of showing that values and practices often loosely ascribed to Puritanism were, in fact, more widelydiffused; but her bold generalisations are open to question. Though she makes cursory reference to Barry Levy,Quakers and theAmerican Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley (New York, 1988), she fails to take cognisance of his central argument that, from the beginning, colonial Quaker communities embraced distinct 248 CanadianReview of American Studies conceptions of family life which were, in many respects, prototypical of nineteenthcentury experience. Child rearing within them was based on the religiously derived perception of the child as a "tender plant" requiring the nurturance of a loving family to shield it from the corruptions of a carnal world. This notion was clearly distinct from the orthodox Protestant view of children as bearers of original sin, whose development must be supervised by a vigilant community, to the extent of sometimes encouraging their removal from the family itself. It is perhaps inevitable that in a short book on a large theme there would be a tendency to overgeneralise. And, despite its flaws, Wall's book is a brave effort which merits widespread use in undergraduate courses as long as its readers are aware that it offers, not convincing social theory, but a model of social development which requires continual testing against empirical research. John Sainsbury Brock University •••••• Robert Bothwell. Canada and the United States: The Politics of Partnership. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. Pp. ix + 190. Since the 1960s,two characteristics have dominated the writing on CanadianAmerican relations. First, much of the work has been done by those in the Canadian media and the academic world with a focus on how Ottawa officials, public opinion, and interest groups viewed the relationship with the United States. Secondly, much of this literature has a decidedly anti-American tone which has become the basis...