Wife to Widow

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In Wife to Widow, award-winning historian Bettina Bradburyexplores the little studied phenomenon of the transition from wife towidowhood to offer new insights into the law, politics, demography, religion, and domestic life of early nineteenth-century Montreal. Bradbury's unique history spans the lives of two generations ofMontreal women who married either before or after the Patrioterebellions of 1837-38 to reveal a picture of a city and its inhabitantsacross a period of profound change. Drawing on a wealth of primarysources, from church and court records, censuses, and tax documents, tonewspapers and pamphlets, Bradbury shows how women -Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish, wealthy and working-class -interacted with and shaped the city's culture, customs, andinstitutions, even as they laboured under the shifting conditions ofpatriarchy. Weaving together the individual biographies of twenty women againstthe backdrop of the collective genealogy of over 500, Bradbury tellsthe stories of these women through the traces their actions left indocuments and archives. In doing so, she makes an invaluablecontribution to the writing on the histories of women, families, cities, law, religion and politics. A truly monumental study, Wife to Widow is an immenselyreadable, rigorous, and compelling work.