Sarah Kemble Knight essays

Sarah Kemble Knight essays What would a woman in the 1700s be doing riding on horseback across country by herself? This question seems shocking to some but not to a woman like Sarah Kemble Knight. She was the daughter of a Boston merchant and married a sea captain. In her quest from Boston to New York, we will look at the aspect she had on her journey. The differences she noted in her diary about how she portrayed the people of that time, and the religion that Sarah had in her life. Sarah was a Puritan woman, and with keeping that in mind she had great humor in her writings. She portrayed herself as humorous and her surroundings also. The still all too common stereotype of Puritans is that of somber and unsmiling. The Puritans belief was to serve God and their husbands. After reading the introduction, Sarah lost her father in 1689 and with her husband out to sea she assumed the responsibilities of the household, as with many other women of this time. Through the history books women are portrayed as being seen but not heard and through the readings of American Literature I have come to realize that women played a very important role in this era. Women were often far from ideal and in a frontier society they sometimes had to take on mens work. Usually on the death of their husbands and fathers the women had to become printers, stationers, writers, and innkeepers. Knight was an unusually independent woman for her time. During her lifetime she supported herself and her family by running a shop, teaching handwriting to children, copying legal documents, and taking in boarders. In the journal that Knight kept of her journey, she described what it was like to travel on horseback, accompanied by a mail carrier and other travelers. The road was rough, the rivers were treacherous and this frightened Sarah very much. The fear she was feeling did not dampen her spirits of the journey. Her imagination ran wild with the vividness of her ...