Power and Submission

Gender Roles in William Byrd’s “Secret Diary”

Abstract

This paper focuses both on the patterns of domination and inequality (authority and protection against obedience and gratitude) and the standards of gender roles in the eighteenth-century Virginia patriarchal regime. Sex-role identification in connection with sex-typed educational plans, domestic predicament, and sexual politics in marital life are all taken into critical consideration through a careful reading of William Byrd's Secret Diary.