Stripped and Script

<div>Female loyalists occupied a nearly impossible position during the American Revolution. Unlike their male counterparts loyalist women were effectively silenced-unable to officially align themselves with either side or avoid being persecuted for their family ties. In this book Kacy Dowd Tillman argues that women's letters and journals are the key to recovering these voices as these private writings were used as vehicles for public engagement. Through a literary analysis of extensive correspondence by statesmen's wives Quakers merchants and spies <i>Stripped and Script</i> offers a new definition of loyalism that accounts for disaffection pacifism neutralism and loyalism-by-association. Taking up the rhetoric of violation and rape this archive repeatedly references the real threats rebels posed to female bodies property friendships and families. Through writing these women defended themselves against violation in part by writing about their personal experiences while knowing that the documents themselves may be confiscated used against them and circulated.</div>