osed in 1715, during her second widowhood, with a final paragraph from 1719 before her death. Gluckel has conveniently broken down her narratives in seven books, which help the reader clearly identify with individual aspects occurring in her life. In her memoirs Gluckel thoroughly encompasses a social, cultural and economical perspective about her life as a Jewish woman while contrasting it to Christian ways which dominated Germany during both 17th and 18th century. By examining Gluckel's memoirs the reader is placed first hand into the life of a Jewish woman, who although has many responsibilities still feels the importance in explaining in detail, her experiences to her children as a mother and businesswoman. Gluckel's role as a mother is an influential reason why she wrote her memoirs to begin with. Gluckel particularly wrote her memoirs to her children to guide them in their ways not morally but rather through her own experiences. Gluckel writes in book one of her memoirs:I am not writing this book in order to preach to you, but, as I have already said, to drive away the melancholy that comes with the long nights. So far as my memory and the subject permit, I shall try to tell everything that has happened to me from my youth upward. Not that I wish to put on airs or pose as a good and pious woman. No, dear children, I am a sinner. Every day, every hour, and every moment of my life I have sinned, nearly all manner of sins. God grant I may find the means and occasion for repentance. But alas, the cares of providing for my orphaned children, and the ways of the world, have kept me far from that state. Gluckel's role as a Jewish mother is greatly influenced by the Christian community and cultural setting around her. As Natalie Zemon Davis writes in her book, Women on the Margin Gluckel's autobiography to her children is very similar to Christian autobiographies written in seventeenth and eighteenth century in Germany. ...
