“Deborah Sampson, daughter of a poor Massachusetts farmer, disguised herself as a man and in 1782, at age twenty-one, enlisted in the Continental Army. Eventually, her commanding officer discovered her secret but kept it to himself, and she was honorably discharged at the end of the war. She was one of the few women to have fought in the Revolution. This example represents the figure of women fighting alongside men. This encouraged the expansion of the wife's opportunities. Deborah, after the Revolution, along with other well-known female figures, reinforced the ideology of republican motherhood which viewed marriage as a "voluntary union maintained by mutual affection and dependence rather than by male authority." (Fonner, p. 190). This ideal of “companionate” marriage changed the structure of the family itself, the modern family in which workers, laborers and servants are no longer considered members of the family. However, although women thought that after the war they would have been perceived differently by society, this was never the case. The revolution did not change the perception of women and the emancipated ideal