Gender in British North America17th Century
–Families
–Single (wealthy) males
–Slaves
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Religious beliefs
Protestant and Catholic religious beliefs shape ideas about proper role of women
Sin of Eve means all women untrustworthy
Eve’s disobedience to God means she should be under the authority of Adam to limit her potential for transgression
Paul: “women should keep silence in the churches” – taken to mean women should not teach, nor hold authority over men in church
Religious beliefs
Patriarchy is the biblically ordained social order and correctly expressed in all things from the home to church to the state
Within a patriarchy, people need to understand their place within it, act accordingly, and structure their expectations to meet their role
Legal status
Married women are “feme covert”
no legal identity after marriage (legal status “covered” by their husbands’ = “two become one”)
Not able to own personal property – what she brings into the marriage belongs to husband (can be seized for debts, etc)
May own real estate, but cannot control it
“feme sole traders” or deputy husbands in extreme circumstances
Single women are “feme sole” with the same legal rights as men, no political rights
Legal status
Dower Rights
Set amount (usually 1/3) of “life interest” in her husband’s real property after his death
e.g. can have 1/3 harvest from farm
Called “widow’s thirds”
Inheritance generally goes to eldest son unless will declares otherwise
Wealthy fathers may try to protect daughter’s inheritance
Poor Laws
Destitute widows or orphans (mainly) must be cared for by the community
Puritan beliefs
Individual bible study and interpretation
Constant self-examination and policing
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Puritans and Women’s Souls
Patriarchal authority through the church (St. Paul’s edict: “Let the women keep silent in the churches.” -- 1 Corinthians 14:34)
Anne Hutchinson told: "You have stepped out of your place, you have rather been a husband than a wife, and a preacher than a hearer.“
Puritan belief: "the soul consists of two portions, inferior and superior; the superior is masculine and eternal; the feminine inferior and mortal."
Puritan families
Individual congregations, whose leaders have demonstrated their conversions, agreed that the Gospel would be preached and discipline maintained among the congregation, then God would bestow “saving grace” within the church.
“National” covenant means Puritans also apply these ideas about covenant and mutual assent to state
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Puritan families
Coming from stratified society where status and its meaning are vital: deference, respect, order
Somewhat mitigated by fact many arriving initially from middle strata of English society
Family is core of Puritan society – mirrors larger society and prepares members for Godly lives (as befits saints)
Familial hierarchy and recognition of place in it vital to understanding of larger society and individual responsibilities/order: family covenant
Orderly families = orderly society
In fact, Puritans leaving are worried over new “landless class” and worried about possible breakdowns of English social order.
Master, misstress, goodwife, etc.
John Winthrop, from “A Model of Christian Charity” 1630
God Almighty…hath so disposed of the condition of mankind [that] some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjection…
The Reason Hereof:...so that the rich and mighty might not eat up the poor, nor the poor and despised rise up against their superiors and shake off their yoke; second, in the regenerate in exercising His graces in them, as in the great ones their love, mercy, gentleness, temperance, &c.; in the poor and inferior sort, their faith, patience, obedience, &c.....
When God gives us a special commission He wants it strictly observed in every article....
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Puritan families
“…a familie is a little Church, and a little common-wealth, at least a lively representation thereof, whereby triall may be made of such as are fit for any place of authoritie, or of subjection in Church or commonwealth. Or rather it is as a schoole wherein the first principles and grounds of government and subjection are learned: whereby men are fitted to greater matters in Church or common-wealth.” William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties (1622)
William Gouge (1575-1653)
Cohort to MA includes preachers, merchants, primarily families
2:3 sex ratio (very good for new settlement)
Main unit of economic production (external and household economies) and property transfer
Main educational, religious, political unit
Desire for order, godly lives of citizens
Town layouts
Policing of all, including unmarrieds
By coming with families, insuring children don’t grow up in goddlessness; can “transplant” society rather than rebuilding it, but transplant without faults; can reproduce ideal structure, conditions, relationships; kin groups moving together – enhances broader social ties as well as inter-familial ties; give stats. Means family is true bulwark in new conditions.
1672, John littleale of Haverhill MA was living by himself and the Essex County Court found “he is subject to much sin and iniquity, which ordinarily are the companions and consequences of a solitary life” and ordered him to “settle himself in some orderly family in town, and be subjected to the orderly rules of family government”
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Puritan women
“he for God only, she for God in him” Milton Paradise Lost
Women and men are equally able to be elect and to develop understandings of God’s word and many women more pious and devout than men.
Subordinate status and pain of childbirth makes them more open to spiritual (deaths during childbirth/childbed mean it is constant part of women’s lives – either directly or indirectly)
Bradstreet: “Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are, Men have precendency and still excel, It is but vain, unjustly to wage awar; Men can do best and women know it well.
Point 3: however, women’s understandings is different than men’s so Winthrop’s case of Misstress Hopkins who went insane
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Choice frequently guided by family
Type of partnership with shared responsibilities
“to guid the house &c. not guid the Husband” (Increase Mather sermon 1672)
Husband should “make his government of her as easie and gentle as possible; and strive more to be lov’d than fear’d: though neither is to be excluded” (Benjamin Wadsworth, Well-Ordered Family)
Subjection, but not “slavish” obedience – turn to hatred
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Responsibilities lay inside a specific “private” purview – maintaining home, household economy, children, servants, but could be “deputy husband” under specific circumstances
“An old (or Superannuated) Maid, in Boston, is thought such a curse as nothing can exceed it, and look'd on as a dismal Spectacle.“ -- John Dunton, bookseller, 1686
Ulrich: winthrop instance of women claiming right ot specific midwife
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Well-ordered home, frugal, clean
Household production – individual and supervision of production
Early market society means home production crucial for most
Egg and butter money, candles, spinning
“women’s work” for wages as cities and towns expand
Informal authority
Male and female adulterers punished differently –Illustrates different role of women
Male adulterers had wronged their partner’s husband
Female adulterers had wronged their own husband AND the wife, children, and relations of their partner
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Puritan women
Women’s sexual nature is welcomed within the bounds of marriage b/c it is necessary to reproduction
Bible says to multiply
Orgasm necessary for conception (difficulty of rape suits)
Heavy punishments for sexual contact outside of marriage
Talking about good and bad sexuality meant to educate children - public punishments and sermons:
“F is for fornication”
Adultery, premarital intercourse, bestiality, sodomy all subject to strict penalties for men and women
Women tried in Essex county avg younger age than women married and many of the men named were married – may indicate predatory relationship or women in weaker social status: Use priscilla willeston case as example
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Puritan women
Essex County Court records from 1641 and 1685, 135 married women and 131 unmarried women cited for fornication
Brides with “early babies” fall into same age category as women who marry with 9-12 month children (early to mid 20s)
62 percent of unmarried mothers are between 15 and 20 and the fathers named avg 25-29 yrs
Single mothers cannot duplicate godly family model and are in economic danger – may become a drain; woman’s carnal nature has been tapped
Midwives as witness
Risky
Mercy Bradstreet – 3 children lost, died in childbirth at 28
Average woman has 7 children, with last at age 37
Does not include stillbirths or miscarriages
Most women spend adult lives childbearing and childrearing
High infant survival rates – could read 80% (London was 20% and Chesapeake could be 40-50%)
Multi-generation families in communities
Anne Bradstreet childless her first 6 years of marriage “It please God to keep me a long time wihtout a child, which was a great grief ot me and cost me many prayers and tears before I obtained one”
Mary Clap (bore 6 children, buried 4) died at 24: childbearing was “the work she was made for and what god in his providence had called her to”
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Salem Witch Trials, 1692
Women in the colonies almost always women – European witchcrazes also targeted men
Most accused exhibit behavior that challenges “goodwife” image
Tituba
Sarah Good (homeless, destitute, mumbled to self) H
As hunt continues, others pulled in
Rebecca Nurse (elderly widow who had never remarried)H
John Proctor (tavern owner, objected to accusations towards his wife) H
Salem Witch Trials, 1692
Up to 13 died in prison
Why?
Ergot blight
Frontier unrest, Indian victories
Captive for 11 weeks
Daughter of a clergyman, one of 13 children.
She was independent minded, assertive, and well trained in religious discourse by her father.
At age 21, she married William Hutchinson.
She was a good Puritan woman
16 pregnancies in all.
She was a good homemaker and housekeeper.
Practiced folk medicine and acted as a midwife when called upon.
•In 1634, she and her husband came to America in a group led by the Reverend John Cotton, one of the primary Puritan divines. •Opened her home to post-church discussions.
Anne Hutchinson
At these meetings 60 men and women discussed theology
Hutchinson became a leader and teacher on the newer ideas of the “Puritan Divines” led by John Cotton
Local authorities told her to stop – Cotton was the enemy of the current governor, John Winthrop.
Hutchinson brought to trial 1637
Banished for “disorderlyness”, then appealed
Imprisoned for a year and brought to trial in church a second time in 1638, convicted and banished.
58 Bostonians took up arms in support of her.
She left colony with small group supporters, followed by husband and children.
Later she and her children killed by Indians; husband had already died
Gender in Anne Hutchinson’s Case
•Anne Hutchinson believed that women should teach and preach because they were as likely as men to have a true covenant of grace with God.
John Winthrop felt that too much reading and studying would drive a woman mad.
He found Hutchinson haughty, aggressive, disorderly, unfeminine, and suspected her of practicing free love and witchcraft.
John Winthrop feared this woman, and particularly her influence over other women.
Women were too weak and unintelligent to resist her message
weak women would, like Eve, lead their husbands to evil.
Gender in Anne Hutchinson’s Case
At her second religious one, Hutchinson was told that her problem was that she would "rather be a Husband than a Wife and a Preacher than a Hearer; and a Magistrate than a Subject."
In other words, she lacked submissive spirit and dependent demeanor of a true Puritan woman.
The charge of witchcraft raised at the end of the second trial.
Told story of a deformed baby that Hutchinson had delivered as a midwife as evidence of her being a witch.
Winthrop continued to harass Hutchinson in exile.
She was seriously ill after her long confinement and at age 46, in the final stages of her last pregnancy.
She delivered prematurely, the child died.
Winthrop sent for details and published, "that she had produced 30 monstrous births, or thereabouts."
Southern Colonies
first women in 1608
“These Savages have no particular propertie in any parcell of that country, but only a general residence there, as wild beasts have in the forest” – Robert Gray “A Good Speed to Virginia”
Cycle of violence and truces
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Unbalanced sex ratio
A few female “headrights” (50 acres of land – women who bought own passage are eligible)
Easier marriage – sex ratio and VA Company wants more married men b/c they cause less trouble
Marrying Native women not a respectable option after earliest period
Female indentured servants
70 to 85 percent of all emigrants in first half of 17th Century are indentured
Cannot marry until indenture is served:
Later marriage = fewer children
Family in the Chesapeake
life expectancy only 43 years
most marriages lasted only 7 years
men outnumber women 3 to 1
pregnant women especially vulnerable to malaria
few children reach adulthood with both parents living (and almost no grandparents)
widows prized (inheritance); remarried quickly
Family in the Chesapeake
Coming from stratified society where status and its meaning are vital: deference, respect, order
Intent to model English gentry
Familial hierarchy and recognition of place in it vital to understanding of larger society and individual responsibilities/order
Orderly families = orderly society
In fact, Puritans leaving are worried over new “landless class” and worried about possible breakdowns of English social order.
Master, misstress, goodwife, etc.
Marriage in Chesapeake
Institution of marriage shaped by sparse settlement and lack of community control as existed in New England
As result, many early marriages were informal, “common-law”
But with fragile families, inheritance becomes an issue
As result, pressure to form more rigid and solemnized marriages
Marriage in Chesapeake
Tension as racial inequalities increase
Sexual violence
Comparison
Marriage differed in British colonies north and south, largely as a result of the institution of slavery.
(While there was slavery in the North, it did not predominate as a social form.)
In South, where slavery resulted in creation of significant peoples of mixed race and numbers of illegitimate children, control of white, landed or upper class women’s sexuality (fertility) became very important.