Intersectionality and the Social Construction of Gender Roles
Erica L. Ball puts for the concept of intersectionality as a way to make the “invisible”
women “visible” in history. An examination of the way the dynamics of race, class, and gender
work together, can challenge long-standing assumptions about U.S. history and culture. These
forces work in concert to construct the social concepts of gender roles in colonial America, and
the tropes of the “good wife” and the “disorderly woman” served to support and reinforce the
development of that patriarchal society.
In both New England and in the Mid-Atlantic region, the social construction of gender in the
early colonies intersected with the construction of race and supported the concept of the
naturalness of female subordination to men. John Smith’s first telling of the story of Pocahontas
formed the basis for the trope of the naturally subordinate Indigenous woman. Tiffany Potter
argues that, because the created idea that even supposed savages were reported to recognize
acquiescent and subordinating models of identify and behavior, European women were coerced
into accepting acquiescent and subordinating models of identity and behavior.1 Potter writes, “If
modesty, continence, and obedience are so universal and prediscursive that even ostensibly
uncivilized Indian women observe them naturally, then any immodest claims to equality or to
potentially disobedient autonomy made by the English women must surely be unnatural,
examples of the frivolous and ill-advised female vanity suggested in their choice of "gaudy
Dresses." The prescriptive values of Europe are thus circularly entrenched for both the continent
and the colonies, using North American Indian women as conduit.”2
Kathleen M. Brown explores the “gender frontiers,” first on the eve of colonial settlement,
then the Anglo-Indian relations, and finally the gender and social order of the colonial
Tiffany Potter. “Circular Taxonomies: : Regulating European and American Women through Representations of
North American Indian Women.” Early American Literature 41, no. 2 (2006): 183.
2
Potter. “Circular Taxonomies.” 192.
1
1
settlements, specifically the distinctions between “good wives” and “nasty wenches.” Order in
society was viewed as coming from God, and hierarchal relationships were viewed as part of the
natural order of the world. The hierarchal relationships within the household mirrored the
hierarchal social relationships among the crown and subjects. Social pressure to conform grew
out of the need to maintain patriarchal households, thus both an obligation of and justification for
state power.3 Women were both naturally submissive and dangerous for their instability.
Women and men maintained separate spheres with regard to work – women inside the home,
men outside. Women who conformed to the roles assigned by society (ever-changing as they
were) were considered “good wives,” while “nasty wenches” exhibited behavior disorderly to
society. Many considered unruly women and disorderly houses to be at the root of social ills,
which could be contained by employing wives domestically4. The English conceptions of the
naturalness of gender order were called into question by the different gender roles of the Indians.
The English extended their hierarchal view of nature to the settlements and to the Indian cultures
they encountered. Just as women were subordinate to men, so were Indians to the English,
though at first and by necessity the English had to deal with the Indians on the Indians’ terms.
As the English and Indians pushed back over domination, the male roles and patriarchy were
strengthened in each culture. In the colonies, gender distinctions became critical to social order
and political authority, and the distinction between “good wife” and “nasty wench” took on
greater significance. Potter explains how the circular taxonomy of femininity bridged the old
and new worlds, where a scale of relative liminality undermines by comparison women in either
culture who act outside of their prescribed identities and roles.5
3
Kathleen M. Brown. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches &Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial
Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 16.
4
Brown. Good Wives, 31.
5
Potter. “Circular Taxonomies.” 183.
2
Looking at the Mid-Atlantic region, Brown shows how at first and out of necessity, no
distinction was made with regard to women who performed manual labor, but women disliked
the arduous nature of the work, fieldwork became to be associated with “nasty wenches” – good
wives worked within the home. Because the colonies lacked traditional forms of social and
political authority, power was tenuous at best, propped up by reputation, and women, through the
use of gossip, exerted informal power over members of their community.6 Brown writes, “These
distinctions between classes of women reflected the importance of marriage for turning women
into good wives and regulating their sexual activity to promote social order.”7 With the growing
use of enslaved African labor, these distinctions among women intersected with the growing
concept of race. Phyllis Mack explains how by first characterizing and codifying African
women as different from and less civilized than European women, English colonists first began
articulating the racial ideology that would ultimately come to define North American chattel
slavery.8
Brown shows how racial differences became engendered and how racial differences came
to be defined through evolving legislation. The domination over others and the need for
agricultural slave labor institutionalized concepts of race and racism. African women were
forced to discard their traditional domestic duties, as defined by their native gender roles, in
exchange for fieldwork suitable for all but white women. Brown states, “It was this
subordination of African women to the needs of English labor and family systems that ultimately
provided the legal foundation for slavery and for future definitions of racial difference.”9
Taxation laws distinguished between African and English women by linking the work of African
6
Brown. Good Wives, 95.
Brown. Good Wives, 104.
8
Phyllis Mack. “Religion, Feminism, and the Problem of Agency: Reflections on Eighteenth‐Century Quakerism.”
Signs 29, no. 1 (Autumn 2003): 156.
9
Brown. Good Wives, 116.
7
3
women to that of men, and this served to associate the work roles of women with their social
status. Rebecca Tannenbaum argues that childbirth shows the intersections of race and gender.10
Enslaved women were regarded as breeders who produced property, and this challenged the
mother-child relationships and exacerbated the power struggles between masters and slaves.
Enslaved women wanted to maintain their role as mothers, while masters exerted their authority
over property. Reproduction defined women’s bodies and lives, and therefore, women became
viewed as biologically created to be mothers and wives.
African women came to be defined by their race and not their gender, and bondage
became a condition of birth, feeding into the concept of a natural state, as shown by a statute
enacted in Virginia in 1662:
[December 1662] Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by an Englishman upon a negro
woman should be slave or Free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly, that
all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother,
And that if any Christian shall commit Fornication with a negro man or woman, hee or shee soe offending
shall pay double the Fines imposed by the former act. 11
Ball argues that race, through family ownership of enslaved African Americans, not only
define the economic and social status of white plantation mistresses, but also supported the trope
of the good plantation wife by characterizing enslaved women as sexually promiscuous jezebels
and beasts of burden.12 In eighteenth-century Europe, the formalized domestic relationship of
marriage functioned as the physical and social embodiment of those hierarchical gendered
RebeccaTannenbaum. “Conceptualizing Women’s History through the Use of Medicine.” 81.
“An Act Defining the Status of Mulatto Bastards,” December 1662, in William Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large,
Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619. In
Women’s Voices, Women’s Lives, edited by Carol Berkin and Leslie Horowitz (Boston: Northeastern University
Press, 1998), 14.
12
Erica L. Ball. “Conceptualizing the Intersectionality of Race, Class, and Gender in U.S. Women’s History.” 156.
10
11
4
relationships.13 Martha Saxton shows the similar assumptions Virginia men shared with their
English contemporaries regarding the origins of virtue, the necessity of maintaining patriarchal
order, the threat of the unruly poor, and the place of noblesse oblige in maintaining the social
order.14 Women could not support themselves outside of marriage, and the education of elite
girls centered around some reading and writing, but mostly on refined skills, such as embroidery
and the playing of musical instruments. Elite women were groomed to be attractive companions
to elite men. Women of lower socio-economic class and enslaved women rarely received any
education, as it posed a threat to the social system. Physical labor was relegated to the lower
classes, while the elites enjoyed pleasure and focused on physical appearances. The gentry held
a moral obligation for good appearance, described by Saxton as “society as theater.”15 Clothing
showed social class; improper attire for one’s social position showed improper ambition, while
inadequate clothing showed social worthlessness.16 Gentry women were pressured into
controlling displays of emotion, especially those associated with disorderly women. Women
were promised beauty in exchange for “goodness” and were taught to believe in the value of
moral criticism in friendships. Obedience was linked to success with finding a husband, and
gentry women had a target for their expressions of frustration.
Gentry women walked a fine line between flirtation and virginity. They were encouraged
to be submissive but not acquiescent. In keeping with the idea of society as theater, women
feigned ignorance of stirring men’s passions, which in turn supported the myth that women were
the source of men’s aggressive sexuality and that they should bear the responsibility for it.17
Women’s disobedience to men most commonly took the form of premarital sexual relations.
Potter. “Circular Taxonomies.” 183.
Martha Saxton. Being Good: Women’s Moral Values in Early America (New York: Hill & Wang, 2003), 100.
15
Saxton. Being Good. 104.
16
Saxton. Being Good. 105.
17
Saxton. Being Good. 117.
13
14
5
While white men could engage in relations with black women (because they gave black women
the role of “nasty wench” and its sexuality), white women could not look outside their social
(and racial) circle. Although young white women took the blame and bore the responsibility for
bastardy, society did not ostracize them, nor did they sacrifice their marriage chances.18 These
hierarchal sexual standards reinforced the position of the elite white men as patriarchs and
strengthened the racial and social strata. Phillip D. Morgan examines the patterns of interracial
relationships among participants, among specific families, and in the public sphere. Although
uncommon, white women did have relationships with black men, and communities looked upon
this arrangement more severely than upon the relationships between white men and black
women. Families with histories of interracial relationships more often continued these patterns,
and these families may have been more accepting of relationships between white women and
black men. Men rarely acknowledged publically their children from extramarital relationships
with black women. “Shadow families” may have been the colonial elephants in the rooms since
many children of mixed race, whose parents did not marry, often took the surname of the
supposed father.
Morgan also examines Jefferson’s relationships with Sally Hemings, and offers that the
relationship followed the norms of Virginia at the turn of the nineteenth-century. Commonly,
when a spouse died, the surviving spouse married a close relation, and Sally Hemings is
suspected of being Jefferson’s late-wife’s half-sister. Moreover, Hemings gave her children
names of Jefferson’s family members, and her children took Jefferson’s surname. Although
Jefferson never acknowledged his relationship with Hemings in writing, their relationship/family
may have been common knowledge (or common assumption) that turned clandestine only
through the passage of time.
18
Saxton. Being Good. 119.
6
Richard Godbeer shows how interracial relations between Englishmen and indigenous
women differed significantly from those between Englishmen and Africans. During the
beginning of the formation of a British colony in the Chesapeake, British men did not commonly
engage in interracial relationships with the indigenous women. Despite advertising loose
indigenous women to attract British men to the Chesapeake, relatively little sexual contact seems
to have occurred, perhaps due to both the women having little interest in these men and to the
men’s fear of “going native” in a foreign land not yet equipped with sufficient British structure.
Only in the seventeenth-century did male colonists begin to engage in interracial relationships in
numbers sufficient for Godbeer to call a pattern, and these relationships appear to have taken
place more often on the frontier fringes, away from the protection of their countrymen. In
contrast to relationships between white men and black women, colonists more fiercely frowned
upon relationships between white men and native women, both in the New England area and
further south. The proportion of men and women in Puritan New England society was more
balanced, perhaps suggesting that British men felt little need to look elsewhere for marriage.
Little evidence exists to support reasons why native women might have held little interest in
British men, but Godbeer suggests that these men, because they lived on unfamiliar territory,
offered little to the native women. Because the natives instructed the British on ways to survive
in the territory, British men might not have been able to offer much support to the women.
Although intermarriage could lessen tension between two opposing parties, the British showed
little desire to co-exist with the native culture, and therefore, intermarriage would have served no
political purpose. Perhaps the acceptability of interracial relationships between white men and
black women or native women had more to do with the power structures of the relationships
between and among these cultures. Because native women were part of the culture with which
7
the British fought for dominance, intermarriage might have been perceived as more of an
acquiescence and acknowledgement of the equal status between cultures. Because black women
(and men) arrived in the colonies in a subordinate relationship to the colonists from the outset,
relationships may have been perceived as more the black women desiring to assimilate into the
British culture.
Saxton shows how the Puritans held ambiguous views for marriage of slaves. They did
not always recognize marriages between a slave and a partner in Africa, did not insist upon
marriage for slaves, and as a result, they held “a pool of unmarried black women in a moral
limbo.”19 The Puritans viewed blacks as unable or unwilling to have the same sexual standards
and desires as they held. The Puritans viewed Christianized Native American marriages
(between Native Americans!) as a gauge for their own morality. Puritans viewed marriage in a
religious context, as well as spirituality in a sexual context, and marriages of Christianized
Native Americans reflected their success in conversion. Additionally, they believed converts to
their religion as more devout, so the marriages between converts appeared more holy. Women
had the duty to be obedient to their husband, which for tens of thousands, meant leaving England
to relocate to New England. The migration of couples and of families set New England aside
from the other colonies with regard to demographics – New England had a more-balanced
population of white men and women than the other areas. Although unlawful, society tolerated
spousal abuse, and women could not as easily separate from their husbands as they could in the
Chesapeake region.
Women tied their economic futures to the men their married, and white women struggled
to form their identities through marriage and the duties associated with it. Saxton writes,
“Eighteenth-century financial dependence was linked to political dependence and consequently
19
Saxton. Being Good. 46.
8
to corruption and the tyranny of a wealthy few over a large, unrepresented body politic.
According to this formulation, the poor were easily corrupted. Dependent upon richer people for
their livelihoods, they gave their political allegiance in return.”20 This thinking can be expanded
to women, as they were dependent upon richer people, their husbands (since only in rare
instances did women hold property of their own), and rather women gave their familial
allegiance in return. Good wives assumed the role of mother, the duties of keeping house, and
the behavior (or appearance) of obedient wife. Although unhappiness could be the basis for
divorce or separation, usually the man claimed this reason publically. An unhappy woman
seems to have been doomed to unhappiness.
The concepts of motherhood and childhood changed during the eighteenth-century.
Children were less often looked upon as little adults and more so as having different needs from
adults. Slave women were “encouraged” to have children, thus increasing the slaveholdings of
the planters, yet these women had little opportunity to raise the children, let alone nurse their
infants. When discussing the relationships between white women and their children, Saxton
writes, “Maternal fondness was losing its negative connotation over the course of the century,
but it was also proving useful in preventing women from exercising moral authority over men.”21
Although the mother says “no” to her son, he graciously refuses her request, and this is
evidenced by Benjamin Wadsworth when he wrote, “Persons are more apt to disregard their
Mothers, tho they stand in some aue of their Fathers. But the great God of Heaven bids Children
fear their Parents, if therefore they fear them not, they rebel against God. . . .”22
20
Saxton. Being Good. 133.
Saxton. Being Good. 164.
22
BenjaminWadsworth. “The Well-Ordered Family (Boston, 1712).” In Women’s Voices, Women’s Lives, edited by
Carol Berkin and Leslie Horowitz, (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 58.
21
9
New Englanders, because of their reliance on family rather than enslaved labor, held
different views on motherhood and marriage from the colonists in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Women in New England played many simultaneous roles women in New England played.
Because, unlike in other areas, New Englanders transported family units from England, they did
not have the need to build society from the ground up. Although still a patriarchal society,
Puritans stressed the friendship/partner bond in marriage more so than in other regions. Most
women married, as this society frowned upon unmarried women, and their husbands expected
them to assume housewifery duties, which included cleaning, cooking, household chores, caring
for children, and helping with the husband’s work, as well as any of her own economic tasks.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich disagrees that these women had more independence than the women in
neighboring colonies, and she suggests that the perceived independence was really women acting
as “deputy husbands” in their husbands’ absences. As in other colonies, women were still
subject to the doctrine of coverture, and this fact suggests that women did not have any more
independence than other women.
Although women might have had some economic roles, such
as selling wares or skills, this was done so in the larger framework of contributing to the
household. A woman engaging in economic activity did not necessarily translate into separate
economic power.23 Society was more communal than in other areas, and women oftentimes
shared work and supplies, and they relied upon each other more so than on slaves or indentured
servants. Unlike in the Chesapeake region, higher economic status did not divorce women from
housewifey. Servants took over many of the duties for these women, and the women were
expected to perfect their housewifery skills, such as their needlework. Women contributed to the
household economy through domestic manufacturing, and this carved out social roles for them.
23
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 16501750 (Vintage Books: New York, 1991) 37-38.
10
Additionally, women held the responsibility for the care of the house, including cleaning,
cooking, and caring for children, while men held responsibility outside the home in the public
sphere. In the informal female economy, women circled among the homes of their neighbors,
giving assistance where needed. Again, Wadsworth’s words evidence expectations for women,
when he outlines the helpmeet’s duties as including, “. . . to cohabit or dwell together with one
another. . . . [to] have a very great and tender love and affection to one another. . . [to] be chaste,
and faithful to one another. . . . [to] be helpful to each other. . . .”24
In New England, childbirth, although a community event welcoming its newest member,
was also a time for women to gather in private away from the oversight of men. The community
viewed the pains of labor as suffering for Eve’s original sin, and women assembled to assist their
sister in sin through her “travail.” Although this event held the most control for women and their
best opportunity for solidarity, the minister and the physician could still intervene. Although
pregnancy did not excuse a woman from her work duties, the higher her social standing, the
more opportunity for her to disengage from her responsibilities in the home. Ulrich describes
three types of families – those of property, of reproduction, and of sentiment. While the first two
types are self-explanatory, Ulrich examines the naming patterns of children to discern families of
sentiment, which are described as both matrilineal and patrilineal, and all looking at the past.
The naming of children after their deceased siblings is offered as evidence for families of
sentiment.25 Mothers were viewed as affectionate and authoritarian, tirelessly working,
responsible for every facet of running the home and raising the children, and as examples of
fertility, and paternal authority held in check the power of maternal love. Women and mothers
24
Wadsworth. “The Well-Ordered Family,” 57.
25
Ulrich. Good Wives. 149-152.
11
were strong and capable of acting as deputy husbands, but they were viewed as content to
relinquish that role and return to submission upon their husband’s return. Women were both the
victims of and the perpetrators of authoritarian violence, and they could act with skillful violence
against the Native Americans. In cases of capture by Native Americans, women more so than
men, and single women more so than married women, were more likely to remain with their
captors and assimilate to their new way of life. Women played interesting religious roles, such
as bearing the standard of morality both for the community and for their families, providing the
push to form congregations in newly established communities, and being the intermediaries
between the physical and the spiritual world, much as a Voodoo priest or priestess would. The
role as intermediary between these worlds could take on both negative and positive meanings for
the woman; they could have divine inspiration from God, thus showing the woman’s spiritual
worthiness through such a gift, or they could be bewitched or have formed a covenant with the
Devil.
Puritans intertwined their conceptions of sexuality with those of spirituality, looking upon
Christ as a husband and “envisigage[d] union with him in vividly sensual, even sexual, terms”
and Godbeer describes this as “eroticization of the spiritual.”26 Godbeer uses diaries,
correspondence, and poetry to evidence the love and friendship shared between marriage
partners, a crucial foundation for strong Puritan marriages. Godbeer shows that marriage
partners and ministers looked upon sexual relations within the marriage as a “necessary good,”
and refusal to engage in them could be cause for judicial or church hearings. They viewed sex as
necessary and appropriate for procreation, but they also viewed the pleasure derived from it as
necessary and appropriate for a healthy marriage. Sex not only expressed love between partners,
but having a healthy and fulfilling sex life reduced the risk of straying outside of marriage.
26
Richard Godbeer. “A Complete Body of Divinity.” 55.
12
Although they categorized, ranked, and outlined in detail the specific sinful sexual acts, they
placed these sins within the larger context of sin in general and that of the “fall from grace.”
Sexual sins ranked at the top for their sinfulness and placed the sinner the farthest away from
God. For the Puritans, “Christ’s marriage to believers now provided a model for husband and
wife as they sought to build and sustain their relationship.”27 Earthly marriage motivated
spouses to cultivate their relationship with Christ. In the generations following the arrival of the
first Puritans, ministers changed their focus of sexual sin. Rather than emphasize punishment for
impurity, they stressed the loving and joyful (sexualized/eroticized) relationship with Christ as
bridegroom, perhaps, as Godbeer suggests, to prevent them from leaving the flock. Godbeer puts
a wonderfully interesting spin on gender, arguing that Puritan men held more-flexible gender
roles than their contemporaries. Because the Puritans viewed the soul as feminine or of neutral
gender, the men held little reservation wanting a union with a masculine Christ. Socially, men
could assume feminine roles and women vice versa. Godbeer writes, “That flexible relationship
between biological and cultural gender informed social, civic, and spiritual interactions.”28
Puritans viewed women as being more sinful by nature as a result of Eve’s original sin.
This view ties in well with the patriarchal view that good women should be obedient and
restrained out of a fear of God. As a result, women held the responsibility of not only
suppressing their own sexuality, but also ensuring they did nothing to provoke that in men.
Disobedience by women usually took the form of sexual indiscretion or of bewitching. Women
could right their sexual wrongs, in part, with claims of marriage promises. Through bewitching,
women could voice their thoughts and frustrations while not bearing responsibility for their
actions; however, once exorcised, these women could no longer engage in this behavior.
27
28
Godbeer. “A Complete Body of Divinity.” 72.
Godbeer. “A Complete Body of Divinity.” 79.
13
The Puritans viewed sexual indiscretions as not only the sin of the offender, but also as a
chance for redemption for the offender and as a threat to the community as a whole. They
viewed sin as a disease that could affect their community, and as a result, they felt the moral
obligation to confront potential sinners prior to the act. Moreover, a witness to a sin or a sin in
the making could also be deemed morally at fault for not intervening or reporting the offense to
the authorities. Two interesting variables confounded this watchful neighborly duty – the
emphasis on hospitality and the social etiquette ambiguity. Showing hospitality to one’s
neighbors oftentimes placed women in precarious positions, such as welcoming a neighbor into
the house when alone. Not only did this sort of situation make the woman vulnerable should the
person engage in unwanted sexual advance, but the woman could also find herself in the position
of unmerited gossip/watchfulness of her neighbors. Godbeer (pregnant) argues that the Puritans
held ambiguous views about social etiquette and gives the example of kissing among friends as
the example. Observers of the kiss could have more moral say in the appropriateness or
sinfulness of a kiss. Sleeping arrangements may serve as a better example of ambiguity,
especially with regard to sex.29 Because the residents of a house slept in the same bed and had
limited private space, they had more opportunity to engage in sexual advances and acts. I
question how long they engaged in this sleeping arrangement and if any members saw how it
created opportunities for sinfulness. Although different churches reacted differently to
punishment for sexual offenses, by and large, each preferred that the sinner repent and reaffirm
his or her relationship with God. Public humiliation - confession to the group, possible tangible
evidence of guilt, such as wearing a sign, and temporary expulsion from the congregation –
usually served as the punishment for sexual offenses, as offered by both the clergy and by the
courts. Because the Puritans held strict views about evidence for crimes punishable by death,
29
Richard Godbeer. “Pregnant with the Seeds of All Sin.” 91.
14
offenders more often were convicted of lesser crimes. Also, because the magistrates also upheld
the moral convictions of the community, they like the clergy, sought redemption for the guilty.
Because women were viewed as culpable in eliciting sexual desire in men, they as victims were
also often held to be complicit in the crime. Homosexual sexual offenses were difficult to try in
court due to the debate about the exact definition of the crime, especially for sexual offenses
among women. Because they emphasized penetration as key to sodomy, they had difficulty
attaching fornication to acts between women, as well as for men.
Puritans, similar to Calvinism, experienced anxiety that was centered on their inability to
be assured that they were of God’s elect and would ultimately be saved. Because their covenant
of grace held that they could never earn nor be denied God’s grace, they continually wondered if
their deeds were worthy, if their sins were too great, and if their souls were too wicked for God
to choose them. Elizabeth Reis states that this imminent possibility of damnation – made certain
by complicity with Satan through sin – generated overwhelming fear in the hearts of the
Puritans.30 Their view of grace, that God chose only certain worthy people and that they could
neither earn nor be denied God’s grace, coupled with the ambiguous messages from their
ministers, that doubt surrounding worthiness for grace or overconfidence of being among God’s
chosen, combined to create a world filled with apprehension, anxiety, yet also assurance.
`Receiving God’s grace was a matter of chance, yet the individual was responsible for
damnation. Reis uses autobiographies and poetry to show how much of the motivation for
people’s behavior came from fear of damnation rather than from trust in God. Living a virtuous
life gave Puritans hope that they could receive grace; sinners had no hope.
Reis maintains that men and women differed with regard to their sense of self and uses
conversion narratives to support this argument. The women’s conversion narratives oftentimes
30
Elizabeth Reis. Damned Women. 13.
15
reflect that women “thought of themselves as completely worthless, virtually unredeemable,
slaves of Satan.”31 While women believed that sinfulness encompassed their entire being, men
more often drew distinctions between their inner souls and their sinful acts.
These different outlooks regarding sin as internalized or as external transgressions prove
critical as the Puritans’ sense of Satan and temptation evolve. First, the Puritans extended their
individual covenants with God to their godly community, and as a result, the behavior of the
individual members of the community impacted the community as a whole. They viewed
privacy with distrust, believing that privacy led to secrecy, and secrecy meant hiding private sins.
Second, in the Puritans’ view, the absence of God’s grace meant estrangement from Christ. If
God was not present, evil existed outside oneself, taking the form of Satan, who in their view
was present earth, just outside their community (or invited in at times), available to tempt men
and women away from God and toward him. Because women by nature were sinful and inclined
toward passivity, they were the easiest targets for Satan to lure.
In the next chapter, Reis more fully describes the Puritans’ beliefs regarding women’s
souls and bodies as easier fodder for temptation. They believed that the body was the avenue to
the soul (both men’s and women’s souls were considered feminine), and because women’s
bodies were weaker, they were easier to breech. Women’s passivity and submission made them
more likely to submit to Satan’s temptation. Reis clearly articulates the result of this view,
writing, “Puritans effectively demonized the notion of active female choice. A woman damned
if she did and damned if she didn’t.”32 Because the devil battled the soul within the body, sins
that weakened the body, such carnality and drunkenness, weakened the body’s ability to protect
the soul. Punishment for sins expressed itself through the body, such as illness being brought on
31
32
Reis. Damned Women. 38.
Reis. Damned Women. 94.
16
by sinful acts. Bodies could withstand trials, but subjecting the soul to such misery more easily
led to pacts with the devil. The soul entered into a heterosexual union with Christ (always
considered heterosexual because they viewed men’s souls as feminine) at regeneration, but
suffered misery if Satan prevented the union, thus causing a union between the soul and Satan.
Reis argues that the fluidity of gender roles in the spiritual sense resulted from the gendered split
between body and soul, and that this split allowed men to retain a masculine body (and
masculine gender roles) without giving up the femininity of his soul. Reis describes how during
the witchcraft trials, the feminine soul became equated with dissatisfied women, subjects primed
for the devil’s intrusion.33 John Cotton described how Satan possessed all sinners, but witches
compounded their crime by surrendering to this possession. Sinners passively waited for Christ,
but witches acted aggressively in choosing the devil and allowing him to possess her body as
well as her soul. Satan would then possess the body, in the sense of dominance over and
physical control of the witch’s body, which he would use to torment other victims. Many
witnesses for the witchcraft trials described the physical pains and afflictions done by Satan
through the witches’ bodies. Women victims expressed more brutal attacks, and men described
more maleficence, such as damage to property. The Puritans believed that compacting with the
devil bore physical signs on a woman’s body, such as the marks where familiars suckled. The
devil gave female witches enough strength to torment victims, while male witches received gifts
of extraordinary strength. During the witchcraft trials, Reis states that women as witches were so
threatening because their souls had asserted themselves to ally with Satan.34
In contrast, Srole argues that the Salem tragedy points to the stresses of a newly emerging
commercial society with its uncertain economic future for men and unpredictable marital
33
34
Reis. Damned Women. 107.
Reis. Damned Women, 120.
17
prospects for girls and young women. Carole Srole agrees with Carol Karlsen that hostilities
toward women who appeared independent, those outside of family bonds and controls. As
witches, they personified the dangers of a society in transition.35 Carol F. Karlsen argues that the
Puritans’ belief in witches and witchcraft, which they brought with them from England
essentially unchanged at first, was so widespread, at all levels of society, that disbelief was itself
suspect. As in England, the Puritans associated witchcraft with women and womanhood, and the
Puritans strengthened this association by believing that witches passed on their craft to those
close to them, especially daughters.36 Witches, through their association with the devil,
threatened Puritan society with both physical attacks to person and/or property and with threats
to the spiritual relationship with god. The courts would seriously consider accusations of
witchcraft if either the clergy or members of the community voiced strong support. If either of
these parties did not believe a person a witch, the trial would most likely end in acquittal. If both
parties agreed that a person was a witch, the accused would most likely be declared a witch.
When the concerns of the community and of the clergy were both widespread and intense, the
accusations could multiply, affecting the lives of not just one or two people, but in the case of
Salem in 1692, hundreds.37 The devil granted witches the ability to perform maleficium, or
causing harm by supernatural means, the most commonly ascribed motive for which was malice,
stimulated by pride, discontent, greed or envy.38 (Note that these are the same feelings and
emotions oftentimes ascribed to nasty wenches, those women who succumbed to their innate
weakness as women, and thus could not be good wives.) The witches could attack people,
Carole Srole. “Intersections and Differences: Integration of Women into the United States Survey Course, Part I.”
The History Teacher 23, no. 3 (May, 1990): 266.
36
Carol F. Karlsen. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1998), 3.
37
Karlsen. Devil, 5.
38
Ibid.
35
18
property, and animals, and they could cause disruptions in weather and in domestic processes.
Because witches had access to supernatural powers, they could tell fortunes, conjure spirits, and
either cause or heal injury or illness. For this reason, midwives oftentimes came under suspicion.
The first witchcraft outbreak in New England occurred in Hartford in 1662-63, after years
of internal dissention, resulting in many families forming a new community. Karlsen suggests
that the trials and executions would bring the accusers an end to their suffering and bring relief to
the clergy by purging their enemies from the community. She also suggests that by 1656,
ministers and magistrates had become increasingly uncomfortable with the status of the people
being accused and causing them to doubt accusations brought by the populace.39 The ministers
and magistrates expressed little unease with accusations against women of fewer means or with
“some taint of disrepute.” As the clergy in New England stressed the threat of a witch’s compact
with the devil as the biggest threat to their world, the protection afforded by the accused’s
economic status eroded.
The Salem outbreak in 1692-93 stands out for its size and scope. Spreading to towns in
the region, hundreds were accused of witchcraft, both men and women, regardless of age or
social standing. As the accusations spread to members of standing, the judges began suspending
the trials of the witches, and once the outbreak concluded, formal accusations of witchcraft all
but ceased.
New Englanders regularly singled out specific kinds of people to accuse of witchcraft.
Accused women overwhelmingly outnumbered men, and these accusations very often originated
in property disputes, and once acquitted, women had to post security bonds, which interfered
with or prevented them from pursuing their claims.40 Additionally, witchcraft accusations would
39
40
Karlsen. Devil, 26-27.
Karlsen. Devil,61.
19
follow women for years, if not for the remainder of their lives. Women just on the other side of
childbearing age were accused and convicted more often that women of any other age group, but
old women, once accused, faced a similar fate to these women just over 40 years of age. Married
women were accused more often than widowed or single women, but an extremely high
percentage of the single women accused were relatives of other accused women. Karlsen writes,
“Like their age, the marital status of women was crucial in determining their relationship to their
families and to their society. In the eyes of her community, the woman alone in early New
England was an aberration.”41
In the next chapter Karlsen describes the predominant economic conditions of the
accused witches. Unless single or widowed, women from wealthy families were protected from
prosecution. Women and property inheritance customs played a significant role in accusations of
witchcraft. Women inherited the use of property from their husband’s estates, but not ownership
to the property, and the women relinquished their claims upon remarriage. If a man left a will
granting his wife (or daughters) more property than was customary or if the marriage bore no
children or no male heirs, the woman stood a likelier chance of accusations of witchcraft. The
same goes for women who chose to not remarry, daughters who remained single, or women
engaged in property disputes with other beneficiaries, such as from previous marriages or sons
contesting the terms of the settlement. Women who stood in the way of the orderly transfer of
property stood greater chance of accusations of witchcraft.
What set apart the women accused of witchcraft from women in similar positions,
notably those of age and eligibility for inheritance? Karlsen suggests that the character or
personality of the accused witch could be a likely answer. The literature describes the witches as
disorderly women whose behavior stood outside the social norms. Karlsen writes, “These norms
41
Karlsen. Devil, 75.
20
varied with prevailing class, gender, and racial assumptions, which construed behavior
appropriate for some social groups as inappropriate for others. And the social assumptions that
prevailed in early New England accurately measure the distribution of power at the time.”42 The
behaviors that arose suspicions of witchcraft were those that challenged either the supremacy of
God or the prescribed gender arrangements. The religious beliefs of the Puritans reinforced
gender distinctions, and the witch symbolized the struggle between God and Satan. Karlsen
describes the sins committed by witches (listed as discontent, anger, envy, malice, seduction,
lying and pride) as religious sins against God or his church, sins against members of the
community (a mixture of a religious and sexual nature), and sins against the natural order (of a
sexual nature). Becoming a witch necessarily meant a rejection of the church; therefore,
religious dissent drew suspicions of witchcraft. Specific examples linking witchcraft with
religious dissent include the accusations against Anne Hutchinson and against Quaker women
almost a half century before the Salem outbreak – attacking the religious order also meant
attacking the hierarchal social order. Puritans defined discontent as thinking oneself above one’s
place in the social order, and discontent drew witches to Satan with promises of improved
material conditions.43 Accused witches not only were dissatisfied with their positions (the most
pervasive theme among the lives of accused witches), but they also actively asserted themselves,
oftentimes with anger, and this assertiveness completely contrasted with the good wife virtue of
submission. From anger came the other sins of envy and malice, which led to hostile quarrels
and attempts to do harm. Angry, dissatisfied women quarreled with neighbors, and suspicions of
witchcraft arose from this conflict and subsequent fears of attempts to do harm or exact revenge.
Commonly, the accused witch had a history of conflict with her neighbors. The attempts to do
42
43
Karlsen. Devil, 118.
Karlsen. Devil, 127.
21
harm took a sexual nature when witches used seduction to lure their neighbors to the devil’s side.
Women seduced women through possession and men through nocturnal sexual attack.
Dissatisfaction with society’s rules regarding sexual behavior, specifically restraint with respect
to sexual desires, was a common theme among witches. Seduction extended past sexual
expressions to women’s roles in health and healing, which stemmed from the nurturing duties of
women. Past the nurturing roles, witches inflicted damage to property and trade. Karlsen writes,
“[T]he record shows the lack of deference for male neighbors to be a common thread running
through the many sins of witches. It was not just pride that most fundamentally distinguished
witches from other people; it was female pride in particular.”44
The assumptions about women and witchcraft moved from a position of open discussion
to that of implicit knowledge. Puritans believed in the need to create structure and authority
within society, beginning in the home. They believed that society reflected the natural hierarchy
created by God and that godly women took a subordinate role in supporting this structure
through their wifely duties. In order for a woman to remain godly, she must serve God through
serving man as his helpmeet. Puritans’ suppressed hostility toward women could be found in
their view of the Fall – woman was first seduced by the serpent, who played into woman’s
feelings of discontent, and woman then seduced man. The same sins attributed to witches were
attributed to Eve. Women who rejected the subordinate role in society threatened the hierarchal
structure itself.
When the Puritans first arrived in New England, men far outnumbered women, mortality
rates were high, and marriages occurred at earlier ages. As they became more established, the
sex-ratio became more balanced, and people waited longer to get married. The earlier the age of
a woman at marriage, the longer the childbearing years and the greater the likelihood of
44
Karlsen. Devil, 150.
22
producing a male heir. Also, due to the high mortality rate, women were oftentimes widowed,
especially at early ages, and had to assume some self-reliant behavior. As the colony matured,
women were held more responsible for sexual crimes, and Karlsen suggests that the accusations
of witchcraft against neighbors indicates that signs of female independence had also become
objectionable to the larger community.45 The community had to support women who did not
have the support and protection of a husband, and thus were a drain on the community. As the
population density increased, problems arose from the distribution of property from father to
children. Due to the customs of inheritance allotments, less property became available for
distribution, and sons were less able to attain self-sufficiency, especially when fathers were
living longer and maintaining control over property longer. Additionally, men were obliged to
care for elderly parents and single sisters, and the economic frustrations of these men manifested
themselves in witchcraft accusations.
Possessed females represented distinct traits among accusers. Their age group, 16 to 25,
represented the most active among accusers. Possessed females, more often than not, had at least
one deceased parent. Many of this group were refugees orphaned in the border wars along the
Maine frontier who had become servants with little hope of improving their condition and had
little or no marriage prospects. This dismal future opened the door for discontent, and therefore,
to seduction by Satan. Possession challenged both religious and social norms and expressed an
underlying power struggle between the possessed and the authorities who were culturally
sanctioned to interpret their experience.46
Although the formation of gender (and race) roles differed among women in the MidAtlantic colonies and the women of New England, the paths for the transformations in their lives
45
46
Karlsen. Devil, 196-197.
Karlsen. Devil, 244.
23
merged with the American Revolution. Srole states that the conflicts over economic control of
consumer goods generated the chief political tactic, boycotting British goods. Srole writes,
“Since women were the major consumers, they became the troops in the tea boycott; and because
they engaged in social reproduction, women furnished the patriotic solution, "homespun" goods.
Until the eighteenth century, and even in the nineteenth, wars required an entourage of
independent "contractors" to supply social services of cooking, sewing, washing, healing, and
sex that women normally pro-vided for men. With the increasing centralization of the state, the
government seized that role. The conflict between George Washington and the female
Philadelphia Patriots over donations to the military reflect the tensions in a military with a
centralized British model, but lacking the concentrated resources to implement it fully.”47 Carol
Berkin tells how “when the call went out for a boycott of British goods, women became the
crucial participants . . .”48
Berkin explains that women during the American Revolution had to take on the roles of
surrogate husbands during their husbands’ absences. “For many, the new duties brought a sense
of pride in ownership” they had never felt before. “’Your farm’ became ‘our farm,’ …
eventually, it became ‘my farm.’” Women were “urged by the press, by ministers, and by the
colonial leadership to look upon domestic duties and chores as political weapons, these women
began to see themselves, for the first time, as actors upon the political stage.”49 In looking at the
different roles women performed, class was a major criterion of how women functioned at the
camps during the Revolution. While elite women either stayed home for the duration of the war
or joined their husbands periodically at camps planning dinner parties and balls to encourage and
Srole. “Intersections and Differences.” 268.
Carol Berkin. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 2005), 13.
49
Berkin. Revolutionary Mothers, 17
47
48
24
motivate, it was the poorer women who became camp followers doing the necessary work of
sewing, cooking, cleaning, and nursing. Yet, after 8 years of war, white women at least, were
ready to return to their customary activities as helpmates to their husbands. Though there was a
new emphasis on education for women, women’s spheres actually shrunk after the Revolution.
Their primary role converted to being republican wives and mothers who raise patriotic sons and
daughters, and this return to familiar roles was romanticized during the nineteenth century in
Elizabeth Ellet’s work, Women of the American Revolution. This work supported the notion that
women were moral superiors because of their natural piety, maternal instincts, and domestic
qualities which enabled them to create havens of refuge from the cruel outside world.
Srole writes, “The female worlds of diverse classes and races intersect with the male
worlds to create a whole society. Hence, major changes inherently include both men and women,
although in different ways. The recognition of differences is the first step toward locating
intersections.”50 Once located, these intersections can show the development of the social and
gender constructions that supported the patriarch society in the American colonies. At first,
gender roles for European women formed as a reaction to the “other” – the “other” naturally
submissive, savage Indian woman, and later the “other” jezebel, beast of burden enslaved
African woman. The codification of these differences set the foundation for the
institutionalization of chattel slavery. Conforming to these constructs of gender and race allowed
the formation of the dominant patriarchal society, both in the Mid-Atlantic region and in New
England. As long as women accepted the notions of differences based on race and class, they
accepted the hierarchal nature of the society, as constructed through the social and religious
institutions. White women could aspire to the trope of the “good wife,” i.e., the elite, white,
submissive wife, or they would by default perpetuate the trope of the “disorderly woman.” Mack
50
Srole. “Intersections and Differences.” 269.
25
writes, “A person’s capacity to be a free agent may be generated in the context of relationships,
of conditions of dependency, or out of the individual’s subjection to an external power, but
agency itself is defined as the individual’s ability to act according to her own best interests and to
resist oppressive power relationships.”51 Only by first examining and describing these
conditions can the question of agency be approached.
51
Mack. “Religion, Feminism, and the Problem of Agency.” 151
26
Bibliography
“An Act Defining the Status of Mulatto Bastards,” December 1662, in William Hening, ed., The
Statutes at Large, Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session
of the Legislature in the Year 1619. In Women’s Voices, Women’s Lives, edited by Carol
Berkin and Leslie Horowitz. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998.
Ball, Erica L. “Conceptualizing the Intersectionality of Race, Class, and Gender in U.S.
Women’s History.”
Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Berkin, Carol and Leslie Horowitz, eds. Women’s Voices, Women’s Lives. Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1998.
Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches &Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and
Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Godbeer, Richard. “A Complete Body of Divinity.”
---. “Pregnant with the Seeds of All Sin”
---. “’The Dangerous Allure of ‘Copper-Coloured Beauties’”
Juster, Susan. Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics & Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New
England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.
Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England.
New York: W.W. Norton, 1998.
Mack, Phyllis. “Religion, Feminism, and the Problem of Agency: Reflections on
Eighteenth‐Century Quakerism.” Signs 29, no. 1 (Autumn 2003): 149-177.
Morgan, Philip D. “Interracial Sex in the Chesapeake and the British Atlantic World.”
Potter, Tiffany. “Circular Taxonomies: Regulating European and American Women through
Representations of North American Indian Women.” Early American Literature 41, no.
2 (2006): 183-211.
Reis, Elizabeth. Damned Women.
Saxton, Martha. Being Good: Women’s Moral Values in Early America. New York: Hill &
Wang, 2003.
27
Srole, Carole. “Intersections and Differences: Integration of Women into the United States
Survey Course, Part I.” The History Teacher 23, no. 3 (May, 1990): 263-274.
Tannenbaum, Rebecca. “Conceptualizing U.S. Women’s History through the History of
Medicine”
Townsend, Camilla. Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma. New York: Hill & Wang, 2004.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary,
1785-1812. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
---. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 16501750. Vintage Books: New York, 1991.
Wadsworth, Benjamin. “The Well-Ordered Family (Boston, 1712).” In Women’s Voices,
Women’s Lives, edited by Carol Berkin and Leslie Horowitz, 58. Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1998.
28